Old is new

Our home is mostly automated using Home Assistant, so far it's been working pretty well. My wife just wants things to work—she doesn't care how, and she doesn't care much for automation. But I found myself contemplating putting up a couple of tablet-based dashboards around the house for more control. Then I realized I could turn those into an intercom system as well to prevent all the yelling and shouting, which was currently the main form of communication around the house.

But nobody really needed more controls, and I never got around to investing in all the hardware. However, one day I was looking for stuff on a second-hand site, and I found somebody in the area was selling a box of old expensive office VoIP phones.

Lightbulb!

I did some digging, and decided setting up a PBX system should be doable. The phones were cheap and when I put this idea to my kids they were really excited. So a couple days later I find myself replacing most of my switches with POE switches and pulling some more UTP cables around the house.

Setting up the PBX system was not as easy as I hoped. I wanted to avoid paid services and strictly use open source software. I found a couple of options, but in the end I decided to go with Asterisk. But after a couple of days of struggling with that I realized my FritzBox router has a built-in PBX system...

I got the FritzBox specifically since it was a European system and it supports mesh networking, but since the Germans were always still a bit conservative with their adoption of internet stuff, their routers to this day support connecting physical phones. Anyway, with the FritzBox, setting up the phone system was a breeze.

Now almost all parts of the house have a phone, the kids love it, I never have to yell to get people to come to dinner. Making and receiving calls brings a smile to their faces, and it's amazing how easy it was.

Now the only thing left is to teach them non-mobile phone etiquette. :-)