Back in the days of yore when hats were fashionable and color TV didn’t exist, there were real life people who would answer the phone if you dialed 0. These operators would provide directory assistance, and connect you to another number (such as KL5-8635). Apple’s Siri is a lot like an olde-timey phone operator, so [davis] decided to put Siri in an old rotary telephone.

The build started off with a very inexpensive Bluetooth headset and very old rotary phone. The single button on the Bluetooth headset was wired to a contact of the dial – in this case, the number 1. Dialing 1 shorts two contacts in the phone and the Bluetooth headset turns on.

[davis] came up with a very easy build but dialing 1 just isn’t the same as dialing 0. Connecting the Bluetooth button to 0 closes the button for too long. He says ’0 for operator’ could be implemented with an ATtiny or similar, but we’re wondering if [davis] could make due with a dial-less candlestick phone.

People quickly find out that I am a dork, and their next question typically is “why do you own that old as dirt dumb phone?”. Well to be honest, I don’t like phones. After a decade of Palm Pilots and Windows CE devices, I really don’t like touch screens either (fat man fingers and a bad habit of chewing nails does not help). I also do not like that in order to get a fancy PDA with a radio you usually have to sign up for a data plan, or pay for the thing in full.

Now get off my lawn! Seriously though, I really only need my phone to do two things, make phone calls, and send SMS messages. If I had a wishlist the only other things I would like is mass storage for MP3 files, and Bluetooth. Naturally when I started my new day job I found the geek in the department and shortly there after I got asked about my basic LG flip phone.

After a few days of interrogation I jokingly snapped back with “well since you are so worried about it why don’t you give me a better phone!” With a little hinting around and a bribe of a “Swiss Roll” at lunch, I was given an old HTC phone with Windows Mobile 5.

While it is not exactly an iPhone or an Android,  it is much more featured than what I had, and it has a mini SD card slot and Bluetooth! The only catch was, he could not find the charger. We did not know if the thing even worked (he had never seen the thing turned on) , or what condition the battery was in.

As a good little hacker I took it anyway,  join me after the break to see me get it fired up and save a quite a bit of change in the process.

The phone in question is a Cingular 2125 (yea Cingular so its about 5-6 years old, but so is my flip phone) which is  marked as HTC innovation under the battery. It seems like every page on HTC’s website includes the word “innovation”. It could go by a few other names such as Wizard 1xx  and Faraday, but no matter the most useful information comes from the cingular page.

On that page it states that the phone can be charged from 5-9 volts via the mini USB port. You can charge with a standard USB cable,  but if the battery is below a certain level you are required to use the wall charger. Since this phone probably has not seen a charger in at least 4 years it is safe to say the battery is flat.

I googled around for a while but never really found anything about the charger, other than their cost, One can pick up a generic USB charger for a few dollars, but I doubt that would do any good because if it would charge off of a 2 wire USB connection, it would have been charging on my computer just as well. The official charger however is 29.99 + shipping, and frankly there is no way I am paying that, and waiting a week for a phone that I don’t even know works.

Going on one of my trademarked “guess and whims” I decided to wire up a USB plug the same way a lot of Motorola phones are using a drawing found with the Adafruit minty boost discussion (and who cares if I fry it) . First up is to find a male mini USB plug, digging around I found the totally useless USB cord that came with my TI lauchpad. Using a utility knife I scored down the side of the plug slowly cutting the plastic boot,  quickly removing the plug from its housing.

After removing the plastic boot, I de-soldered the 4 wires connecting to the USB plug and soldered on some long lengths of ribbon cable.  Naturally one of the pins I would need was clipped off, they often do this to keep unskilled workers from making incorrect connections, but its highly freaking annoying.

In order to get around that I just used my soldering iron to scoop out the plastic around the pin, and cleaned out all the melted gunk with a knife, leaving enough metal for me to get a good solder connection. Once wires are solder on I soldered the other end to a set of pin headers so it could plug into my breadboard. Hooked it up turned it on and the phone started charging, and after a couple hours it was half charged.

