Is there an Internet intercom? Need help for a friend and his mom. | Hacker News Reader

Is there an Internet intercom? Need help for a friend and his mom.

10 pointsgeofffox12 comments

My friend lives in California. His mom, 90 and now with failing short term memory, lives in New York. Even dialing the phone can be an iffy experience for her.

What he'd like is an intercom so he or his brother could monitor his mom's apartment and speak to her without the necessity of her doing anything. The sticking point is use from her end must be totally passive.

Does such a system exist? Thanks.

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I would get a IP Phone that supports intercom, or intercom like features and get two of them. Lots of phones (I think Polycoms do this) support intercom via a auto-answer feature thats enabled for a special extension or something like that. Digging into Polycom's XML firmware might be a bit daunting for the uninitiated though, so you might want to see if Snom has something that will work for you (hell if they don't, the phones run linux!). You will probably need some kind of proxy for the phones, I like FreeSWITCH, but you can use something simpler, or Asterisk if you like it better.

Use grandstream gxv3000 ip video phones. You can dial by IP (no pbx or sip service required), set the phone to auto answer on her end and administer it via web browser. (Why a video phone is more desirable in this case than a regular phone should be self evident)

This means you don't have to depend on computers or buggy software being on and set up just right and turned on to work. If nat is a problem thanks to your internet carrier, use a pair of open-wrt boxes with openvpn to make sure you're always connected to each other.

The commercial products used widely in similar situations are called "senior medical alarms" (or "alerts"). There are a number of providers. It is hardware (e.g., waterproof button worn around the neck, communicating wirelessly to a base station which includes a specialized loud speaker phone) plus a data-rich monitoring service. When the button is pushed, the base station connects 24/7 to a service rep who can use the loud speaker phone to converse with the wearer. In case of emergency, the rep has a list of nearby friends and possibly distant family to notify, and also has prepared data on hand to summon the correct local emergency services and tell them how to gain access. Monitoring services offer other functions, including calling the senior's base station regularly just to check in and chat briefly, or calling to prompt and check on specific medication. Additional hardware is available, such as motion detectors which activate the base station in case of unusual or missing activity, and multiple units to cover larger living spaces. A lot of development has gone into solving this specific problem, so possibly specialized service would work better than just an intercom.

I think this would be an interesting idea to implement.

Although, maybe 1. ask his mom to get a separate phone, specifically for your friend to call her and 2. for her to keep it on the line, constantly.

now that is pretty iffy, but it's a quick hack.

although I think a program would be much better, obviously.

I played around with Flash Media Streaming Server a while back it and might be able to do what they need it to:

He could setup the freebie developer's version (at least it used to be free) on his computer. Then you'd need to make a flash player or two that will stream the video and audio back to the server so they can each see and hear the other. Then just stick those players on webpage somewhere, and you're pretty much set. This could be done as an Adobe Air app as well I think...

If they have the computers and webcams (hp mini or eee pc would work!), I'd be happy to see what I could do to help them out: admin (at) hpminiguide . com

(Sorry if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I'm super tired and coming down after a few strong drinks)

Aren't there web enabled baby monitors?

Somebody here at HN built this for justin.tv: http://www.slumbervision.com/

This may seem a little too 1984, but you can set up a camera with an external IP address in her apartment:

http://www.networkcamerareviews.com/articles/portforwarding....

Just get a single button telephone with their number hardcoded. Or something like that.

Look into VoIP. A specific system probably doesn't really exist yet, but you/your friend might be able to cobble something together.

Or an auto-answering skype client?

Or, if you don't want to do any programming, Skype plus VNC.

It's time for your friend's mom to stop living on her own.

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