OT Internal phones

secretsam
secretsam Posts: 5,120
in Commuting chat
Morning all

I live in a townhouse and communicating from the kitchen (Ground floor) to my daughter's room on the 2nd floor is a nightmare. The house is littered with unused phone sockets, is there a way of setting up an internal system?
It's just a hill. Get over it.

Comments

  • Wheelspinner
    Wheelspinner Posts: 6,711
    20 years ago I bought some Bang & Olufsen phones. One was a “base” station which connected to the phone network line, and the other handsets were just wireless extensions. They had a function where you could just dial another handset walkie-talkie style, worked great. Up to 6 handsets could run on one base station.

    Am sure there’d be a similar function in a lot of cordless phones these days?
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  • timothyw
    timothyw Posts: 2,482
    This is something you can do with Echo dots (and other echo devices) if you are that way inclined, you can ask them to phone each other as required.
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    depending on how good your wifi is within your house using something like voice calls over whatsapp or similar might be a good option
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  • photonic69
    photonic69 Posts: 2,958
    This or similar:
    https://www.philips.co.uk/c-p/XL4952DS_05/cordless-phone-with-answering-machine

    We often use these for internal calls when my wife is in the loft and I'm calling her for dinner/coffee/bog roll etc.

    Plenty to choose from


    Sometimes. Maybe. Possibly.

  • thistle_
    thistle_ Posts: 7,218
    I think most cordless phones allow you to call other handsets, provided the signal reaches that far.

    With old bell telephones, if you kept pressing the button that hangs up the call it made the other bells "ding" - probably from causing a surge on the line.
    I'm not sure if you can do it with modern corded phones. I expect it's possible somehow but because most people use cordless phones there's no demand for it.

    What's wrong with WhatsApp, FaceTime etc.? That's what all the kids use anyway isn't it? :)
  • wolfsbane2k
    wolfsbane2k Posts: 3,056
    edited December 2019
    We've got a set quad set of BT phones - 1 main one that's plugged in to the wire, the others just need a charging station. We can get one handset to call a specific handset as needed.

    A different option is Amazon Echo's or Google Home's - they have a broadcast/call function

    You "could" set up an internal phone exchange system using a raspberry pi with asterix or similar as the PBX, but it depends on the wiring - if the phone lines are all daisy chained other, rather into in a patch board somewhere, then its likely going to be a PITA - and i'd suggest sticking with wifi/DECT based solutions if the signals are strong enough.
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  • Longshot
    Longshot Posts: 940
    We use the Echos from Amazon.
    You can fool some of the people all of the time. Concentrate on those people.
  • slowbike
    slowbike Posts: 8,498
    Longshot said:

    We use the Echos from Amazon.

    Having had targeted emails from Amazon for products related to discussion we were having with friends, I'm not inclined to have any internet connected voice activated device enabled in our home. Sure, it's convenient, but who knows which snippets of audio are being listened too or used for non-marketing purposes - tin hat is firmly on! ;)
  • Longshot
    Longshot Posts: 940
    slowbike said:

    Longshot said:

    We use the Echos from Amazon.

    Having had targeted emails from Amazon for products related to discussion we were having with friends, I'm not inclined to have any internet connected voice activated device enabled in our home. Sure, it's convenient, but who knows which snippets of audio are being listened too or used for non-marketing purposes - tin hat is firmly on! ;)

    No, put the tin hat on - it absolutely happens. We've actually tested it a few times and are resigned to the fact it's constantly listening in. If only we had anything worth listening to.
    You can fool some of the people all of the time. Concentrate on those people.
  • chris_bass
    chris_bass Posts: 4,913
    Longshot said:

    slowbike said:

    Longshot said:

    We use the Echos from Amazon.

    Having had targeted emails from Amazon for products related to discussion we were having with friends, I'm not inclined to have any internet connected voice activated device enabled in our home. Sure, it's convenient, but who knows which snippets of audio are being listened too or used for non-marketing purposes - tin hat is firmly on! ;)

    No, put the tin hat on - it absolutely happens. We've actually tested it a few times and are resigned to the fact it's constantly listening in. If only we had anything worth listening to.
    how exactly did you test it?

    did you get emails for those products before? did you get emails about products you didn't talk about? did you talk about popular amazon products? did they recommend any weird or niche products that they wouldn't have otherwise known you'd like (haven't bought before, aren't ususal for your age or demographics etc)

    i'm not saying it definitely doesn't happen but they probably have better things to be doing!
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