Home StationBy Matthew C. ·
Why a radio you can reach from afar
When you live in another town, a problem with the radio becomes a phone call you can’t fix. You listen to them describe the buttons, guess what went wrong, and wait for the next visit.
- A station that stops, and they can’t find it again.
- A volume turned down to nothing, so the radio seems broken.
- A station they’d love, and nobody there to set it.
- No way of knowing whether they still listen at all.
An ordinary radio can only be fixed by someone standing next to it. A radio you control from your phone can be fixed from anywhere.
What you can do from your phone
Home Station radio has two sides. On their phone, three big buttons and nothing else. On yours, everything else, from any phone or computer, iPhone included.
- Choose the three stations, and change them whenever you like. The radio follows within seconds.
- Name each button in their words: “Morning news”, “Old songs”.
- Set the lowest and the loudest volume, so it never goes silent and never blares.
- See that it’s online, what’s playing, when they last listened and how much battery is left.
- Tap “Fix it” on the day they call to say it’s broken: it turns the volume back up and restarts the radio.
- Send a voice message. The Family button says “New message” until they listen, and you see when it’s heard.
Turning it on and off from afar
“Fix it” also starts the radio for them. Even if it was stopped, it sets the volume and plays the last station they chose, as long as the phone is on and online.
To turn it off, set a time from your phone and it turns itself off every day. There’s no stop button on your phone, and it doesn’t start by itself at a set time.
A radio that starts on its own can surprise someone, so use it when they’d expect it, for instance while you’re on the phone together.
Alerts, so you hear about it first
The hardest part of looking after someone from afar is not knowing. The radio tells you.
- An email or a notification if the radio goes offline or a station stops, and another when it’s back to normal.
- If you like, one when nobody has used it by a time you choose: a reminder, not an emergency service.
- Every Sunday, an email with how long it played that week.
If a station’s stream breaks, the radio switches by itself to another stream of the same station, never to a different one.
Nothing for them to learn
A radio you control from afar only helps if they can still use it on their own. Their side stays as simple as a radio can be.
- Tap a colour and the radio plays. Tap STOP to stop.
- No menus, no search, no ads, no sign-in.
- The settings are behind a PIN only the family knows, and the back button always leads back to the radio.
- Your changes simply appear on their buttons. There’s nothing for them to accept or update.
You choose the stations; they choose when to listen.
What the family sees, and what it doesn’t
Looking after a radio from afar means seeing a little of what it does. Tell your parent what that is, and set it up with their agreement, or with the agreement of whoever decides for them.
- You see whether it’s playing, which button, the volume and the battery, and how long it played each day over the past week.
- The radio doesn’t use the phone’s camera or microphone: it can’t see or hear the room.
- It isn’t a tracker or an emergency alarm. It doesn’t replace a call, a visit or care.
Other ways to control a radio from afar
Home Station radio isn’t the only way. Depending on what you need, one of these may be enough.
A smart plug turns an ordinary radio on and off from your phone, for little money. The radio has to come back on by itself when the power returns, and you can’t change the station or the volume.
A smart speaker can often be managed from an app, and can play a station at a set time. But it expects them to speak to it, a voice from nowhere can confuse someone, and it’s easy to unplug.
A Wi-Fi radio has plenty of stations, but its app often works only on the same Wi-Fi as the radio, so you can’t reach it from your own home.
If someone nearby can look after it, a simple radio with big buttons may be all they need. Home Station radio is for when nobody can.
Setting it up
You need to be there once, to connect the radio to you. After that, everything happens from your phone.
Find a spare Android phone or tablet
With Android 7 or newer. An old one from a drawer works well, with its charger.
Install Home Station and connect it to you
At their home, on their Wi-Fi. The radio shows a square code: scan it with your phone’s camera.
Choose three stations and name the buttons
From your phone, while you’re there, so you can show them once: tap a colour to listen, STOP to stop.
Turn on the alerts
On your phone, so you hear about a problem before they have to call you. In the radio’s setup menu, turn on the option that brings it back after the phone restarts.
Brothers and sisters can help from their own phones too, for free. Invite them by email: they can change stations, send messages and get the alerts.