this is a really different feature for your cellphone, provided you have a Siemens MC 60 mobile phone. it’s the ability to use the phone as a magnetic card reader. how you ask? the MC 60 has the ability to record sounds to use a ringtone or whatever. when a card has data on it, and you swipe it through a card reader, it will make a “swoosh” sort of noise. these are the two tones the card makes..the two tones being 1 and 0. after this, the binary data is read and interpreted with whatever information may be on it. 2600’s Off the hook was talking about this on their show a few weeks ago, and how it’s used with metrocard

now, if i’m not mistaken, cell phone jamming is illegal in the united states

tom horsley got rid of his land line but didn’t want to lug his cell everywhere with him when he was in the house.  his solution was to hack together a light detection circuit, a wireless doorbell remote, and some paper mache into a giant incoming call noisemaker.  if you want to build your own, you should also check out version 2 that he is working on.

Continue reading “Cellphone Ring Notifier” →

somebody over at spark fun decided that those 1980s zach morris cell phones just weren’t retro-cool enough.  keith swett sent us the link to this hack which involves retrofitting an old 1950s at&t rotary phone with modern day tri-band cell hardware.

make sure to turn it off when you are in the theatre.

Continue reading “Rotary Cell Phone” →