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Rotary Cellphone

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Re: Rotary Cellphone

#151

Post by DonHopkins »

zentiggr wrote: post #83
DonHopkins wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with telephones that still persists even today, is that you can only hang up on somebody once. Anybody who can solve that problem is bound to revolutionize communication as we know it.

Imagine that there was a phone receiver that delivered a zero to nominally painful electric current based on how abruptly the audio from the other speaker cut off... All sorts of reasons that this isn't doable, but the psychological satisfaction of knowing that spam caller just got zapped...

I'd love for Simone Giertz to design a crappy robot Hang Up Machine phone receiver, as effective as her Wake Up Machine alarm clock!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbjV7TUSIHs&t=3m36s

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#152

Post by deepspace »

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…

> A bit like fitting your car with reigns for steering and a whip for acceleration.

I just spent far too much time pondering the feasibility of a reign / whip controlled car. The trickiest part might be designing the filter to detect the crack of a whip reliably. Also wondering if there are any laws regarding the form and location of steering and acceleration mechanisms.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#153

Post by [deleted] »

jfengel wrote: post #82
Waterluvian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being able to slam hang up on someone is a critically missing feature and due to such, I believe the entire smartphone revolution is a failure.

There is, of course, an app for that: https://download.cnet.com/Slam-the-Phone/3000-20432_4-780789...

[deleted]

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#155

Post by DonHopkins »

timonoko wrote: post #62

European Union recommended emergency number is "112". Because you can morse it with the hook or even by short-circuitin the wires. This is also why the pulse-dialing receiver is operational in most EU countries.

Note: You should NEVER say that you hate the phone company on an open land line. And please, be nice to the operator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jEiTxg21q8

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#156

Post by ObscureScience »

ObscureScience wrote: post #92
rsync wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly. So think of the cradle switches - what "hangs up" the phone - as a button, and you just click that button (quickly) for '1' and then you pause and hit it twice in very rapid succession for '2' ... You need to be on a POTS line to do this, of course, but it will work even today. Even if you have no dialing mechanism, you can dial the…

It's been awhile since I tried it, but isn't it n+1 presses to dial n? So you can dial 0 with one click.

It seems I remembered correctly. I'm from Sweden and we use the system I recalled. All of you correcting me are right with regards to most other countries.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#157

Post by defnotarobot »

dublin wrote: post #119
tkmunzwa wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly. This brings back memories, this is a trick people my age group mastered as teenagers in a 3rd world country. All calls were billed - including local ones, so parents would commonly get lockable cages that would cover the buttons/rotary dial to prevent unauthorised calls in their absence. The cages would leave the receiver accessib…

The old GTE payphones up in Georgetown, Tx (suburb of Austin, now) when I was a kid would let you dial with the switchhook - no coins required. Agreed, zeroes were a pain, but this was partially compensated for by the fact that 5-digit dialing worked for any local number, e.g. 3-1234 got you 863-1234. Interestingly, most VoIP adapters support the pulse dialing of an old phone, but very few have the cojones to actuall…

I've seen some grandstreams that'll run a ringer.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#158

Post by jfim »

dwild wrote: post #131
taneq wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On my first Android smartphone, an LG Optimus One P500, I had no trouble to reach 4-5 days and the battery was far from humungous, only 1500 mAh. Most things were not running but I was using it to text quite often during the day. I don't believe there was any wizardry on there. We see the battery on a picture, if it comes from Adafruit, that seems like the 2500mAh one they sell. There's no reasons that thing can't la…

> I don't believe there was any wizardry on there.

A lot of that wizardry is not really user-visible. Ensuring that chips spend more time in sleep mode, coalescing events so that wakeups happen together, ensuring that there are no components passively draining power, etc.

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#159

Post by kragen »

rsync wrote: post #91
TrickyRick wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone not familiar with morse or pulse dialing, how does one do that?

You click the handset down, like you are hanging up the phone, but just very briefly. So think of the cradle switches - what "hangs up" the phone - as a button, and you just click that button (quickly) for '1' and then you pause and hit it twice in very rapid succession for '2' ... You need to be on a POTS line to do this, of course, but it will work even today. Even if you have no dialing mechanism, you can dial the…

I was very surprised a couple of weeks ago, making a call on a fixed-wireless 4G modem with a phone jack on it, that it supported pulse dialing. (The handset plugged into it happened to be set for pulse, you see.)

Re: Rotary Cellphone

#160

Post by kragen »

Someone wrote: post #143
dublin wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The old GTE payphones up in Georgetown, Tx (suburb of Austin, now) when I was a kid would let you dial with the switchhook - no coins required. Agreed, zeroes were a pain, but this was partially compensated for by the fact that 5-digit dialing worked for any local number, e.g. 3-1234 got you 863-1234. Interestingly, most VoIP adapters support the pulse dialing of an old phone, but very few have the cojones to actuall…

That’s because the traditional physical bell needs a high voltage (relative to the digital circuits in modern hardware). https://www.epanorama.net/circuits/telephone_ringer.html : ”The voltage at the subscribers end depends upon loop length and number of ringers attached to the line; it could be between 40 and 150 Volts.” I think they also (relatively to the hardware in a VoIP adapter) need a large amount of power. S…

I think you need the high voltage anyway, even for a fake bell. The power is probably the problem.
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