Open Lounge Phone
A free, open-source, screen-free phone. Real mechanical keys, a handset, and nothing else: no
browser, no feeds, no strangers.
It is a lot more than one phone. 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, including how available and how visible you are to each person.
The same board and software make a kid's first phone, a desk phone for grown-ups, a shared
Lounge phone, a small office phone system, or (with the labs firmware) a house intercom, a
doorbell and an elder's daily check-in.
- Kids' phone — calls only the contacts a guardian approves, respects quiet hours (callers
get voicemail with a transcript instead of waking anyone up), and its guardian sees when it
was last online. Kids' phones on the market are closed boxes with a fixed feature list; this
one is open, so a child can learn how it works and tinker with it as they grow, while the
phone's rules stay with their guardians until they decide otherwise. When it starts running
firmware that isn't an official update, its guardians hear about it straight away, and with
Ask me first it waits for their OK.
- Voicemail everywhere — any call that isn't answered (no answer, declined, busy, quiet
hours, unavailable) goes to a greeting — the standard one, your recorded name, or your own —
and the message lands in the callee's inbox, across servers too.
- Lounge phone — a shared phone anyone in the space takes over as themselves by scanning its
code and pressing the key it flashes; it forgets them the moment they're done. People from
other servers can use it too, if the space allows guests.
- Grown-ups use the companion app on their own phone or computer, or any old device as a
phone (
/device/, add it to the home screen). You choose who can reach you, whether you're
taking calls right now, and whether your connections see that you're around.
- Not just a phone — the labs firmware (firmware/labs/, 0.0.0)
turns the board into a house intercom, a doorbell or front desk, a dinner's-ready chime, a
daily check-in for an elder, a Home Assistant panel, a dial-a-story line or a USB macro pad.
It's the build on the v0.1 dev boards for now (lightly tested; most of its extras so far on a
computer). Its features come to the phone firmware later, where they make sense.
Run it on your own Cloudflare account or self-host it with Docker; to just try it, use the
free public hub at hub.openloungephone.app. Your keys and your
server are yours: nothing depends on this project (security model). Servers connect to each other, so everyone can reach everyone: you
knock on someone's address (name@server), and once they accept you can call. Nobody —
including this project — sits in the middle of your calls, and there is no bridge to the phone
network, ever.
Status
The software works end to end today. The hardware has its first early dev board prototype:
hardware v0.1 (rev A), ordered from JLCPCB on 2026-09-30. Its files are in that release. Board v0.3 is coming soon as a fully assembled board or a bare PCB; join the interest list.
| Phase | What | State |
|---|
| M0–M4 | Protocol and core logic; self-hosted server, browser phone, companion app; Cloudflare backend; invites, passkeys, voicemail with transcripts | done |
| Lounge | QR takeover with a key-press proof, ephemeral sessions, "open to chat" | done (software) |
| Security (software) | Four-word device fingerprint (phone MENU → About, pairing, the phone's page); phone page with last seen, software version and remove-and-wipe; retention defaults and transcription on/off per space; an audit trail in every space (who changed what, never what was said; read only by those who run the space) | done (software) |
| Recording (C2) | Opt-in per space (never with kids' phones), always announced to every party (spoken prompt, the phone's status light and REC on its display, a mark in the apps, other servers too), made by the recording side's own client and uploaded, in the timeline and call log, transcribed only where the space transcribes, expiring with history; other servers may refuse recorded calls | done (software) |
| Device lifecycle | Modes at claim (kids, personal desk phone, Lounge); per-space Lounge session length (idle, end of day, until logout); optional house-line keys and "who's here" on idle Lounge phones (off by default; public lines only for someone signed in); a space's name and time zone can be changed later (Settings), and the phones follow at once; remove = the phone wipes itself | done (server, apps, browser phone); firmware: remove = wipe done, modes and factory reset later |
| P1 / P1b | Accounts and handles (name@server), several households per account, open sign-up; spaces (home, team, organization); handles reserved 90 days; recovery codes, session list and sign out everywhere, space owners and leaving (0.5.0) | done |
| P2 | Connections ("buddies"): knock, accept, decline, block — on one server and across servers (signed server-to-server requests) | done |
| P3 | Calls across servers, voicemail, opt-in presence, Lounge guests from other servers | done |
| P4 | The public hub: free, donation-funded, fair-use allowance, Turnstile, operator view, export and account deletion | live at hub.openloungephone.app (2026-09-29) |
| Voicemail everywhere | Unanswered calls go to voicemail for every caller and callee (people, kids' phones, Lounge guests, other servers); greetings (standard, recorded name, custom); ring time; recording the greeting on the phone |
Versions and changes: the server and apps in CHANGELOG.md (releases are tagged
server-vX.Y.Z), the firmware in firmware/CHANGELOG.md (fw-vX.Y.Z), the
hardware as hw-vX.Y releases; how they fit together:
openloungephone.app/project/versions/.
More: architecture, the phone's UX, federation (and its
spec),
the public hub, add-ons, privacy, hardware.
Layout
packages/protocol wire protocol (zod schemas) — the contract every device speaks
packages/core pure domain logic shared by all backends and devices
packages/db SQL migrations + typed store (Cloudflare D1 and SQLite)
packages/federation server-to-server signatures (RFC 9421, Ed25519), keys, /fed/v1 schemas
packages/server-app backend-agnostic HTTP API, connection gateway, household hubs, federation
packages/client browser helpers: socket, WebRTC call media, tones
apps/server-selfhost Node server (+ Dockerfile, compose.yaml with coturn)
apps/server-cloudflare Worker + Durable Objects + D1 + R2, and the deploy script
apps/cli `npx openloungephone`: deploy, self-host setup, status, doctor
apps/device-web the phone in a browser (keys, LEDs, status strip, handset)
apps/companion companion PWA for guardians, grown-ups and operators
firmware/ ESP32-S3 firmware (ESP-IDF), its simulators, and the labs build (firmware/labs)
hardware/ schematic, board layout and core shell, all as code
docs/ architecture, federation (+ spec), hub, privacy, generated protocol reference
Repositories
Try it
npm install
npm start
Open the setup link the server prints, create your household, then open
http://localhost:8787/device/ in another tab. That's the phone. Press Space to lift its
handset and it reads out a pairing code; enter it in the companion app, then call each other.
To run a real server, npx openloungephone selfhost init (Docker; see
docs/self-hosting.md — the Docker packaging has not been build-tested
yet) or npx openloungephone deploy cloudflare (your own Cloudflare account; see
docs/cloudflare.md). npx openloungephone doctor checks this machine.
Development
Requires Node 22.18+ (it runs the TypeScript sources directly).
npm install
npm test # unit tests (including a two-server federation test)
npm run check # lint + typecheck + tests (what CI runs)
npm run docs:protocol # regenerate docs/protocol.md after changing packages/protocol
npm run docs:federation # regenerate docs/federation-spec.md after changing packages/federation
OLP_E2E_CLOUDFLARE=1 npx vitest run tests/e2e/cloudflare.test.ts # two local Workers (after npm run build)
CI runs npm run check (including the v1 conformance vectors), both docs drift checks, and the
Interop workflow (two self-hosted servers, two Workers under wrangler dev, and this server
against the previous release in both directions, federating with each other).
License
Software: AGPL-3.0-or-later, except the add-on bridge in sdk/python
(Apache-2.0), so any service can use it. Hardware designs:
CERN-OHL-S-2.0.
If you run a modified Open Lounge Phone server for others, you must share your changes.
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