The real reason we ever wanted to get a landline was because of this issue, so instead of wasting money I just used spare parts to make an alert system I can activate remotely. I can also use the 'say' command for text-to-speech, but that's not really effective. The old school phone ringer wav is perfect.
Once, when I was working away from home, someone unplugged the phone at home so I couldn't phone in. After becoming very frustrated, I SSH'd into my home server, and from there into the Mac Mini we used as a media station. Then:
- checked they were watching something using `ps`.
- killed that process so I had their attention.
- `say 'this is dad, I'm inside the computer.'`
- `say 'I want to phone you but you have unplugged the phone.'`
- `say 'plug it back in'`
Worked :)
[0] Also interesting is the time I discovered that sending a special escape code to the printer caused the cash drawer to open, but that's a tale for another thread.
My kids weren't replying to text messages about being ready to go to an appointment that we were pressed for time on, and I was on the way home, so I did that to tell them to get ready. A few seconds later I get a text from my wife: "How'd you do that?!?"
I also have a "haptic test" function: press the button, the phone vibrates briefly. I originally created that check the delay on the Pebble-Tasker connection, but ended up using it almost every day to find my phone among the clutter in the house.
Tasker is amazing, if you have Android, I recommend checking it out.
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[0] - misplacing a phone while having it still in Bluetooth range actually happened to me once long ago with a feature-phone. I looked and looked and couldn't find it. It was set on silent, so calling it didn't help. Then I noticed it's still connected via Bluetooth to my PC's phone management app, so I manually turned the ringer on, and discovered it deep within the mechanism of my bed. Finding it there without this trick would probably take me hours.
Better off forcing a ring in the home than where you can't foresee the consequences.
In the same sentence as performance and a restaurant, not less.
As a workaround, I’ll use the “Find my iPhone” chime which is the one way to bypass the hardware switch if I need to get my wife’s attention while the phone is set to silent.
