Easy dial telephone

posted Nov 1st 2009 11:20am by Mike Szczys
filed under: home hacks

easy-dial-phone

[Taufeeq's] Grandmother needed to be able to call her family members but due to ailing eyesight and memory this was a difficult task. He decided to help her with this by building a telephone that will auto-dial a number at the push of a button. [Taufeeq] built a case to hang on the wall which houses a hook for the receiver and two auto-dial buttons. The buttons are lighted and loosely based on the LED push buttons we covered in January. Housed in a separate box are a microcontroller and a dual tone multiple frequency IC used to dial the numbers. These are patched into a PCB from a standard telephone.

The result looks great and makes using the phone much easier with the simplified controls. We’ve included the demonstration video after the break.

Comments [29]

tagged: auto-dial, dtmf, dual tone multiple frequency, telephone

Reader Comments

That’s awesome – interesting, neat, practical, helping-of-grandmas… Any one of those would make it cool, but it has it all!

Posted at 11:36 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by Will

This was just the thing I needed! :)

Posted at 11:37 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by Gardenee

Nice, until she needs to dial 911.

Posted at 11:37 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by Bob

Thanks everyone for all the warm comments. I will try getting a better video of my phone.

@bob : We can always have more buttons on the phone to include emergency calls. I did not want to put more buttons on the console. That would require her to remember which button dials whos number. (something she is not good at at her age)

Posted at 11:48 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by Taufeeq Elahi

Would be great if you could build this in, and still have the normal keypad. That way you could use it as a standard phone, but with an addded “speed dial like” extention

Posted at 11:55 am on Nov 1st, 2009 by VV

Wouldn’t buying a cheapo phone with programmable auto dial buttons have been a better use of your time?

Posted at 12:18 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Raver1975

only 2 numbers, how sad

Posted at 12:33 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by therian

@Bob

Appropriate technologies for other countries often don’t fit in with most technocentric people’s idea of the way things should work. For 911 to be a problem, you need a functioning 911 type service. Which if it’s available is just another lighted button set up so it won’t get accidentally pushed

Posted at 12:41 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by sean

Raver1975, you are obviously on the wrong website.

Taufeeq Elahi, a red button for 911 on the side or out of the way might work, although children might press it trying to contact batman.

Just a thought, since the phone only need to “hear” the tones, might the circuits from those birthday cards that record greeting work? They could easily be embedded into the handset and wired to the mic. Would be especially good for a wireless handset.

Posted at 12:43 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Bob

@Taufeeq Elahi:
Nic work!

@Raver1975:
If you had read Taufeeq Elahi’s post before posting, you’d have read that he didn’t want a phone with more buttons, which would get confusing.

And that “better use of your time” it’s getting tiresome. When a non-hack is posted, morons come screaming OMG NOT A HACK, when a real hack does get posted, we get the USELESS HACK idiots.
Wouldn’t doing something else than posting here be a better use of your time? Sheesh.

Posted at 12:46 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by IceBrain

Why not make bigger buttons and put a picture of the person she wants to call on it? Or is her eyesight so bad that the buttons would need to be so ginormous that she’d need help pressing them? :)

Posted at 1:13 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by sneakypoo

Most autodial phones these days don’t have the one button/one press to dial a number. Older phones had 10+ buttons where a single press dialed a given number, but most phones today have a more complicated arrangement, like press a button to get to autodial, then press one of the regular number keys to select which number. For the cognitively impaired, this can be a difficult task.

When my dad started having problems dialing the phone, we were fortunate to find a bunch of phones at a surplus place that had about 20 autodial buttons. Pick up the phone and press one. Exactly what he needed.

Posted at 2:09 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Jon

It’d be nice to see more stuff done with POTS. Since SS7 took over it’s pretty much just a network everyone ignores outside typical subscriber use and a occasional scan.

Posted at 2:11 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by tj

helping grandma is always time well spent. good show.

Posted at 3:21 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by also a bob

So gran’s not a big pizza lover eh?

Mine would definitely need the 3rd button for Deangleo’s takeout.

Posted at 5:18 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by vonskippy

Poor gramma – having to dial numbers in binary… :(

Seriously, nice idea. This would work out well for my older relatives and I might just go down the same road. Nice work.

