from Hacker News

Rotary Cellphone

by nallerooth on 2/12/20, 7:54 AM with 165 comments

• by bo0tzz on 2/12/20, 12:20 PM

  Looks like this got hugged to death. Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20200211231236/http://justine-ha...

• by timonoko on 2/12/20, 1:22 PM

  European Union recommended emergency number is "112". Because you can morse it with the hook or even by short-circuitin the wires. This is also why the pulse-dialing receiver is operational in most EU countries.

• by DonHopkins on 2/12/20, 12:46 PM

  The problem with the "retro" telephone ring sound that so many modern phones have built in is that it just doesn't resonate and echo and slowly decay over time like a real phone ring. It would be cool to code up a physical ring simulator that reproduces that sound properly, and responds to the accelerometer, especially when you drop it or hang up on somebody by slamming it down.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxXsIQDafog

• by ssfivy on 2/12/20, 11:36 AM

  For those interested, here's a Sparkfun project from 2005 on converting an actual rotary phone into a portable cellular phone:

  https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/51

  You used to be able to buy them too: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/286

• by adrianN on 2/12/20, 10:16 AM

  > the battery lasts almost 24 hours

  It seems like for hobby projects it's really hard to get good battery run times. I wonder why that is. Is is difficult to get everything into the appropriate sleep modes, or are hobbyist parts just that much more power hungry?

  Commercial feature phones have stand by times measured in weeks.

• by walrus01 on 2/12/20, 10:31 AM

  On a slightly more practical note, if you want a rotary VoIP desk phone, there's a few models of Grandstream ATAs that understand pulse dialing. They can be registered to Asterisk as normal SIP clients. $20 for the ATA plus $20 for the phone, plus your time to do the software configuration.

  https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Black-Rotary-Phone-Telephon...

• by jacknews on 2/12/20, 10:35 AM

  Very cool!

  i concur with the whole functional simplicity thing.

  But I think the dial is anachronistic, despite what's claimed; A bit like fitting your car with reigns for steering and a whip for acceleration.

  The only 'functional' aspect of it is perhaps that it slows down your dialing enough (especially when your finger slips on a number, and you have to start over!), for you to think whether you really need to make that call.

• by brian_herman__ on 2/12/20, 10:43 PM

  I want all of these features in a phone without the rotary part:

  * Real, removable antenna with an SMA connector. Receptions is excellent, and if I really want to I could always attach a directional antenna.

  * When I want a phone I don't have to navigate through menus to get to the phone "application". That's bullshit.

  * If I want to call my husband, I can do so by pressing a single dedicated physical key which is dediated to him. No menus. The point isn't to use the rotary dial every single time I want to make a call, which would get tiresome for daily use. The people I call most often are stored, and if I have to dial a new number, or do something like set the volume, then I can use the fun and satisfying-to-use rotary dial.

  * Nearlt instantaneous, high resolution of signal strength and battery level. No signal metering lag, and my LED bargraph gives 10 increments of resolution instead of just 4.

  * The ePaper display is bistatic, meaning it doesn't take any energy to display a fixed message.

  * When I want to change something about the phones behavior, I just do it.

  * The power switch is an actual slide switch. No holding down a stupid button to make it turn off and not being sure it really is turning off or what.

  edit:formatting

• by jamiethompson on 2/12/20, 11:43 AM

  I use an unmodified rotary phone as my main landline phone. In the UK it would seem that our exchanges still support pulse dialling. The only drawback are menu systems that expect to hear tones, but I get around this with a small app on my mobile phone that just plays DTMF tones. If i want to, i can pick up the receiver and play tones down it to dial a number rather than using the... dial.

• by StavrosK on 2/12/20, 12:04 PM

  This is great, I especially love the form factor. I did the same a few years ago but kept the original enclosure:

  https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/

  It was a very fun project and I learned a lot about electronics doing it!

