What it can be
Open Lounge Phone is a phone with real keys and a handset, and a small open platform behind it. Everything runs on connections: you sign in on a public hub you trust, or federate your own servers and services, and you choose the level of safety and security you want at every step. That includes how available and how visible you are:
- Who can reach you. Nobody calls you until you’ve accepted their knock, and a kid’s phone has no address at all: only the people its guardians allow.
- When you’re reachable. One switch says whether you’re taking calls; quiet hours send callers to voicemail; a Lounge phone only rings for you while you’re signed in on it.
- Who sees you’re around. Sharing your availability with your connections is off until you turn it on, and “open to chat” on a Lounge phone is a key you press.
- Where your data lives. The free public hub to try it, or your own server, on your own Cloudflare account or your own computer. They all talk to each other.
The same board and software fit very different places. Pick the one that sounds like you:
Families with kidsA first phone without the internet in it, that grows with your child.
Grandparents and eldersBig keys, one-press calls to family, and a daily check-in.
Care homesFamily on the keys in every resident's room, reception by extension, and a daily check-in.
Schools and classroomsA phone in every classroom, the office in one press, and calls to a partner class anywhere.
Hospitals and clinicsA bedside phone patients use as themselves, and that forgets them when they go home.
Shared houses and co-livingA house phone in the kitchen, an intercom between rooms, a dinner bell.
Offices and front desksExtensions, ring groups and a lobby phone that rings whoever is on duty.
Cafés, lounges and hotelsA phone anyone can use as themselves, and that forgets them when they leave.
Makers and tinkerersOpen board, open firmware, hot-swap keys: make it do something new.
Not just a phone
Section titled “Not just a phone”The labs firmware (version 0.0.0) turns the same board into other useful things around a property, most of them without a server at all:
| What it does | |
|---|---|
| House intercom | Lift, press a key, and the phone in the other room rings. “All” rings every room. Works on your Wi-Fi with no server and no internet |
| Doorbell or front desk | A phone by the door whose key (or any key) rings the house phones with the door’s name |
| Dinner’s ready | One key makes every phone in the house beep and show the words |
| Daily check-in | An elder presses I’m OK each morning; if they don’t by the time set, their family gets an alert in their voicemail |
| Home panel | A key runs a Home Assistant scene, and the screen shows something like GARAGE: OPEN |
| Dial-a-story | A key plays a recorded story in the handset |
| Macro pad | The phone becomes a USB keyboard with mute, play and shortcut keys |
| Games | Press MENU ten times: Snake and Memory on the e-paper screen |