Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rotary Cellphone

justine-haupt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 172 posts

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#31

Post by rusticpenn »

adrianN wrote: post #5

> the battery lasts almost 24 hours It seems like for hobby projects it's really hard to get good battery run times. I wonder why that is. Is is difficult to get everything into the appropriate sleep modes, or are hobbyist parts just that much more power hungry? Commercial feature phones have stand by times measured in weeks.

Most performance optimizations take more time to implement than the actual goals. Hobby projects focus on fun proof of concepts, performance optimizations are ot very attractive (unless optimization itself is the goal).

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#32

Post by chrisseaton »

jamiethompson wrote: post #24

I use an unmodified rotary phone as my main landline phone. In the UK it would seem that our exchanges still support pulse dialling. The only drawback are menu systems that expect to hear tones, but I get around this with a small app on my mobile phone that just plays DTMF tones. If i want to, i can pick up the receiver and play tones down it to dial a number rather than using the... dial.

You hold your mobile phone up to your rotary phone in order to play the tones? Why not just use the mobile phone to make the call?

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#33

Post by jamiethompson »

chrisseaton wrote: post #32
jamiethompson wrote: post #24

I use an unmodified rotary phone as my main landline phone. In the UK it would seem that our exchanges still support pulse dialling. The only drawback are menu systems that expect to hear tones, but I get around this with a small app on my mobile phone that just plays DTMF tones. If i want to, i can pick up the receiver and play tones down it to dial a number rather than using the... dial.

You hold your mobile phone up to your rotary phone in order to play the tones? Why not just use the mobile phone to make the call?

Well, I don't. I rarely use the landline. I'm just saying that you can if you want to.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#36

Post by JdeBP »

jacknews wrote: post #10

Very cool! i concur with the whole functional simplicity thing. But I think the dial is anachronistic, despite what's claimed; A bit like fitting your car with reigns for steering and a whip for acceleration. The only 'functional' aspect of it is perhaps that it slows down your dialing enough (especially when your finger slips on a number, and you have to start over!), for you to think whether you really need to make…

The article makes no claim that it is not anachronistic. What it says, rather, is that that is not the point.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#37

Post by JdeBP »

jamiethompson wrote: post #24

I use an unmodified rotary phone as my main landline phone. In the UK it would seem that our exchanges still support pulse dialling. The only drawback are menu systems that expect to hear tones, but I get around this with a small app on my mobile phone that just plays DTMF tones. If i want to, i can pick up the receiver and play tones down it to dial a number rather than using the... dial.

Hand-held DTMF tone generators, for exactly this purpose, were once fairly widespread. A financial institution once sent one to me for navigating its dial-up automated teller system.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#38

Post by JdeBP »

taneq wrote: post #19
enriquto wrote: post #2

This is seriously cool! The device has an amazing set of features and functionality. I am a bit surprised about the short battery time. I would expect that, without a display, the battery would last several weeks under normal usage.

I don't see it listing the battery capacity anywhere so it might not be very big. Also, proper power saving design is a bit more complicated than you might think, it takes a lot of careful attention to detail to take a mobile device from hours to days of battery life.

The headlined article states that it was taken from 2 hours to 1 day already.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#39

Post by pratio »

taneq wrote: post #27
krilovsky wrote: post #6

Calling this open source is a bit of a stretch. At the heart of this phone there is a huge proprietary dependency (the Adafruit FONA module).

It's hard to get any open source software finished, what with all the goat farming. ( https://pics.me.me/i-thought-using-loops-was-cheating-so-pro... )

I was about to post the same link

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#40

Post by pratio »

krilovsky wrote: post #6

Calling this open source is a bit of a stretch. At the heart of this phone there is a huge proprietary dependency (the Adafruit FONA module).

It goes opensource in my book maybe you will create an opensource alternative for the hardware. This sort of gatekeeping is maybe the reason why hobbyists avoid HN.
Post reply on HN