I’ve been searching for a while via Ecosia, Google etc. and on Reddit but I’m struggling to find an answer.

My parents are moving together with my grandma to a new house with a little annex for my grandma. They’re planning to get Alexa’s so that my grandma can call through to the other side of the house if she falls over or needs help. I would love for them not to end up giving every conversation they ever have to Amazon’s servers… Is there any way to replicate this functionality in Home Assistant (i.e. call between satellites across the network)? If I can figure this out I’ll build a self-hosted setup for them.

  • CameronDev@programming.devEnglish
    9·
    1 day ago

    If its safety related, use a paid for tool if you can afford it. The cost you pay for is for all the testing and reliability, that you can’t replicate with a diy solution.

    You’ll feel terrible if something happens and your solution doesn’t work in the moment.

  • sunnyjim@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
    2·
    1 day ago

    Thanks for the suggestions everyone. In broad strokes, here’s the thinking to reply to a few comments at once:

    1. We didn’t want to use a phone-based solution because she doesn’t always carry her phone in the middle of the night. This goes for carrying a button.

    2. A LifeAlert system could work, but they usually involve buttons.

    After talking about it, we realised that simply putting out a baby monitor or equivalent might be the most effective - she can shout at it and it will go direct. An alternative would be setting up a HA alert to broadcast based on a phrase (or a few). We’ll weigh up the options but I’m leaning towards the former.

    Thanks everyone! I appreciate the ideas - I think HA might not be the solution after all, but hopefully I can keep them from installing wiretaps Amazon Alexa in their house.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    2 days ago

    A phone seems like an easier solution, but there are VOIP integrations for HA, as well as ways to stream audio through the media player to different devices. I’m not aware of any integration that specifically does paging as you describe, but it would be easy to do with an esp32 board with a speaker.

  • damnthefilibuster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    You could try Rhasspy - https://github.com/rhasspy/rhasspy

    Mike is a pretty cool guy. I know the repo is archived, but he might help you if you reach him.

    Alternatively, what about a panic button? Both commercial solutions and privacy friendly local solutions exist. I know it’s intrusive and grandma will have to keep it on her person at all times. But… that’s kind of what they’re there for.