I let it finish overnight on a computer USB port, and though the weekend I made a few calls, many text messages and beat “Super Mario Bothers” using a NES emulator. The battery, after all of that was sill roughly 75% of its full charge. so I know the phone works and the battery is still good at this point.

I could have left it at that, but if I ever let the battery discharge below its USB only threshold I would be doing it all over again, in order to prevent that I decided to move my 3 wires and resistor from the breadboard on to a proper power source and make my own charger.

While the breadboard was still hooked up I measured the phones current, using that setup the phone would draw just under 700ma (678 to be exact) , which is enough to screw up USB ports but low enough I have to question the intentions of HTC as they really could have dropped that.

Anyway, I rummaged around my junk box and got out an LG charger for a phone which I have never seen before, rated for 5 volts 800 milliamp, which is perfect. Now its just a matter of attaching the charger to the USB port with the 2 pins pulled down appropriately.

Cutting the cord to the LG charger I was presented with 4 wires, and since the 24(?) pin connector on the end was just held together with screws I popped it open and compared it to pinouts on google. Strangely enough red is 5 volts, green and black are ground, and yellow is an ID line (similar resistor setup I imagine except it seems backwards to what I need).

It never fails, if I look up the pinouts the wires will match logically, if I don’t look them up then its all kinds of crazy.Its just worth looking them up or probing them out, because color of wires means nothing in most situations, then you have to look them up anyway.

I clipped the green and yellow wires since I did not need them, and to prevent the ends from shorting out I took my wire clippers and tugged at the insulation a bit so the wire was back inside the insulation. Then I put a drop of liquid super glue on the ends so they would not poke back out.

Meanwhile on the USB plug I soldered a 220K ohm resistor bridging pins 2 and 4 together, and connecting the other end to ground. Finally I connected power and ground to pins 1 and 5 of the USB plug, in order to tighten things up a little I pulled on the outside jacket of the power supply cord which hides the 2 cut wires.

Now I have a proper wall wart for this phone, but it iss pretty fragile. There is really nothing holding the metal USB shield in place and there is no strain relief on the solder points. To solve the shield problem I just simply used a thin layer of gel superglue.There is a little bump in it so the boot will hold it. To solve the boot problem I pulled out my favourite little hack tool, putty epoxy. All I have to do is mark off where I don’t want the putty to go, then tape it off so it does not squish inside the plug.

If you have never used putty epoxy before its just epoxy resin and hardener in a putty form. All you have to do is kneed them together into a uniform color (mine is blue and white so it makes a purple color) and apply. You can get this stuff at different strengths with different additives, but I just use cheap “5 minute brand” from Wal-Mart. Since this stuff hardens fast you have to move quick, kneed it together to a uniform color and apply.

Once you have it blobbed on you may want to smooth the surface, since you will have fingerprints, or little spikes where the epoxy sticks to epoxy stuck to your fingers (even wearing latex gloves). The best way to do this is to wet your fingers with some plain old vegetable oil and smooth it out. It will never be 100% perfect but it will be darn good enough.

Finally before it sets up I need to trim the plug end so its not covered in rock hard gunk where it needs to be plugged in. Using a utility knife with the blade wiped down in vegetable oil simply make cuts down until you hit metal and angle away a bit so you pop the cut parts off. At this point the epoxy is starting to set hard so it will feel less like putty and more like sand, just keep making small cuts and eventually when you start seeing the tape move a bit since your now prying at the edge of it, you have gone far enough.

Now I am all set for another half decade and instead of getting grilled on “why are you using that dirt old dumb phone”, I will be getting grilled on “why are you using that dirt old smart phone … oh it plays zelda? Well OK, that’s cool then”

Sounds good to me.

[Dimitris] decided to build a homemade alarm system, but instead of triggering a siren, sending an SMS message, or Tweeting about an intrusion, he preferred that his system call him when there was trouble afoot. He says that he preferred a call over text messaging because there are no charges associated with the call if the recipient does not pick up the line, which is not the case with SMS.

