Meet Me On My Rotary Phone

We suspect kids today — and some adults — are confused about phone terminology. In today’s world, “hanging up” and “dialing,” for example, are abstract words without the physical reference that older people remember. But some people have a soft spot for the old rotary dial phones, including [Stavros], who wired a rotary phone to his computer for use on online meetings. Check out the video below.

He took an old rotary phone and wanted to program a Raspberry Pi Zero to act as a sound card and a keyboard. That way, he could connect to the meeting by picking up the handset and disconnect by hanging up. He also planned to read the dial and convert that into keyboard input.

If that sounds like a big project, it’s because it is. [Stavros] decided to use Claude Opus 4.1 to write the code for him, but was stymied by the $200/month price tag. So he wrote some code to send queries on a pay-as-you-go plan. After $50 was spent, the code was in worse shape than the first version. So much for vibe coding.

Plan B was — his words, not ours — shameful. He used a cheap USB sound card, an RP2040 to act like the keyboard, and a hub to make it simple to connect. Cases were removed, and boards were integrated into the phone to make a working project.

We do appreciate that [Stavros] tries not to irreversibly damage the old gear when he makes a mod like this. He uses a 3D printed connector to replace the old press-fit connections on the phone’s PCB, and it is all highly reversible.

While Claude didn’t help the development much, perhaps [Stavros] can use the phone to talk to Claude. We’ve seen a number of rotary phone hacks over the years.