Idea
Amid the current pandemic outbreak, peoples are forced to stay home to break the chain of transmission. But there are some unfortunate people who don't have anyone at their home to rely for help or emotional support. And also there are some who have limited or no access to the internet at their home like in New Zealand.
What we built
Think a call center system, but outsourced to and answered by anyone that registered online. Anyone who need someone to talk to will ring a hotline number, the person will be put on queue and wait. The system will ring everyone who are registered and set their status as available online. The first person who pick up will automatically connect to the caller.
Demo
Give a call to +18557725566 to chat with someone,
OR become that someone who will be ready to receive a call by registering your number at https://chinwag.xyz
Currently only New Zealand, Malaysia & USA phone number are supported for this demo.
Link to Code
https://github.com/natsu90/chinwag-twilio
How we built it
- NodeJS as the backend
- Firebase Cloud Firestore as the database
- Firebase Authentication, at the beginning we're using Twilio SMS API, but we realised it cost you money, in addition of the Voice API.
- Twilio Voice API
Additional Resources/Info
If you're just started using Twilio, they have this setting called Geographic Permissions to protect from abuse. You have to toggle on the setting yourself for any country you think your user will come from. But this setting is not obviously displayed, so I had been pulling my hair for a few hours. But I'm partly to blame because I don't put a catch block in the code.😬
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