
Vintage Telephones Hacked with Raspberry Pis to Create Intercom [video] - rbanffy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN1owkwFsdY
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tga
An infinitely simpler version of this is to connect the phones together with a
power supply (48VDC) over two (long, cheap) wires to get a good old telephone
line -- with no computers involved. Add in some hand cranks to also get the
phones to ring.

When I was young, I used to have this with a friend who lived next door. It
was amazing to have a free, private, always on hotline. If memory serves me
right, it even worked for playing Starcraft over 56K baud modems!

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toast0
> If memory serves me right, it even worked for playing Starcraft over 56K
> baud modems!

You would likely have connected closer to 33.6k. 56k modems can only receive
at that speed, to send at that speed, you generally need a digital line like a
T1 or maybe ISDN.

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mshook
That's V90, V92 could do 56k/48k.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem#Evolution_of_dial-
up_spe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem#Evolution_of_dial-up_speeds)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.92](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.92)

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relieferator
I'm considering buying a big house with multiple floors to do this.

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lsllc
Hah, for "vintage" I was imagining a candlestick telephone. I guess I need to
rethink what vintage means!

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thom
I don’t think I’ve spoken into a landline phone in more than 10 years, they’re
all fairly vintage at this point.

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jimktrains2
My wife and I decided to teach our 4yro how to dial 911 if there is an
emergency.

How to our landline: Go to my wife's desk. Pick it up. Dial 911. He literally
has to say or do nothing else as the address is registered to the phone by
virtue of being a landline and if you say nothing they send people. (We did
tell him to talk to the person, but I just mean even if he's not
understandable or too scared or worried to talk things will/should "fail
safe". (We also made labels for the back of the phone with a big 911 on it,
along with some smaller labels with alternate contacts for when he's older or
if we have a babysitter over.)

Our cellphones: find the phone (which sometimes takes us forever under better
circumstances). Find the power button. Hit the power button. Find the little
phone icon. Drag it up just right without letting it "drop". Dial 911. Give
the operator our address. Now, if he's too scared, worried, or freaked out to
talk or be dextrous enough to handle a touchscreen or remember what to look
for to bring the emergency dialer up, &c, the whole system won't work. It's
essentially a "fail unsafe" system.

It's also useful to have a landline as I've used it to fax documents at least
once a year for various reasons. I know there are sites that donut, but having
it on hand just makes it so much easier, especially when starting with paper,
which I always was.

Anyway, I'm not arguing your point, but I feel like people, especially with
small kids, should give landlines more love. We have FiOS and it essentially
comes with one that you can't pay less to not have.

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thom
On iPhones this process is: press the side button five times, or hold that an
one of the volume buttons down, just FYI.

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jimktrains2
Yes, now teach that to a 4 yro and that it only works on mommy's phone and not
daddy's. And that's once he finds said phone.

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tonywastaken
It would be even more impressive if this was a real rotary phone. It seems
like this is some sort of hybrid that looks like a rotary but has number
buttons.

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StavrosK
A real rotary phone isn't much harder (might even be easier):
[https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-
saga/](https://www.stavros.io/posts/irotary-saga/)

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aceperry
Hey, I loved your 10 minute python tutorial!

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StavrosK
Thank you, glad you liked it!

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rubatuga
Or just run a PBX server, but I guess that isn't a "hack"

