If you read Byte magazine in 1983, you might have expected that, by now, you’d be able to buy the red phone with the video screen built-in. You know, like the one that appears on the cover of the magazine. Of course, you can’t. But that didn’t stop former Hackaday luminary [Cameron] from duplicating the mythical device, if not precisely, then in spirit. Check it out in the video, below.
While the original Byte article was about VideoTex, [Cameron] built a device with even more capability you couldn’t have dreamed of in 1983. What’s more, the build was simple. He started with an old analog phone and a tiny Android phone. A 3D-printed faceplate lets the fake phone serve as a sort of dock for the cellular device.
That’s not all, though. Using the guts of a Bluetooth headset enables the fake phone’s handset. Now you can access the web — sort of a super Videotex system. You can even make video calls.
There isn’t a lot of detail about the build, but you probably don’t need it. This is more of an art project, and your analog phone, cell phone, and Bluetooth gizmo will probably be different anyway.
Everyone always wanted a video phone, and while we sort of have them now, it doesn’t quite seem the same as we imagined them. We wish [Cameron] would put an app on the phone to simulate a rotary dial and maybe even act as an answering machine.
Once it starts ringing…
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0280065/
There were multiple real ones in the 80s, if not 83 and not as good as we can now make.
The Sony PCT-15 was in ’88. https://theawesomer.com/retro-tech-sony-face-to-face-video-phone/626191/
There was a Mitsubishi Lumaphone by Ataritel in ’86, and just those names together sound interesting though I don’t see a lot of information past what’s on https://www.reddit.com/r/atari/comments/2el96k/mitsubishi_luma_video_phone_designed_by_atari/
Good work, but not my taste. I don’t like that smartphone-centric thinking.
I’d rather like to see a primitive, but original video phone.
Something built around a CRT and a vidicon camera. Or a LED matrix. Or a primitive homebrew LC display.
Anyway, it’s merely my opinion/taste. It’s not relevant, after all.
Raspberry Pi with a 6″ display booting into a kiosk browser going to some video conference app (Zoom, whatever). I think the key is to make it single purpose instead of jam-packed with clumsy functionality like a smartphone.
That being said, it’s a fine piece of art, an hommage to the Byte article.
It’s also cool as a gag for the party.
And the old-phone-as-Bluetooth-handset gag is more fun than it should be.
Related, since there’s those bluetooth cassette tapes with mic, is the walkman-as-bluetooth-handset gag, or alternately a boombox could work.
I have a pair of red handsets I found in a thrift shop, one had a cord with a TRRS plug and one had Bluetooth. They’re disappointingly light, compared to the real thing, but were way too cool to pass up despite that.
I need to find a design for a handset hook I can print, so I can hang one or more of them up on the wall. They’re not doing me any good languishing in a box somewhere.