The system is based around an off the shelf motion detector that was hacked to work with an old mobile phone. The motion detector originally triggered a siren, but he stripped out the speaker and wired it to a bare bones Arduino board he constructed. The Arduino was in turn connected to the serial port of an unused Ericssson T10s mobile phone. This allows the Arduino to call his mobile phone whenever the motion detector senses movement.

The system looks to be quite useful, and while [Dimitris] didn’t include all of the code he used, he says others should be able to replicate his work without too much trouble.

[Les] had thousands of dollars of expensive IP Telephone infrastructure at his fingertips, so he figured he might as well play around a bit – after all, what good is all that equipment if you can’t have a little fun?

Inspired by the “Awesome Button” featured on Make, he started thinking about what sort of feature he would like to have available at the push of a button. He must have had Travis Tritt on the brain the day he started building his creation, since he named it the “The Call Someone Who Cares Button”.

[Les] picked up an “emergency stop” button from eBay, wiring it to a TeensyUSB, just as it was done in the Make article. He mapped the button to the pause/break key, then whipped up a bit of C#code that listens for that key to be pressed. When toggled, the button sets forth a series of events that gets his boss on the line ASAP.

It’s a fun little project, and while I might have built a button that introduces fake static and echo into the line before dumping the call, I think it’s pretty cool all the same.

Since it seems that just about everyone has built some derivation of the Awesome Button, share yours with us in the comments, and be sure to stick around to see a quick video demo of the CSWC button in action.

[sparkfun] announced a new board called the IOIO (pronounced “yo-yo”) this week that allows communication from your Android devices to your upcoming projects.

The board hasn’t been released yet; [sparkfun] is still pulling together documentation and waiting on their first production run. We do know that the board contains a PIC24F MCU, and will give your phone analog input,  and Digital I/O, PWM, I2C, SPI, and UART control. Communication with the board is over the USB port on your phone.

The brilliant thing about this board is that an external programmer isn’t required. Everything you connect to this board can be controlled from within Android apps. We covered Android development in a hackaday tutorial series before, so now it’s possible to put these skills to give your projects a touch screen, internet and bluetooth connections, a camera, or your phone’s accelerometers. Very slick.

Video of some basic functions demonstrating what possible with this board after the jump, but feel free to comment and tell us what you’d like to see done with this board.

Have you ever wanted to be someone else, at least over the phone? Do you dream of turning the tables on telemarketers, making them hurry to get off the line instead of you? If so, [Brad] over at LucidScience has the project for you.

A bit of a prankster at heart, he walks through the conversion of a normal telephone into a Data Access Arrangement device (DAA), allowing you to interface it with either hardware or software-based audio mixers.

The process can be completed in a relatively short time period, and doesn’t require much more than an old telephone, a handful of tools, and some miscellaneous switches and jacks. He disassembled a telephone and trimmed off all of the unnecessary circuitry while retaining most of the original functionality. Line in and out jacks were then installed in place of the handset microphone and speakers, respectively. The final result is a compact box that relays altered audio from any kind of mixing device to person at the other end of the call. Since the majority of the phone remains intact, your calls still sound natural as they pass through the phone’s existing voice filter and preamp circuitry.

Once the DAA is complete, you can use any number of effects on your voice, limited only by your audio mixer. [Brad] says he has long-time friends that don’t even recognize his voice after he has run it through his effects machine, so get started on yours before April Fool’s day arrives!

[Julian] was rummaging through a military surplus store when he spotted a pair of old helicopter pilot helmets that he absolutely had to have. At $25 they were a steal, but pretty useless in their current state. He decided to modify one of the helmets for use while playing video games, but he didn’t stop there.

The helmet had two decent speakers built-in so he kept them, but tweaked the wiring from a mono-only configuration to accept stereo input. A RF wireless headset was disassembled and wired into the helmet so he could use it for playing video games while his wife is asleep. As an added bonus, the headset he used happened to have an AM/FM receiver built in, so he can enjoy music while sitting around with his helmet on as well. A Bluetooth cell phone headset was also torn down and wired into the helmet for gaming and handling phone calls. The Bluetooth mic was extended into the original mic stem built into the helmet, keeping things authentic-looking.

