#nt1967

[commodorez]

NT2017 Rotary Cellphone MK I

It took over a year to get around to it, but I’ve finally overhauled my rotary cellphone to a state of functionality.  The Feather FONA board was partially damaged, and could no longer charge the battery.  There was a programming fault that prevented the called party from hearing anything being spoken, but that’s cleared up now.

I still haven’t figured out why caller ID information isn’t being returned correctly out of the function call provided by Adafruit, but whatever.  The faux dial tone no longer works, which is frustrating.  I still haven’t added things like a menu system to let the user set things like speaker volume, or read out texts, or whatever.  I added a vibration motor so you can unobtrusively be notified of incoming calls, which is the way I like it.

This will be my primary phone while I’m at DEFCON.

[commodorez]

After hours of frustrated coding, this thing actually kinda works now.  I can place outgoing calls, and receive incoming calls.  Incoming caller ID is still not working, but fuck that.  How many rotary phones do you know of with a display?

It finally has a name: NT2017 MK I  which seems fitting to me, because the original design is exactly 50 years old. 

[commodorez]

Spent some time switching over to the dedicated Feather FONA board, eliminating a large chunk of the internal wiring fiasco from my rotary cellphone.

I’ve revised a few of the internal bus lines, which will hopefully yield a cleaner internal design.  I’m gluing on the display bracket (made from a stack of bread ties and gorilla glue), which will hopefully hold...  not sure how this older plastic formulation will like that.

[commodorez]

Oh good, that’s working.

Slowly, the whole design is coming together.  Right now I’m programming basic hook switch operation.  While the dial does correctly input numbers, the current program is stupid and just displays them, nothing more.

[commodorez]

So some of y’all may not have heard, but I magically got this thing running at the 11th hour 2AM before the first day of VCF East XII.  I still think something important is broken here, but I can’t say what for sure.  I know the charging system on the Feather Fona is impeded by whatever broke.

Still, it ran all three days of VCF East for quite a few hours each day, and garnered a surprising amount of confusion, followed by praise.  Many people thought it was just a toy at first, then realized I was dead serious about it being a functional cellphone.

Seems I need to finish up the project sooner rather than later, because I have demand for more details from a few folks.

[commodorez]

The rotary cellphone project has been revived with a fresh Feather Fona.  Charging is working again, which is nice.  Something isn’t quite right with my hook switch/dial tone logic.  I can place calls, and receive calls, but outbound audio isn’t passing... 

Man, it has been WAY too long since I touched this code -- like, 14 months.  Remember kids, document your code.

[commodorez]

I drew this on one of the whiteboards at my office used for doodles.  Seems it hasn’t been erased for over two months now!