We're no strangers to VoIP: Building the National Rick Astley Hotline
summary
A DIY VoIP system that starts as a static TwiML MP3 and grows into a serverless hotline using Twilio + AWS Lambda + Zappa, handling more than 1,000 inbound calls per 30 days and delivering about 70,000 seconds of joy per month while costing roughly $200/year to host. The stack is Python Flask-like handlers deployed with Zappa, uses Twilio for numbers and SMS, hits Lambda’s free million-requests/400,000 GB‑sec tier, and includes interactive menus, call logging and plans for SMS replies and karaoke recording.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:10The rickastley hotline
- 3:36Voice over IP with twilio
- 5:28Version one implementation
- 8:33Scaling and challenges
- 10:43Moving to AWS Lambda
- 13:35Using zappa for deployment
- 18:15Technical hurdles and logs
- 21:39Future plans and open source
- 25:04Questions and answers
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