Comment by jonah-archive
9 months ago
Huh, I was just thinking about something sort of like this after camping with some friends and our kids this weekend -- we brought FRS walkie-talkies for all of them (cannot recommend this enough!) and on the drive home my four-year-old was asking if he could call his friends on the radio -- rather than getting him a Technician's I was thinking about finding or making some push-to-talk cell/wifi devices for them. It seems like a few of these things exist but they're marketed toward the enterprise (in at least some cases, with a family-style product unfortunately but unsurprisingly being discontinued: https://relaypro.com/families/ ), but it doesn't seem like it would be a hard build aside from making a durable/kid-friendly enclosure for it.
you could try GMRS over FRS which ends up having more range and only costs $35 for a 10 year license (no test / certification needed). I was recently trying both types of handheld walkie talkies and the FRS range was almost 1/5th the range that GMRS was able to do
alas, his friends are a couple hundred miles away so GMRS won't cut it. The GMRS-enabled radios are much, much better though
You're making me nostalgic for my old Nextel handset(s).
Right?? This was the closest modern thing I was able to find but the price point isn't there for a kid radio: https://rapidradios.com
Apple watches work as walkie-talkies with separate accounts and paired phones. I used a retired iPhone 8 and eBay'd a watch for ~$40.