Senior citizen-friendly video telephony system with a Raspberry Pi
Conclusions
The term "plug and play" seems a bit like overkill for this video telephony system, but once network access is configured, the Jitsi meeting has been given a name in the code, and the email account is set up, all you really need to do is plug the Raspberry Pi into a suitable CEC-enabled TV.
To make a call, the user then just presses a button and waits for the other party to join the Jitsi session. The first time you do this, you should go through the steps with the mouse and keyboard connected to disable one-off notifications, check the CEC response, and enable the microphone and camera. After that, grandma and grandpa should be able to manage the system.
The original source for the project from Instructables [9] is a few years old and ultimately only provided some inspiration and a starting point. The video telephony system described here configures the audio devices, controls the TV set, and automates everything with a single button.
If I had found a solution to purchase, then this project would never have taken off. But for a newcomer, the potential learning effect is massive, especially if you do not simply copy the code, but also look up what it actually does. Most importantly, it produces results that have a tremendous utility value.
Infos
- Jitsi: https://jitsi.org
- WebRTC: https://webrtc.org
- Jitsi Meet: https://meet.jit.si
- msmtp: https://marlam.de/msmtp
- CEC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control
- "Raspberry Pi Raspbian Power on/off GPIO button": http://www.barryhubbard.com/raspberry-pi/howto-raspberry-pi-raspbian-power-on-off-gpio-button/
- WebRTC test page: https://test.webrtc.org
- Audio and video test for WebRTC: https://webrtc.github.io/test-pages/src/audio-and-video
- "Video Calling on Raspberry Pi 3": https://www.instructables.com/id/Video-Calling-on-Raspberry-Pi-3
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