Turning Your PC Into a LAN-based Intercom? 25
AugstWest asks: "With all of the VOIP projects all over the net, and more and more of us geeks installing machiens in every room in the house, it hit me that we've got all the wiring and hardware necessary for a full-house intercom installed.
Software, however, is another story. None of the VOIP projects I've been able to find can be easily adapted to instant-on lan voice communications. With a microphone hooked up to all of the machines throughout the house, shouldn't it be simple to set up instant-on voice software? I've scoured the net for it, does any already exist?"
speak freely (Score:5, Informative)
Speak Freely [speakfreely.org] should do all you need. Plus, it's cross-platform; I have it on both my FreeBSD and Windows machines at home.
Re:speak freely (Score:4, Informative)
www.teamspeak.org
the main advantage of teamspeak over speakfreely is that, aside from having better quality low-bitrate codecs, it automatically mixes speech on the server.. speakfreely doesn't, it simply reflects everything, and teh clients do a horrible job of mixing the voice streams. if two people talk at once in speak freely, the third person can't understand either of them.
-gleam
Re:speak freely (Score:1)
Just leave the output program running on all programs pointed at one box with reflector running. Then a little script that starts the mic program and points ether at a spacific other box or the reflector for all the boxes. Would work great for a LAN.
Scripts and netcat :) (Score:4, Informative)
nc -l -p 5000 >
Sending:
cat
You probably want something a bit more... robust than this, but hell, what do you want for 2 lines of bash?
Yes (Score:1)
Wireless intercom. (Score:1)
OS X (Score:2)
Dirk
Its called a telephone. (Score:4, Funny)
Security (Score:4, Funny)
Therefore, I would not be inclined to install software that would allow people to listen in to conversations in my house.
If I had kids I definitely wouldn't run the software
My parents had an old style intercom
Re:Security (Score:1)
Came in handy when he started talking layoffs
A bit OT: The Holy Grail of Interconnectivity (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever wire a house for voice, video, data? Well, there's a rather standard way of doing it and it involves two four pair cables (Cat5e, generally, though in the "old" days, if you were penny wise and pound foolish, you'd run one Cat3 and one Cat5, or worse, one quad "Jake" and one Cat3), and two RF cables (RG-6/U, preferably quad-shielded).
One of the quad-pair is used for data, the other for phone (some of the more complex phone systems actually need all 4 pairs); one of the RF cables is used for distribution from the headend, and the other for modulated distribution back to the headend, to distribute your DVD throughout the house.
It's supposed to be the most cost-effective way of doing things: cheaper to RF-modulate an analog signal than do real-time MPEG2 encoding to stream over IP, right? Same for the phone stuff, though, as the original query hints, not out of the realm of afordability to do it over IP. And all that cable! Do you know how thick a bundle of 2xCat5e and 2xRG6/U is? About 3/4-7/8 inch. It's a real pain to retrofit into an existing house. Been there, done that. Wireless data networks start to look real attractive.
Now, you can get products like SpeedWrap that add an extra jacket (and some even include Fibre), which makes deployment a bit easier, but the cable costs about double what individual cables do (still, if you're paying for installation, it can be worth it).
Yeah, it would be real nice to do it all over IP, and thus, one 100BT or GigE network connection.
I've often thought of a "per-room" interface box, with network in, and telco, intercom, digital audio, and video outputs and possibly digital audio and video inputs. The idea is to interface to legacy equipment (like standard handsets, intercom speakers, stereos, TV's, etc), with one little wire snaking back to the headend. Computers, of course, connect directly to the network. You might want to splurge and have several nets: entertainment, data, and DMZ data. Such things would be a real hacker's dream to design, build, and deploy.
The kicker, of course, is cost. A phone and a bit of wire is way cheaper than this kind of tech, which requres, effectively, a fairly powerful computer in each room to be networked. Gigabit ethernet switches don't come cheap. Start running MPEG2 video around your home lan and the ??AAs will be all over you for "infringement". Still, Moore's law being what it is, in about ten years, such things could be made as cheap as doughnuts.
Yeah, this went off-topic, and didn't provide any tech solutions for IP-intercoms, but it does warrant examing the bigger issue of putting all of a home's digital and digitizable traffic on a LAN.
Re:A bit OT: The Holy Grail of Interconnectivity (Score:1)
Re:A bit OT: The Holy Grail of Interconnectivity (Score:2)
Besides, quad-shield is not that much more than double shielded, and as long as you're hauling cable, might as well.
Simple Solutions (Score:4, Funny)
1. Get up and go talk to them (unless you have a really big house.
2. Do what I do. I page my kids via the yell command and they usually reply via the what? response. This isn't always going to work because of collisions, crosstalk, and limited bandwidth but it doesn't cost that much, is cross platform, and very portable.
Re:Simple Solutions (Score:2, Funny)
Sometimes the 'demand' and 'ultimatum' commands don't even get through.
Actually the problem could also be due to packet filtering. It is possible that they have a rather neat packet filter that filters out all those commands.
Oh well...
XMMS-Shoutcast? (Score:2, Interesting)
Net Meeting (Score:1)
Simple solution (Score:2)
http://rogerwilco.gamespy.com
levine
Radio Shack (Score:2)
Softphones and IM Clients (Score:1)