Overall it’s a quite a useful recycling of some old military junk. It’s a great idea though the helmet looks like it could be a touch cumbersome after awhile.

As you well know, today is March 14th – aka “Pi Day”.

Celebrated in math classrooms around the country, this truly is a celebration that belongs to the geeks. Here at Hack-a-Day, we too love Pi day, though we might not outwardly celebrate it with as much gusto as expressed by some of our readers.

[Chris Poole] is one Hack-a-Day fan who knows how to make the most of this mathematical holiday. He has put together a neat SIP-based phone service that reads Pi aloud to anyone who calls. He is running Asterisk in combination with Perl to read off the numbers, and is using a free SIP DID number to accept the calls. We gave it a shot earlier today, and were greeted by a gentle synthesized voice reading off the numbers of Pi. We’re not sure how many digits it is programmed to handle, as we stopped after about 20, so give him a call and let us know how many digits you make it through.

As a parting note, no Pi Day would be complete without a few obligatory Pi-related (albeit old) web comics and pastry concoctions, so here you go!

XKCD – Pi Equals…

XKCD – e to the Pi Times i

XKCD – E to the Pi Minus Pi

Spherical Pi Pie

[Itay] has a friend who works in a rented office where the parking lot is secured by a remote-controlled gate. Unfortunately, while his friend shares an office with several people, they only received a single remote. To help his friends out, he built a small device that triggers the remote control whenever a phone call is received.

The remote modification was rather straightforward. He simply opened the device, adding a single wire to each button terminal. Rather than connect to the remote using wires, he decided to fit it with what looks like a scavenged DC power jack. The ring detector circuitry was constructed and stuffed in a small phone box, which is connected to the remote using a DC power plug. It’s a great solution to the problem, but let’s just hope no one gets a hold of the phone number they used for the trigger!

There are plenty of pictures on his site, as well as video of the ring detector being tested. Unfortunately [Itay] lost the original schematics for the circuit, so you will have to flesh that part out on your own if you wish to build a similar device.

Keep reading to see a few videos of the remote in testing and in use.

A hot topic in the gadget world right now is the Sony Ericsson XperiaPlay phone, and while that is not our usual cup of tea, when we see the newest toy stripped down to its bits n pieces it piques our interest.

This 8 page teardown of the XperiaPlay (google translated to english) takes you though all the steps needed to dismantle your new joy. Every screw, clip, header and connector, each in order so you can get it back together again.

As the carnage progresses time is taken to point out some of the parts of the phone. From the mundane like I/O jacks, to the more interesting like the Synaptics touch pad driver that are handling the “analog” sticks, the Cypress multi-touch controller for the screen, and of course, the brains.

(thanks Frogz)

Who is ready to win some tickets to the PUSH N900 Showcase?

The showcase is an event where all 5 teams from the Push N900 competition are going meet up in London and present their N900 hacks. Including N900s that fly, skate, Etch a Sketch(TM), and more. We also hear there is going to be a poll-dancing robot thanks to [Giles Walker]. We were given tickets to the event, and decided to pass them along to our readers.

How can you gain a pair of tickets to this magical showcase? Check out after the break – hope you know a thing or two about resistors.

You’re working with any one of the team winners in the PUSH N900 competition. Your team needs two like resistors in order to complete the project on time.

Luckily your work drawer is overflowing with resistors, and you know that there are only 4 different values since you pulled them yourself from old junk.

You close your eyes and reach in. What is the minimum amount of resistors you have to pull out to ensure 2 of the same value?

That’s it? Yep! Send in your answer to the email Competition@HackaDay.com and two lucky winners will receive a pair of Tickets to the PUSH N900 showcase.

Rules and information.
1. The showcase will be the 4th of February, in London UK. If you are unable to make it or out of location – you can still win and your name will be announced. But we highly encourage you to pass your ticket to a runner up who can actually make it.

2. Competition is open to everyone and anyone – except Staff members and Contributing writers of HackaDay. There will be a total of TWO winners for this competition.

