Hi Everyone.
First time poster and not very technically minded when it comes to electronics.
OK so my story is, I have a daughter that is getting married in 2 months and said that she seen somewhere that there was a phone you could get that people recorded messages on it for you instead of filling in a wedding attendance book. So I have purchased a new vintage looking phone but now I am wondering what I need and how would I do it, to make a PCB that can utilize the phone mic and use the switch in the phone hand piece to switch the unit on and off and also be able to store the recording to then be downloaded for them to listen to at a later date. The phone i purchased is in the link below.
Hoping you guys that are well versed in this field could offer some assistance.
Any information will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Gary
What a cool project idea! I’ve got a couple of ideas of how you may be able to implement this but there will be some challenges around having enough memory to store all the messages without overwriting any previous ones, and making sure the recordings can be retrieved again later.
Do you have a link to where your daughter first saw this idea so we can take a look at how others may have managed to build one?
We’ve got some cheap and cheerful voice recorders for less than $20 but most will store less than a minute of audio, or won’t have the ability to retrieve that audio and save it elsewhere later.
The other big challenge I can see is having it intuitive and easy to operate. A well designed recorder would ideally begin recording just by picking up the handle and save once the handle is placed back on the cradle.
Perhaps we can find a suitable audio recording library for a Raspberry Pi and hide a Raspberry Pi and small microphone within the unit. That way you could use an SD card for storage and controlling the input switch from the cradle should be relatively straightforward.
If you have any other resources on how this has been done before you could provide links to they would be invaluable to brainstorming ideas and finding the smoothest path forward.
Thanks for all the help guys its greatly appreciated. Ill order all of the bits from you then Ill just have to have a go a writing the code (never done it before hahaha). Thanks
Hi James.
Yeah mate just checked the comments of the YouTube video and seen that he has put a link to the code so that will help immensely haha. The next question and something that I just forgot to order is what would be the best way to power this thing. I know in the video he said he would power the teensy via the USB port.
Thanks Gary
I’d check out a USB Battery Bank: USB Battery Packs Australia
They should provide more than enough battery to keep it going for a while (and handles charging and discharge safety)
Thanks mate I was thinking one of these but wanted to ask the pros.
Now this phone that I purchased i plugged it in and rang our home number and it actually works however it is very quiet to hear and very quiet on the other end so I’m thinking of changing out the mic and speaker. Could anyone recommend decent replacements? Below are images of the speaker and mic set up in this phone.
Thanks Gary
Just to confirm were you looking to integrate all of this with the Teensy?
Once youve got the final project working you’ll be able to perform some post-processing on the files to increase the volume, or as the recordings are being made.
Replacing the mic and speaker will require some more work from the original guide, it might be worth getting the parts and seeing if you are happy with the volume through the Teensy first.
Liam
