How easy is it to manage the calling allowlist for those providers? That seems to be the key value proposition here; the parent app that controls the allowlist.

Keep in mind, the main use case is allowing kids to call their friends and family and no one else.

VoIP nerds out there, is there any simple PFSense equivalent for VoIP that would allow you to DIY this? Basically restrict inbound and outbound calls to a whitelist?

You might like FreePBX[0] for a PFSense-style "PBX appliance" with easy WebUI. Just grab the ISO (or shell script to install on Debian). It's built on Asterisk, and more than adequate for the task. Whilst FreeSWITCH is awesome it's way more complex and overkill for this use case.

[0]: https://freepbx.org

Awesome, thanks! I'll check it out.

Yes, get a trunk from someone like BulkVS, SignalWire and run your own freeswitch or asterix. You can set up arbitrary “allowed” lists. Hell you can even get fancy with lookups and decide on the fly to allow a call or not.

There are other comments about providers, but my way is way cheaper and you can run you EPBAX on a pi or even get a pre made VM from Azure, Amazon, etc.

Damn I hate paying rent.

Whoa, love this. Do you have any recommended resources if I wanted to try this out? Any comments about FreeSWITCH vs Asterisk, or BulkVS vs Signalwire for a simple setup like this?

Freeswitch is more complicated and has a steeper learning curve, but you can pair it with FusionPBX and it will make things a lot more palatable. Asterix is the grand daddy of this stuff. The community is stronger for Asterix. Freeswitch is pretty much infinitely customizable.

SignalWire is the primary sponsor of Freeswitch but is mainly geared towards HUGE installations. BulkVS is cheaper and better in my opinion. You can also look at AnveoDirect, which is more raw than BulkVS, but you can become really really fancy with it. Like, call center fancy.

I did a writeup of my own experiences using Asterisk for this exact use case: https://github.com/mnutt/rotary

This is exactly what I was looking for—thanks! So cool that you did this with a rotary phone.

Asterisk has better voice lines, like if-rotary-phone.wav, tt-somethingwrong.wav, shiny-brass-lamp.wav, you-sound-cute.wav, and tt-monkeysintro.wav.

Some of the providers on that link have “allowlist” as a feature, but I am curious how easy it is to manage. The parent app seems like the real value proposition here.

Why is preventing them from calling other people an important feature? The market for people who care about that sounds extremely tiny.

And that’s fine. It’s cute. It’s fun. Looks like they are optimizing for UX, design, and marketing.