Bluetooth Ericofon is working

[sqnewton]

Hello,

Thanks again for all your kind words about the Bluetooth Ericofon project. The phone is already up and running. The full project is at http://btericofon.blogspot.com and has a short video plus lots of pictures. Fell free to check it.

Happy 2010 to all!

Santiago

[Tonyrotary]

Great job on the project!

[AET]

Happy to hear it!  Congrats!!

[mienaichizu]

Wow! that's nice! can you do that in the model 500

[dsk]

I'm most happy for seeing skilled modern people finding projects like this interesting.
Stone age people as me, having problems with more modern equipment than drums or maybe magneto telephones would never try, things like this.

I have tried to make an ordinary telephone receive skype calls when the PC is turned off, but even that failed.

You have done a great job of Engineering and design. We may not give you a Nobel prize, but I wish I could.

dsk

[McHeath]

Impressive work!  What kind of life will the battery give?  Did you have the PCB custom made, it looks that way.  The feature set is nice, voice recognition in a 50 year old design, who would have ever thought that could happen. 

Any plans to market the PCB?

[sqnewton]

Thanks to everybody for the kind notes. What is funny is that I was invited yesterday to a Swedish friend's elegant party and I showed the phone to him and his mom and OMG, it became the sensation of the night (lots of Swedish people there and the Ericofon being Swedish...). They loved it and I got tons of questions and jaw-dropping faces of people in disbelieve that it really worked. People calling their own cell phones and calling the Ericofon back and listening to the ringer. A nice "side effect" that I realized is that is a great tool to collect phone numbers, especially from the cute women..   ha ha..

@ mienaichizu:
Sparkfun sells a 500 with a BT interface (US$ 250 to $325). It may have some issues based on some reviews and checking on their programming code I think it definitively has. I could come up with a 'retro-fit' kit for any rotary phone, especially now that landlines are disappearing and there are so many people out there (like me) that love older phones and would love use them again. Let me know if you (and other members) think that it would make sense. An alternative is to use an existing BT gateway, such as XLINK or Cell2Tel.

@dsk:
Thanks! I grew up with old telephones and designing devices to make teletype writers work over radio and phone lines. And I am sure you are not from the stone age; the technology simply goes way too fast.

@ McHeath:
I have to check the battery life. Yesterday the phone was on for most of the party (don't want to see my cell phone bill..) and it has plenty of juice. It is a 900 mA LiPo battery and the average consumption is less than 60mA (have to double check) when active and like 10mA when idle. I would guess 10-15 hours of conversation (?). The PCB is custom made. I made it and included a mounting hole to match a threaded hole on the upper metal part of the dialing assembly. The whole project is open source, so you can download the PCB files and either send it to fabrication or obtain the PCB from me. I wouldn't recommend to etch the PCB at home, since it is double sided and has many vias (through-plated holes).

Sorry for the long reply, I just wanted to address your questions. Thanks again. (BTW: somebody noticed that the dial and busy tone was too high pitched -440 Hz-. I realized that I embed the European dial tone. Next code fix with have the US dial/busy tone frequency (350Hz I believe). Q

[dsk]

You may find a real good tone database here: http://tinyurl.com/ybtgt4w
dsk

[bellsystemproperty]

Your ericofon is so cool!  I ordered the Xlink a couple days ago. Maybe it will arrive on Friday. Next it will go inside a bag with a battery. It's going to be like an old bag phone. It's not portable, it's luggable. Your project is much more elegant than my solution though. The dial tone sounds like my Panasonic dial tone from the pbx. I'll post pictures of my project when it's done too.

[sqnewton]

You may find a real good tone database here: http://tinyurl.com/ybtgt4w
dsk

Thanks for the link! Pretty cool. (425 Hz for Europe and in Colombia, there is where I got the dial tone from). I'll see if I can mimic the US tone (350+440).

Your ericofon is so cool!  I ordered the Xlink a couple days ago. Maybe it will arrive on Friday. Next it will go inside a bag with a battery. It's going to be like an old bag phone. It's not portable, it's luggable. Your project is much more elegant than my solution though. The dial tone sounds like my Panasonic dial tone from the pbx. I'll post pictures of my project when it's done too.

Thanks! I am having fun showing it of. You idea is cool, too! Definitively and old bag phone. I also thought about getting one of those old cell phones (the "brick" from Motorola) and build the contraption there, but I found the Ericofon cooler. I am sure yours will be very cool too. And I liked the "luggable" part. Please post pictures and if you can have like a blog or so about how you do it would be cool. I like to see what people build. Thx!