A blog about various stuff.

It's a rotary phone from the 1970's. This is the sort of phone we had in the house when I was a kid.

For Mum's birthday, I bought this old phone from a second hand store.

I pulled it apart and installed a little computer into the phone.

I connected the rotary dial to the computer.

I connected the speaker in the handset to the computer.

I connected the hangup/pickup switch to the computer.

I set up a dedicated phone number with voicemail, which emails every voicemail to me. I then asked all Mum's friends and family to leave a special birthday message for her on that phone number. I converted these messages to MP3 files.

I uploaded all the MP3 files to the computer in the phone.

I then wrote some code in Python which plays a dial tone when the handset is picked up.

The Python code listens to the rotary dialler. When the a number is dialled on the rotary phone, the Python code plays back one of the birthday messages. There were over 60 messages, which I assigned to phone numbers 100 to 160.

I then ran a USB power cord out of the back of the phone and into the computer inside.

I wanted to add in some of the dial up services from the 1970's like "dial a story", "dial a horoscope", "dial a poem", also some crazy AI generated stories about our family members, but I ran out of time.

I put it in a box and mailed it to Mum.

This all took ALOT of time but once I get an idea like this I can't get it out of my head until it's done, and Mum's worth it eh?