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OT: In shop intercom systems

Old Western Electric intercom phones. Sounds crazy but I wired up the entire
house, and out to the garage. Keeps the hollering to a bare minimum. Also
I like it when the buzzer goes off, and the wife says "come on in and get a
glass of wine to cap off the night."

Jim
 
My wife and I both have Mac computers. When I need her attention, dinner's ready, for example, and she's busy in the office working the books, I log on to her computer using ssh, a text based terminal, and type 'say "Dinner is ready"'.

The Mac "say" command will convert the text to speech and play it over her speakers. Her sound card is also attached to a small FM stereo transmitter so it also plays over our radios. It never fails to freak her out, but she gets a hot meal :)

I can do it when I'm traveling, too, which really surprises her!
 
You might consider a used multi line phone system. You can pick up something like an intertel GLX system on Ebay for a few hundred dollars, and that gives you 12 possible telephone extensions, up to 6 phone lines, loudspeaker, paging, etc all in one lump. Put an extension in every room in the house and every building and one button pages them all, or you can reach just one extension from any other extension. I have the GLX in my shop and office, requires only a 6 conductor wire to each jack. I put it in new, and it's obsolete now, but I just buy hardware on ebay when I need it.
 
At the shop, we all carry Nextels. That or the newer high tech walkie talkies would be fine.

At home, I have a cordless phone system with two handsets. There is an intercom system on board.
 
Most multi cordless phones have a intercom facility. We have a five station one and this time around I haven't bothered putting the wired intercom back in as the phone one just works and is convienient...
 
We have used two different kinds of Radio Shack intercoms, wireless and hard-wired. The wireless didn't last long. IIRC, it went TU during the first thunderstorm after installing it.

The cheap hard-wired one still works after 30+ years. Originally battery-powered, I connected it to a cheap wall-wart power supply. Because their bedroom is in the basement, it was a life-saver while the kids were growing up. After they flew the coop I moved it over into the shop. It still works great!

Orrin
 
I had a Radio Shack "wireless" intercom (plugs into wall 110V). It worked OK some of the time, but most of the time it was subject to serious interference from, I presume, other wiring in the shop and home. Erratic and maddening, and I threw the whole works out.
 








 
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