- get a cheap android 15 (or 16) tablet. which is possible. these devices are manufactured for video playback.
- buy a usb c to usb, hdmi and rj-45 hub so i have all the connections you'd expect on a pc
- get a used monitor and cheap keyboard and mouse (the android probably has a touch screen, which is yuck)
- get a usb phone interface
it's the usb phone i'm having difficulty with. options are minimal, and i'd really like to get a sip videophone that i can use as a usb phone. but neither option has a high likelihood of compatibility.
so, i thought about it that much more carefully.
the usb phone interface is just a sound card with some buttons. in addition to being a sound card, i need it to read the keypad buttons (the numbers) and some functions on the phone, like hold and mute and speaker. that can't be that hard?
it turns out that this is actually very hard in android due to the access restrictions. there are no drivers, no proprietary software; i'm back to the underlying linux kernel with this, but it's worse due to the increased access restrictions. there are some apps, and they usually work, but they're written for gaming. i'm making a guess.
it's also the case that if i'm building an ad hoc zoom device that i want buttons on my videophone that are not on videophones, like share screen, hide camera or raise hand. i really want a midi controller that i can program, maybe with a couple of knobs for volume and camera zoom. and, if that's the case, why not buy the sound card and the keypad separately, too?
i'm left with a different approach. i could get one of the following three options for the sound card:
- a usb phone (legacy, hard to find)
- a sip videophone with normal desk phone capabilities and a usb connection that i can hack into android for now and put aside for later (was really never manufactured at all)
- a usb sound card shaped like a receiver, without any buttons on it, or with a couple, often to mimic a cordless landline phone (for sale at amazon for cheap). i'd rather just get the receiver for the sound card and delegate the keypad, but i'll look at it carefully.
only the latter is really realistically going to actually work. i already have a working headset, i should note, which was bought for microsip via windows xp. this system also won't touch my cisco 7941, connected to voip.ms as an office phone, in my bedroom.
in addition to the sound card, i am also going to want to get a programmable controller for zoom that can let me expand the set of buttons on a legacy office phone to the set of buttons in a zoom device, or a programmed controller designed for this purpose, and i am going to want that regardless of what sound card option i pick. in fact, i think that the way android works is that i would need to program the keys in the usb phone, as though it is any other controller. it won't plug and play. there's nothing special about a usb phone - it's just a composite sound card and controller, read as a hid device. given that truth, why bother searching for something i can't find and guessing it will work? why not just build it myself as:
- the usb sound card in the shape of the receiver (maybe with some buttons)
- the numerical usb key pad for zoiper, along with extra programmable phone buttons
- the programmable usb controller for the zoom buttons (mute, hide video, raise hand, share screen, whatever else), or a pre-programmed one, with a volume control.
these controllers are currently on the market for gaming, music production, zoom and other reasons. a company called elgato manufactures a device called a stream deck that is licensed by zoom to write apps for this reason. i would want to get a different device for exactly that reason, to make sure i can program it.
i should probably start with the following
- get a cheap android 16 tablet, with 6+ gb of ram and an octacore 2.5 ghz processor. these devices are manufactured for video playback. zoom won't cut them off for years. ~$100.
- buy a usb c to many usb a, hdmi, vga, rj-45, headphone, etc hub so i have all the connections you'd expect on a pc. $30.
- get a used monitor and cheap keyboard and mouse (the android probably has a touch screen, which is yuck). i have things i can use, but it would be $25 each, for about $50.
- get a usb phone soundcard receiver, maybe with a keypad and some other buttons. ~$10.
- download an app like keymapper to connect those button to functions in zoom and zoiper
- also get a usb keypad, with a few other buttons that can be programmed to do what an office phone does, in software. i can reuse this as a usb calculator in the long run. ~$25
- and then also get a controller for the zoom buttons, and program it to do what a theoretical hardware videophone zoom phone would do. i can reuse this as a midi device in the long run. $~75
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$290
i'll pay more than that for a deprecated yealink device that is running android 9.
i'm likely to wait for the last part and get the first part pretty soon. i want to make sure the app works first.
i'm also looking at a drawing input (i have an xp pen for the other room) and a clicker to go through presentations.