

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

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.<p>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.<p>Does such a system exist?  Thanks.
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oomkiller
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.

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noonespecial
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.

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rg
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.

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pizza
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.

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themole
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)

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haliax
Aren't there web enabled baby monitors?

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

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tomh
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....](http://www.networkcamerareviews.com/articles/portforwarding.html)

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aw3c2
Just get a single button telephone with their number hardcoded. Or something
like that.

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bodhi
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?

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

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

