I remember many years ago (when I discovered dial-up Internet) me and my mates used to chat via IRC, after that we had yahoo messenger and google talk and all sorts of other chat tools like them. After that, while running my own business, me and my team wanted to have a way to chat when at work which was also secure and discovered the Openfire project. (https://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/)
A few days ago I realized that we as a family needed our own secure and private form of chat (children included) which would not expose the young to Facebook trolls or spammers or whatever.
Solution: spin up a linux VM, install the openfire server, configure it to work securely (TLS) and only for members (no sign up allowed, only the users that you create will be able to connect) then install piding on each desktop/notebook/raspberry pi/ etc and configure account on it (the openfire account that is, the one you created for that individual on your private server).
You can imagine how the children felt when I told them about this … 🙂 (their questions included: so can we chat with you anytime of the day? even when you are at work ? can we chat with mom? can we chat from everywhere in the house ? etc )
The cool thing about it is that because it is using XMPP you can install any chat client that supports it (which includes clients for mobile devices) and enjoy a secure way of chatting with your family (especially with the young ones) and anyone else that you want to give access to.
Big reward from a fun little project. Enjoy!