Posted at 5:56 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by FW

Nice, any chance of making it auto dial a default number after a short time. would be nice to have the phone dial a number if the phone is taken off the hook for say 1 min.

Posted at 8:50 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by JanousKhan

I think that would be illegal. Aren’t there laws in most western countries saying that hardware that hasn’t been checked and authorised by a Telecommunications authority?

Nonetheless, very well done!

Posted at 10:28 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Benny M

It seems a pretty large oversight to not put an emergency button on the base. Also, why not label the buttons, even a sharpie would be better than it is now…

Posted at 10:50 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Zendu

@IceBrain :
Thanks, and yours was an interesting post :) “USELESS HACK” ha ha.

@sneakpoo :
No, she cant see a picture of the person she wants to call. But lighted button is easy to find a press.

@Jon :
Wow, good luck for your dad. He was lucky to find a phone that fitted his needs.
I had to build one to fulfil the requirement.

@vonskippy :
ha ha, no she does not eat pizza!

@FW :
Do keep me posted on my email if you ever make one for your old relatives.
Enhance the idea, it will be my pleasure.

@JanousKhan :
Yes such a function can be implemented.

@Benny M :
Yes, sure there are rules. But this device is a piggy back on a regular telephone. In this case, I am not tampering with the POTS in any way. Its just that a microcontroller is dialing a number instead of your fingers. Things like stealing electricity from telephone line is unlawful.

@Zendu :
As i repeatedly said, she cant see properly. Not to speak of reading lables. Her eyes have been operated a few times and currently undergoing laser treatment. So the best thing is to have a big receiver that is easily locatable, and buttons that emit light, so she can see the yellow spot on the wall that she has to press. its a purpose built phone, and had the exact thing that was needed in the given situation. Putting an emergency button or a pizza button, or a big button wont do any good to it :) You might put a huge button for a parkensons patient, it depends on the need.

Posted at 11:37 pm on Nov 1st, 2009 by Taufeeq Elahi

yeah, touchscreen and 2 buttons, she has to press the left or right button until she recognizes the dude she wants to call

Posted at 12:15 am on Nov 2nd, 2009 by arrangemonk

Just buy your grandmother a jitterbug you cheap ass!

Posted at 12:56 am on Nov 2nd, 2009 by Random667

although, labels for the buttons wouldn’t be a bad idea, she just might have visitors over who can read and need to ring someone

Posted at 3:55 am on Nov 2nd, 2009 by je5us

man, everyone’s a critic! I second the 1st post. good job!

Posted at 6:27 am on Nov 2nd, 2009 by paul

great hack.

reminds me of a important government phone.
“Yes, Mr. President we received the launch codes.”

Posted at 8:37 am on Nov 2nd, 2009 by Doom2099

“Balloons will be in readily accessible locations, visible from nearby roadways and accompanied by DARPA representatives”

1 calculate max line of sight to a red ballon of all US road from air for (something like FL100)
2 sign on facebook to request help from private pilots , coordinate search areas
3 …
4 profit!

Posted at 9:55 am on Nov 2nd, 2009 by superlopez

@Random667 :
Everyone here who produces hacks and backward experiments must be an ass for you. You are logged on to the wrong website if you want to buy something from market and use it.

Posted at 9:46 pm on Nov 2nd, 2009 by Taufeeq Elahi

um isnt this called speed dial?

Posted at 1:34 pm on Nov 3rd, 2009 by miguel

“@sneakpoo :
No, she cant see a picture of the person she wants to call. But lighted button is easy to find a press.”

“@Zendu :
As i repeatedly said, she can’t see properly. Not to speak of reading lables. Her eyes have been operated a few times and currently undergoing laser treatment. So the best thing is to have a big receiver that is easily locatable, and buttons that emit light, so she can see the yellow spot on the wall that she has to press. ”

Taufeeq, I can already see your next Grandma Gift: Updating the phone so that next to it is a backlit photograph collage of her family members and their “new” phone numbers. (Which in this case is probably just a big red arrow pointing to the correct button! ;) )

Posted at 8:41 am on Nov 20th, 2009 by mbear

Easy dial telephone

Recent Posts

Reader Comments

Leave a Reply

Hacks

Resources

RSS newsfeeds

Most commented on (30 days)

Recent comments