Rotary Phone -> VoIP (SIP)

Now I’m sure y’all remember my previous rotary phone revival from exactly 4 years ago… This time however, instead of transforming it into a full mobile/GSM phone, the plan is to make it more “enterprise friendly” by using VoIP, more exactly the SIP protocol.

Retro Game on IKEA OBEGRÄNSAD LED Display – part 2

One month after I started hacking the above IKEA wall display I finally managed to finish writing the 2 (very) basic games and put everything together, ready to be displayed on a wall:

Game on IKEA OBEGRÄNSAD LED display

As I was browsing for furniture in our local IKEA the other day, I noticed these “wall lamps” and their potential for hacking immediately jumped at me !

So I had no choice but to purchase one and try to find some time after almost exactly 2 years since my last project…

This is the first in a (hopefully long) series of posts that try to follow the journey.

Bluetooth Media Button

This is a pretty straight forward project, though it still took a while to get everything fitting together nicely 🙂

The idea was to re-use this nice big volume knob from an old, analog amplifier, put it into a custom little box and make it able to control the volume of my computer.

ePaper Calendar

I had a couple of these small ePaper boards, bought on sale a while ago, begging to be used in a project… I wasn’t sure what to do with them, until I saw James’ video about his message board.

Then it occurred to me: a small, ePaper display for my Google Calendar would be perfect ! True, we all check our phones regularly, almost compulsively, nowadays, but still, there’s nothing like having your tasks/appointments on a piece of paper ! Even if it’s of the “e” variety… 🙂

Especially if it’s for the shared family calendar, so that my wife and kids can also have it right there in front on them in the kitchen!

Electric Long-board

When this year’s lock-down started a few months ago, I finally bought myself a long-board so that I could keep up with the kids on their bikes or scooters when exercising.
It didn’t take long before I remembered that I always wanted to build an electric "toy" that could carry myself.
I contemplated a bike, a Go Kart and others, but it’s always been pretty obvious that the easiest to attempt would be a skateboard…

ESP8266 Temperature Logger

This is a quick post about a pretty standard Temperature (and Humidity) data logger. Yes, I’m finally jumping on the IOT bandwagon, whatever that is… 🙂

The background for this is my recent discovery that the adrenaline (epinephrine) injections that a person at risk of anaphylaxis has to carry around should normally be stored within a very tight temperature range (20-25°C with short exposures to 15-30ºC tolerated).

This came as a big surprise, especially in the context of going on a skiing holiday, so I decided to do something to at least have an idea of the temperature range that these injections experience, before going any further and thinking about how to store them better.

Rotary Dial Phone Revival – 3 – The Headset

This is the next piece of work after step 2 that dealt with the ringing bells, and now it’s time to look into the headset and how we can connect this to the new brain of the phone.

Rotary Dial Revival

I know it’s been a long time since my last post, but hey, at least I have an excuse…  he’s 2 and a half and knows no rest or the meaning of the phrase “staying still” 🙂

This is (hopefully) only the 1st part of a series, based around this ’70s Rotary Dial Phone from Eastern Europe. I inherited it from my grandad when he passed away a couple of years ago. This is the same phone that I remember from when I was a kid and would play with at my grandparents’ house… ok, ok, I’ll stop here with the nostalgia 🙂

So I can personally confirm it’s at least 35 years old, but probably more like 40 or 50. Most importantly it has quite a sentimental value for me, which means I have to be careful what I do with it !

Thermal Printer Remotely Controlled through an ESP32

Again one of these things that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, but never found the time to… having one of these little thermal printers that spit out your receipt at the till in a supermarket, and hack it to print little snippets of information like reminders or shopping lists, etc. …