rotary phone

The old rotary phone my grandparents used always fascinated me. Listening to the dial as it rotated back, or the bells ringing on a call. It sits in a stark contrast to the devices we use today for communication. These phones are no longer usable with the modern phone infrastructure.

By opening the phone and replacing parts of its innards, we enabled these phones to again connect to each other. A Raspberry Pi Zero connects to Wifi and runs client software for the mumble voice chat protocol. Four of these phones are in the flats of my close friends. Using the rotary dial, we can now call each of the other phones directly or ring all of them at once to start a conference call.

This modification allows perfectly fine and beautiful telephones to be used again and forces us to be more present while talking to each other. You pick up the phone, sit down and concentrate on a conversation with your friends.