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I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

stavros.io

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Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#31

Post by stavros »

Medox wrote: post #18

> Since I didn’t want to make any permanent changes to the phone, I didn’t want to remove these tabs, or to solder anything onto them. I just wanted to connect a cable to them in the easiest way possible. Same here but I want to go for a xilink bluetooth adapter and maybe even sacrifice and old smartphone with a separate sim. Not sure if the AI stuff will work but it seems possible….

I've got you: https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#33

Post by stavros »

nkrisc wrote: post #26
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #2

If you use such a thing on a regular kind of meeting that happens over zoom or similar, your arm will atrophy and fall off from having to hold that thing for the duration. The only remedy I see is to give everyone such a contraption and make it mandatory.

There were countless products available when I was a kid that were meant to make holding a handset between your ear and shoulder comfortable.

These young people don't know what the nineties were like.

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#34

Post by hobinjk »

Medox wrote: post #18

> Since I didn’t want to make any permanent changes to the phone, I didn’t want to remove these tabs, or to solder anything onto them. I just wanted to connect a cable to them in the easiest way possible. Same here but I want to go for a xilink bluetooth adapter and maybe even sacrifice and old smartphone with a separate sim. Not sure if the AI stuff will work but it seems possible….

It's a good approach! I used an xlink for my super hacky (but very easy) bluetooth rotary phone project: https://hobinjk.github.io//hardware/bluetooth/hackery/2024/0...

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#35

Post by foobarian »

Since you didn't modify the original phone, I wonder if the oldschool dialing way of digit-banging would work. For each digit N, you hit the hangup button N times, pause, then go to next digit. Used to do that on our family's Pupin that looks like this one [1]

[1] https://in.pinterest.com/pin/rare-vintage-pupin-bakelite-rot...

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#36

Post by stavros »

foobarian wrote: post #35

Since you didn't modify the original phone, I wonder if the oldschool dialing way of digit-banging would work. For each digit N, you hit the hangup button N times, pause, then go to next digit. Used to do that on our family's Pupin that looks like this one [1] [1] https://in.pinterest.com/pin/rare-vintage-pupin-bakelite-rot...

No, the hangup rocker goes to another GPIO than the dialing rocker in the rework.

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#37

Post by a022311 »

stavros wrote: post #31
Medox wrote: post #18

> Since I didn’t want to make any permanent changes to the phone, I didn’t want to remove these tabs, or to solder anything onto them. I just wanted to connect a cable to them in the easiest way possible. Same here but I want to go for a xilink bluetooth adapter and maybe even sacrifice and old smartphone with a separate sim. Not sure if the AI stuff will work but it seems possible….

I've got you: https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/

Interesting how 10 years later we saw an actual cellphone with this color...

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#38

Post by dylan604 »

stavros wrote: post #33
nkrisc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were countless products available when I was a kid that were meant to make holding a handset between your ear and shoulder comfortable.

These young people don't know what the nineties were like.

They must think the little things people stick on the back of their phones meant to make holding the device easier for longer periods such a novelty.

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#39

Post by bluGill »

abound wrote: post #27
egorfine wrote: post #10

I like this guy's optimism of letting AI create a USB sound card out of a microcontroller from scratch.

Probably not a bad litmus test for current and future generations of LLMs though, I'd be curious to try it out on the latest crop.

Only so long as nobody knows you are using it. Soon as anything becomes a metric people with game it.

Re: I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset

#40

Post by dylan604 »

sokoloff wrote: post #15
BoxOfRain wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be an excellent way to make sure the standup stays terse, we could even put lead weights in the handsets to further increase this virtue.

NB: Many of these older phones already came with metal weights insides to give a feeling of more substance to them. Not always in the handset, though it wouldn’t surprise me if some did have them.

Usually, the base of the phone itself was a sturdy metal plate. So while not the handset itself, the phone unit was usually a pretty decent self defense weapon candidate as was widely displayed in many a fight scene in movies from the time.
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