Aw crap, I may have awakened something in me…like hosting another bloody service the kids will use once and then just quit. No amount of my over-engineering can solve user apathy…so this time I’m investing less effort :)

Interestingly…the local brain found these

github.com/nathanielxd/simple-lan-chat

f-droid.org/…/net.usikkert.kouchat.android/

I still kinda wanna do the XMPP thing now…but I have a nagging suspicion I will be talking to myself or the clanker with it.

Honestly, any secure messaging app would suffice! Maybe minus Signal since that needs a phone number currently.

I use an XMPP server to do messaging for my kid without a “real phone”.

Honestly, with lineage it’d be pretty locked down as they couldn’t do Google play apps for major social media, but I guess it depends on how old and knowledgeable they’d be about loading micro G for that stuff.

Also, iirc, you can use an MDM with Lineage OS bc it’s still Android at its core, which could run Android enterprise, and Manage Engine does full MDM for free under 25 licenses/devices. Might be worth a test to deploy apps that way. I’ve done that for regular Android devices when my oldest wanted more freedom without me having to utilize Google all the time.

I find it rather concerning that both of circlus’s GitHub repos are empty.

SimpleX and Briar are both pretty good for messengers that are only able to talk to people you know.

As a self hoster and a dad, I opted to use SMS and Google chat. Google chat on a kids account will only message contacts you know

Setup a matrix or xmpp server for the messaging.

It says it’s opensource. Where’s the source code?

https://github.com/circlus-org

Nothing there.

I had my local AI do some research and it spat out the above.

Ah, there’s your problem.

the above did catch my attention as fairly normie friendly.

Appearing to be normie friendly. Probably on purpose. Please don’t be dissuaded by real OSS projects that try to give you real information and detailed instructions. It’s not all that complicated and usually much safer.

If all you want is “message daddy” why bother with any of this at all? Just set it up so your kid can only SMS one number.

Or use Signal.

Or maybe you don’t even want to put a SIM card into the phone?

Not sure I’d recommend that; they should be able to call 112 or whatever your country’s equivalent is. (edit: ok most phones allow that even without a sim i think)

Or is this supposed to be some sort of toy with the extra benefit of messaging daddy?

The more I think about it the less I see the point.

Yeah, I doubt anyone runs it, because if you follow the instructions and click on the link to the server code, it’s just missing. And the empty repository has been sitting there since May… Seems all “Circulus” is, is a shiny website with advertisement text.