3. Entry Period is between January 28th 2010 Noon PST and February 1st 2010 10AM PST. Winners will be contacted and announced February 1st 2010.

4. Winners will be selected randomly from the correct entries using PRNG. The odds of being selected depend on the number of eligible entries received.

5. Winners will be contacted via email and will be asked to provide their first and last names, city/state/country of residence, their Email address, and if they wish to pass on the tickets to another winner. If a potential winner does not respond within 24 hours. We may select the next entry to take the place.

6. The prize will be two tickets to the PUSH N900 showcase per winner. No cash or other substitution may be made. Winner must accommodate their own travel and other expenses.

7. Participation in the Competition constitutes winner’s consent to use of winner’s first and last name, country of residence for promotional, publicity or advertising purposes worldwide in any media and on the World Wide Web, without further payment, consideration, review or consent (where allowable).

8. Participation in a giveaway constitutes entrant’s full and unconditional agreement to and acceptance of these Official Rules, which are final and binding. HackaDay reserves the right to change and modify these rules at any time for any reason.

9. Comments have been disabled so as to prevent cheating and answer sharing.

[Greg] has been working on a version of Debian/ FreePBX/ Asterisk for people to be able to drop onto a SheevaPlug. If you haven’t seen it, the SheevaPlug is a tiny computer housed in a wall plug. They made some waves when they were announced last year, and we’ve spoken of them several times. [Greg] is offering up the operating system in a pre configured format for SD cards so you can just download it and drop it in your SheevaPlug. Yeah, there’s a little bit of work to do before it will boot, which you can see in the video above.  Thanks for sending this in [Greg], keep up the good work.

[Santiago] turned his Ericfon into a Bluetooth phone. This is completely different from the handset retrofits we looked at last month. This is because he didn’t simply crack open a BT headset and cram it into his phone. He developed his own hardware for full functionality.

This is an open source project with available hardware details that he intends to turn into a kit. [Santiago] has purposed a PIC microcontroller to connect with a WT32 bluetooth module. The PIC allows for a dial tone, dialing with the original rotary dial, and produces the original sound when the phone rings. What he now has is a way to have a home phone without a landline. As seen the video after the break, the Ericfon works the same as it did when it was new, except the connection is made through Bluetooth and not via a copper phone line.

Oh, for crying out loud! While we were all giddy reporting on yesterday’s wonderfully done head-mounted computer, [Andrew Lim] of recombu.com comes along and essentially does the same thing with an HTC Magic handset and three dollars worth of Harbor Freight crap. Linux kernel, WiFi, accelerometer, the whole nine yards. Consider our collective ass handed to us.

Funny thing is, either of these could be considered The Consummate Hack. One flaunting the creator’s know-how with its custom-designed parts and delicate engineering, the other exhibiting a more punk flair with random scraps and off-the-shelf technology achieving much the same effect — a solution so obvious we were blind to it. Whatever your outlook, this is a great day to be a hacker!

[via slashdot]

Maybe you don’t want that one person that has barged into your life to know your private phone number? Could be a salesperson or a co-worker who you aren’t that impressed with, but have to get in contact with. Check out inumbr.

inumbr is a free online service that gives US users the ability to set up a unique phone number, have it forwarded to any number within the US and then have it set to expire without a trace when finished with it. The unique inumbr’s are never reused, and can be extended if longer terms are required. Users choose from a list of 22 area codes from major US cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, select an expiry date and set a number that it should be forwarded to. When the term is up, the number is expired from the system, and never used again for any other user. If you wish to use the number at a later date, you can log into the inumbr system and reactivate it.

As we are becoming more and more mobile and security conscious, the desire for these types of services grows. A phone number can now be given out at will, with security and privacy remaining intact. Google Voice is a major player in this arena. A somewhat similar service, they allow for a unique number with voice mail to forward to other numbers at will, creating a masked or unidentified private number that can be used to give out to 3rd parties. inumbr makes this process simpler with the ability to cut off and reactivate numbers as desired.