Hacking the House Chapter 2: The Boston VoIP doorbell

Abstract

In the January 2016 issue of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine, I confessed to my Chicago apartment misdeeds that led me to a life of noncriminal behavior of hacking the house. I also mentioned how my constant attempts to integrate more and more technology into our everyday living have challenged my wife's sanity. (I rationalize my behavior by telling her she is performing important beta testing as part of my permanent consumer focus group.) She is okay with the Wi-Fi Internet coverage inside the house but needs to bring me into the room to change the channel on the TV because I have implemented a gateway box with a cable QAM tuner to MPEG2 DLNA video over Internet Protocol (IP) via Wi-Fi to thin client wireless set-top boxes running a rendering app on a Google TV platform. She is just about getting comfortable with the home private automatic branch exchange (PABX) connecting Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phones connected via a HomePNA (HPNA) network. I don't think she minds having to predial trunk access codes before each outgoing phone call because it means we have many more possible outside lines and are able to access the home phones via the public Internet while we are away from our home base. Even the X10 network has become a welcome resident because the stand-alone controller takes care of the lights, automatically adjusting for sunrise and sunset based on the month of the year.