• by soliton4 on 2/12/20, 12:08 PM

  in order to one up this very cool project one would have to: - create a cellphone in a Telephone magneto style from before there were rotaries - train a machine learning algorythm to emulate the behavior of a Switchboard operator so you can have the truely "authentic" old school behavior

• by xtiansimon on 2/12/20, 11:36 AM

  Brilliant!

  And this is a gem if there ever was one: “The point isn't to use the rotary dial every single time I want to make a call, which would get tiresome for daily use.“

• by dopamean on 2/12/20, 4:26 PM

  when I started visiting this site almost 8 years ago this was the kind of content I wanted (and expected) to see more of. tbh it's been a little disappointing how silicon valley tech industry everything has been focused.

• by drcongo on 2/12/20, 8:41 PM

  I don't understand how one would dial a 1 on that dial. There doesn't seem to be any room for it to travel.

• by enriquto on 2/12/20, 9:57 AM

  This is seriously cool! The device has an amazing set of features and functionality.

  I am a bit surprised about the short battery time. I would expect that, without a display, the battery would last several weeks under normal usage.

• by ogre_codes on 2/12/20, 8:11 PM

  Given the choice I'd much prefer a device which texts but doesn't have a "phone" than the reverse. The idea of a phone which doesn't text just sounds frustrating.

• by moisto on 2/13/20, 7:32 PM

  That is awesome. I remember dialing our beige rotary phone for my friend when he came over after school... Haha he was afraid to dial it for about a year.

  (Scared of looking dumb, I guess) But aside from choking on our tears and those shameless bellyaches, we didn't give him any grief. This would have been probably 1994 - 2000... when my folks upgraded to touch tone and answering machine :)

• by npudar on 2/12/20, 5:59 PM

  This would be a great time to see this obituary of John Karlin, one of the early phone UX pioneers:

  https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin-wh...

• by Rantenki on 2/12/20, 11:31 PM

  The link for the design files in the story is broken, but the files are up at this link instead:

  http://justine-haupt.com/rotarycellphone/designfiles/

• by rootbear on 2/12/20, 7:57 PM

  Justine and I have a mutual friend. I sent him this link and he talked to her and she said she's been overwhelmed by the attention it's getting. I saw it on the Adafruit blog and I'm wondering if that's what started the avalanche.

  It's cool project!

• by gandalfian on 2/12/20, 12:19 PM

  Weird second time I've seen this this morning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22303956

• by Aloha on 2/12/20, 6:07 PM

  What I dont understand is why they just didnt use the trimline case as the case for the thing - or at least the blueprint for the case - this thing looks uncomfortable to hold for any length of time.

• by microcolonel on 2/12/20, 4:16 PM

  I'd personally do it with the whole enclosure and handset intact. You could fit a pretty decent battery in there... to operate the bell.

• by leshokunin on 2/12/20, 7:32 PM

  So how long until someone ports Doom to it?

• by badrabbit on 2/13/20, 3:52 PM

  She should put this up on a crowdfubd site like crowdsupply to mass manufacture. I for one would buy!

• by C1sc0cat on 2/12/20, 4:47 PM

  Awesome, I will have to share that with my former colleagues from Martelsham.

• by nicbar on 2/13/20, 4:16 AM

  24hrs battery?!?! For a low tech solution with no draining high res touchscreen and all the other battery hungry features of a modern smartphone this is shockingly poor. I thought it was going to be 2 weeks!

• by presspot on 2/12/20, 9:05 PM

  I would totally fund this on Kickstarter.

• by mmhsieh on 2/12/20, 11:33 AM

  how about a phone where you just have a clicker to put in the number in binary?

• by rdevnull on 2/18/20, 4:46 PM

  wow so cool :) take my money ! I want one

• by daniel-dev on 2/12/20, 10:52 AM

  i really like this, well done

• by krilovsky on 2/12/20, 10:19 AM

  Calling this open source is a bit of a stretch. At the heart of this phone there is a huge proprietary dependency (the Adafruit FONA module).