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Turning Your PC Into a LAN-based Intercom?

Posted by Cliff on from the neat-hacks dept.

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?"

3 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. speak freely by rplacd · · Score: 5, Informative

    Speak Freely should do all you need. Plus, it's cross-platform; I have it on both my FreeBSD and Windows machines at home.

    1. Re:speak freely by gleam · · Score: 4, Informative

      teamspeak now has both linux clients and servers, which would likely work on freebsd (via linux emulation) as well. i know for a fact the server does.

      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

      --
      this .sig is not a .sig.
  2. Scripts and netcat :) by Pyromage · · Score: 4, Informative

    Receiving:

    nc -l -p 5000 > /dev/dsp

    Sending:

    cat /dev/dsp | nc hostname 5000

    You probably want something a bit more... robust than this, but hell, what do you want for 2 lines of bash? :)