Bakelite to the Future - 1950s rotary phone ESP32 bluetooth headset
Here's a very beautiful antique rotary phone. It's a Dutch PTT phone model called simply "1950" . But, what's this at the back? A USB-C port? A peek inside shows us some weird things! How did that LiPO battery get there? Ok let's quit the jokey intro, this was all me. I've had this phone for about 15 years and over the last couple of weeks I've converted into a fully functioning Bluetooth headset using an ESP32 microcontroller. In this post: - 1 - Features - 2 - Lessons Learned - 3 - Pictures and story! of how it got made (scroll down!) but first... Does it work? This morning was the first Google meet I've used it in: A participant reported on the sound quality "I didn't know how much I missed the different sound quality! Beautiful. We could hear you very well, not distorted. I wish I recorded your speech ehehe" I could hear them very well too, so I consider this a great success! Get the source code on Github jtwaleson/bakelite-to-t