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Rotary Cellphone

justine-haupt.com

41–50 of 172 posts

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#41
post #38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but that's from "first somewhat functional prototype" which probably didn't make any special effort to conserve power, to "rev A" which I'd guess does all the obvious things and is all you're going to get without significant effort. You don't get "several weeks" out of a phone without some wizardry or a humungous battery.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#42
post #8
post #7

On a slightly more practical note, if you want a rotary VoIP desk phone, there's a few models of Grandstream ATAs that understand pulse dialing. They can be registered to Asterisk as normal SIP clients. $20 for the ATA plus $20 for the phone, plus your time to do the software configuration. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Black-Rotary-Phone-Telephon...

> On a slightly more practical note Why "more practical"? How is a desk phone more practical than a portable one?

You can’t drop it in the toilet.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#44
post #21

how about a phone where you just have a clicker to put in the number in binary?

Make it double as the hook, and you have just reinvented hookswitch dialling for the mobile telephone minded. (-:

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#45

This is great, I especially love the form factor. I did the same a few years ago but kept the original enclosure: https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/ It was a very fun project and I learned a lot about electronics doing it!

I dunno, I like the iRotary form factor. Both are impractical, and yours leans into the impracticality.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#46

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).

The problem with these open source phone projects is that all the modems use closed source drivers (I think).

Do you know a path forward to do this entirely with open source?

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#47
post #42
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On a slightly more practical note Why "more practical"? How is a desk phone more practical than a portable one?

You can’t drop it in the toilet.

In the days of wired handsets with really long cables, you'd be surprised at what could happen to the handsets, and where people took telephone calls. (-:

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#48
post #36

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 .

True

And I agree it's fun and a cool project, regardless of utility

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#49
post #8
post #7

On a slightly more practical note, if you want a rotary VoIP desk phone, there's a few models of Grandstream ATAs that understand pulse dialing. They can be registered to Asterisk as normal SIP clients. $20 for the ATA plus $20 for the phone, plus your time to do the software configuration. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Black-Rotary-Phone-Telephon...

> On a slightly more practical note Why "more practical"? How is a desk phone more practical than a portable one?

They don't break - or at least they don't break under normal abuse. You can break them if you try hard enough, but your first try will probably fail.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#50
The problem with the "retro" telephone ring sound that so many modern phones have built in is that it just doesn't resonate and echo and slowly decay over time like a real phone ring. It would be cool to code up a physical ring simulator that reproduces that sound properly, and responds to the accelerometer, especially when you drop it or hang up on somebody by slamming it down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxXsIQDafog

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