I converted a rotary phone into a meeting handset
20 comments
·November 12, 2025Medox
> Since I didn’t want to make any permanent changes to the phone, I didn’t want to remove these tabs, or to solder anything onto them. I just wanted to connect a cable to them in the easiest way possible.
Same here but I want to go for a xilink bluetooth adapter and maybe even sacrifice and old smartphone with a separate sim. Not sure if the AI stuff will work but it seems possible….
thih9
> Half an hour and fifty dollars later, I realized I had spent fifty dollars on this, and that this was not sustainable because, if anything, the code was getting more and more buggy the more Claude fixed it.
Off topic, this has been my experience with AI so often that it prevents me from exploring AI uses more.
I liked Cursor’s “auto” plan but that now seems gone. I’d happily switch to a provider that offers a similarly “unlimited” usage.
wongarsu
It's difficult to offer unlimited usage of something that's so expensive to run. OP could have used a $20/month Claude or Cursor plan for "unlimited" usage within their quota had they been willing to use a different model than the $75/Million Token Opus 4
voidUpdate
I enjoy how this article shows the issues with both image generation models and language models
null
ipython
I enjoyed the llm generated rotary phone image which had no “3” position but two “8”’s
thih9
The author did too:
> Rest assured, though, the image is almost exactly what the phone looks like, except with a bit more 8 and a bit less 3.
egorfine
I like this guy's optimism of letting AI create a USB sound card out of a microcontroller from scratch.
WesolyKubeczek
If you use such a thing on a regular kind of meeting that happens over zoom or similar, your arm will atrophy and fall off from having to hold that thing for the duration.
The only remedy I see is to give everyone such a contraption and make it mandatory.
jon-wood
Back in the day when phones of this style were the only ones available we learned to hold the handset between our shoulder and our ear, leaving both hands free for other things.
WesolyKubeczek
Cue neck pain
phantasmish
They make those shoulder-rest addons for phone handsets. Not too bad to use for extended periods with one of those, with both hands free.
BoxOfRain
This would be an excellent way to make sure the standup stays terse, we could even put lead weights in the handsets to further increase this virtue.
sokoloff
NB: Many of these older phones already came with metal weights insides to give a feeling of more substance to them. Not always in the handset, though it wouldn’t surprise me if some did have them.
pvtmert
love the hangup part. so, i can finally "rage quit" the meeting that discusses 99th revision of a doc where a comma should be added here or there.
Cthulhu_
You can quit anyway, just say "I've given you write permission, I trust you"
6c696e7578
pkill -9 -f '(chrome|firefox)' is my rage quit, it's like hanging up but hitting the keys on the keyboard as hard as you'd throw the phone down
villgax
Someone please make a Moto Razr form factor and snap bluetooth device so I can keep my big and costly device in my bag and use it only when I actually need to.
https://petrovs.info/post/2023-01-12-shaiba/ This is my USB rotary dial. It's always fun with the young people when I bring it to IT conferences.