I’m looking for a better, more private solution to an intercom I have between the house and my barn. I have Ethernet run out there, and I currently use the “drop-in” feature on some Amazon echo devices. I’m looking to get away from the Amazon devices entirely (maybe implementing the pine speaker they announced?)
I don’t have a lot of requirements, though VoIP would be preferred over a radio style, since it’s a metal barn and blocks a lot of signals. I’m good with some self hosted solution, and ideally there’s a dedicated device, as I don’t want to use my phone or computer for it all the time. I’m probably missing some obvious solution, but figured I’d try to get some ideas together.
Thoughts?
You’ve already run wires, why not a microphone and speaker system?
I could I guess? What would that look like? Just mic and speakers wired over Ethernet and just always on but with a hardware switch or something? Or connected to something like a Raspberry pi running some software to talk with the other pi?
From Amazon, I found “IS543 5/4/3 WIRE INTERCOM STAT-PLAST”
It’s similar to what we had growing up, 1 in the shed, 1 in the kitchen 1 in the game room, push the button of the location you wanted to talk to, only 1 direction of communication at a time, over.
I feel like you’re making it way more complicated than it needs to be, why would you involve a switch or processor when you’re just carrying sound waves? You don’t even need a modulator, it just needs to connect a microphone to a speaker like cans on a string. Is it the highest quality? No, will it record your conversation for posterity? Also no. Will it let you tell at someone to get their asses in for dinner, absolutely
Oh I’m sure I’m overcomplicating it. We had some landline phones growing up that could also ping and “intercom” but those were all connected to phone jacks with an active phone service, ao I figured I couldn’t really do that. How is some like the one you mentioned wired? How does it talk to the the other one? Forgive my ignorance.
And to note, I definitely do not need high quality, just something local that is functional.
If you can find landline phones with that feature set, just get them. You can just wire them together and put 20 volts DC in the line. Of course you’re not going to want to do that over your single ethernet run but if you had multiple…
Telephone services really simple, 18 to 24 volts on hook should pull down to about eight or nine volts when you open the line. If you pulse a 90 volt signal, It will cause them to ring.
It’s literally speaker wire, or you could clip the ends of your Ethernet and use those (but you probably want your Ethernet out there still XD. One side will be to be run to power, but it’ll power the rest of the stations through the wire.
I feel like this is definitely what you’re looking for, no computers required.
That’s fair, and yeah in hindsight would have been great, though tough to retrofit. Maybe I’ll look into running another line for something like that. Thanks!
Did you run the line under ground or through conduit? Disconnect it from both sides, attach string/fishing line to one side, pull cable out of conduit on the side without the string attached. Detach string from either meet cable, reattach string with Ethernet cable and the additional cable (speaker cable in this case), pull string from the original side until both cables make their appearance.
Outside of walkie talkies (have you considered walkie talkie? Maybe put an antenna outside of the shop?) this is the simplest way to do it (imo, but I don’t play with raspberry pi’s)
Against some better judgement, I did direct burial. I did consider walkie talkies, but heard doesn’t work well in a metal barn (I confirmed I basically have zero cell reception). I could look at adding the antenna though, thats not a bad idea.
one of the benefits of using a packet switched solution is that it’s expandable in the future… adding extra terminals anywhere there’s networking is pretty powerful - you can change your mind about location, or even technology in general and not have to worry
… and it’s probably much easier to extend on in the future too - say open source AI assistants get better, you might want to build one that integrates with timers etc, that’s much easier with packet switched … or even more likely, you want to broadcast to the intercom from outside your house or even just make mobile phones able to be transmitters inside the house
you’re totally right that simple point to point intercom stuff like that is a much simpler solution, but packet switched is king for a lot of future-proofing reasons - perhaps not something that OP cares about (a project completed is better than a perfect plan not begun), but worth mentioning
I’m just being pedantic here, but an intercom system expands anywhere there’s networking, requires fewer wires, and lower voltage (will even work without power, not very well, but it will)