Collaborate Disseminate
Never underestimate the quick and dirty hack. It’s very satisfying to rapidly solve a real problem with whatever you have on hand, and helps to keep your hacking skills sharp for those big beautifully engineered projects. [Guillaume M] needed a way to remotely open his apartment building door for deliveries, …read more
Continue reading Quick And Dirty: Operate An Intercom Via Telegram
There was a time when an intercom was simply a pair of boxes with speakers joined by a couple of wires, with an audio amplifier somewhere in the mix. But intercoms have like everything else joined the digital age, so those two wires now carry a load of other functionality …read more
One of the most popular futurist tropes of the 20th century was the video intercom. Once this technology was ready, it would clearly become a mainstay of modern living overnight. Our lived reality is however somewhat different. For [MisterM], that simply wouldn’t do, so he set about producing a retro-themed …read more
Continue reading Video Doorbell Focuses On Quality, Aesthetic
The ESP8266 has become such a staple of projects in our community since it burst onto the scene a few years ago. The combination of a super-fast processor and wireless networking all on the same chip and sold in retail quantities for relative pennies has been irresistible. So when [Petteri Aimonen] needed to make a wireless intercom system for cycling trips it seemed an obvious choice. Push its internal ADC to sample at a high enogh rate for audio, and stream the result over an ad-hoc wi-fi network.
The result was far from satisfactory, as while early results with a …read more
Continue reading Fail Of The Week: ESP Walkie, Not-So-Talkie
Old Radio Shack intercom; brand new Google Voice interface for a Raspberry Pi. One of these things is not like the other, but they ended up together in this retro-look Google Voice interface, and the results are pretty slick.
The recipient of the Google hive-mind transplant was one of three wireless FM intercoms [MisterM] scored for a measly £4. Looking much as they did when they were the must-have office tool or home accessory for your modern mid-80s lifestyle, the intercom case was the perfect host for the Pi and the Google AIY hat. Only the case was used — …read more
Continue reading Old Intercom Gets Googled with Raspberry Pi and AIY Hat
Intercom, a business messaging tool that enables companies to communicate directly with customers in an online context, announced today that it has hired former Intuit SVP Karen Peacock as company COO.
She joined the company May 30th, but they ar… Continue reading Intercom lands former Intuit exec Karen Peacock as its new COO
We’re all familiar with record-your-own-message greeting cards. Generally they’re little more than a cute gimmick for a friend’s birthday, but [dögenigt] saw that these cards had more potential.
After sourcing a couple of cheap modules from eBay, the first order of business was to replace the watch batteries with a DC power supply. Following the art of circuit bending, he then set about probing contacts on the board. Looking to control the pitch of the recorded message, [dögenigt] found two pads that when touched, changed the speed of playback. Wiring these two points to the ears of a potentiometer allowed …read more
The Amazon Echo is a pretty cool piece of tech: it lets you ask questions, queue up music, find out the weather, and more, without having to do anything but talk. But, the device itself is a bit pricey, and looks a little boring. What if you could have all the features of the Echo, but in a cool retro case and at a cheaper price?
Well, you can, and that’s exactly what [nick.r.brewer] did, using a ’50s intercom and a Raspberry Pi. He picked the vintage intercom up at an antique store for $20, and the Raspberry Pi Zero …read more
Continue reading Retrofitting a Vintage Intercom to Run Amazon Alexa
Intercom, a startup helping businesses talk to their customers, has raised an additional $50 million in funding. Intercom’s products cover everything from website chat to marketing to customer support. When the company raised funding last year, co-founder and CEO Eoghan McCabe (pictured above) said integration is one of the big elements of the company’s strategy —… Read More Continue reading Customer communication startup Intercom raises $50M
