hotline

Let people send you voicemails from their phone to your Discord server!

What is this,,, thing?

This is the application that powers the confession hotline for Midnight Chapel, hosted every Sunday by Bizarre Miscreant and Karbon Dallas.

You can call the hotline toll-free at 1-877-770-0071

Features

1. Receives incoming voice calls from any phone.
2. Plays any audio greeting that you specify.
3. Records the voicemail and save locally.
4. Generates transcription of voicemail.
5. Posts the details into your Discord.

Integrations

Here's how we accomplish the above features:

Twilio

We use Twilio Voice API to register the phone number that people can call. All we have to do is provide Twilio with the URL of the server hosting this application.

OpenAI

We use OpenAI's whisper model to generate the transcription of the recording. It's surprisingly accurate and cheaper than Twilio's transcriptions.

Discord

We use simple Discord webhooks to post embeds. The first one posts incoming call data as soon as someone calls, and the second one posts a link to the audio recording along with the transcription. Both make use of Discord embeds for readability && convenience!

Installation

1. Clone this repository
2. Run npm install

Development

1. Run npm run dev

Deployment

1. Run npm run build
2. Run node dist/src/server.ts

Consider using a process manager such as pm2 for production!

Configuration

We have provided a .env.example file that contains all of the parameters you need to specify for operation. To get started just rename the file to .env and make the necessary edits. Here's a brief explanation:

Variable	Type	Description
ACCOUNT_SID	string	Required for Twilio to operate the phone number
AUTH_TOKEN	string	Your Twilio auth token, obtained in the Twilio console
SERVER_HOST	string	The address where our app runs
SERVER_PORT	string	The port for our app to listen on
CALL_WEBHOOK	string	Discord webhook for incoming call information
RECORDING_WEBHOOK	string	Discord webhook for recording and transcription info
OPENAI_API_KEY	string	Necessary for the transcriptions
GREETING_FILE	string	Local file in the assets directory to play when someone calls
RECORDING_TITLE	string	The label to use for the link to the audio recording
IS_PROXIED	boolean	Set this to true if you're developing locally via ngrok or similar
SSL_ENABLED	boolean	Highly recommended for production
NOTIFY_DISCORD	boolean	Whether to use the webhooks

SSL Certificates

If you don't already have your own SSL certificates, just use https://letsencrypt.org. They offer a tool called certbot which makes it super easy. More information here: https://certbot.eff.org/instructions

Once you have your SSL certificate generated, do the following.

1. Create an ssl directory in the root of the application directory
2. Place fullchain.pem and privkey.pem inside.
3. There is no step 3.