This old (Bluetooth connected) Phone: Part 1

I inherited an old Western Electric candlestick phone from a relative, who in a previous life, converted to a nice decorative little table lamp.   I wanted to restore some of the intentional functionality of this old device  but with a modern twist. When I am at home in my office/mad scientist’s lair, I often miss calls on my cell phone because, well, I have it on silence or vibrate. I thought it would be fun to sort of “Steam-punk”  this old phone to have Bluetooth on it and have an old time RIIINNNNNG coming from an incoming call.

 

My first step was to test the Receiver ( the cone held up to the ear) with a  signal generator. I disassembled the base and removed the guts from the candlestick base. Using a signal generator, I was surprised to hear this old ear piece still worked as it did.

The next thing to test was the transmitter piece.  Unfortunately, this part had seen better days. I couldn’t pick up  a sound out of it and I feared the coil and diaphragm were frozen.  No worries, I will just use a modern microphone in its place hidden behind the mouth piece.

There was no bell in the base so that was another part I will need to get and since this style phone typically had a remote bell box, I will have to get creative on how I want to implement this.

For testing and  development purposes, the Purpletooth Jamboree development board makes for a nice break out to try microphones, speaker attachment and GPIOs. It’s based on the BC127  module from Blue Creation. The Bluetooth protocol native to this allows for a Hands Free Protocol ( HFP) as well as an audio device.

 

I was able to connect the earpiece to this development board and pair it with my phone.  I played a song from my phone and I was pleasantly surprised listening to some Little Feat being played through the ear piece.

Next step will be to get the microphone part working so I can actually have a conversation on this old phone.