BT Phone Is Much More Than Retrofit

[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.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDmKkR2zd8c]

11 thoughts on “BT Phone Is Much More Than Retrofit

  1. This is cool. Is this kinda like the SparkFun “Port-O-Rotary” phones (http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?c=96) ? They have two flavors, one that uses a GSM module and a user-supplied SIM card to dial via a cellular connection, and one that is simply a BlueTooth handset that pairs with a regular BT enabled cell phone. It’s cool to see these things go to open source! :) Thank you Santiago! Thank you SparkFun! Thank you HackADay!

  2. Neat!
    Though he should’ve made the voice dial activate when he dials 0 instead of double-click. And then make it respond like a personal assistant. “Suz, get me Peter on the line.” :D
    You can see he is very careful when he puts down the phone – if he weren’t, he may activate the voice dial accidentally.

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