27 Apr 2006
Retro Handsets For Your Cellphone - Pt. 1
As promised to all of you we ran into at the Maker Faire, here are instructions on making your own retro handsets for your cellphone. I apologize for the delay in posting - but one of you friendly Makers out in San Francisco was kind enough to share the black plague with me and I have been on the edge of death this week.
I will cover bluetooth in this article, and will post about wired handsets a little later.
BLUETOOTH HANDSETS
I will talk about bluetooth first because it is actually the easiest to do. The only thing you need to have is a bluetooth headset, and old retro handset you want to modify, and a soldering iron.
I got my bluetooth headset form Sewell Direct. It was inexpensive and easy to modify - which is why I used this one over some name brand one. The phone you can probably get at just about any thrift store. Look around and find one that really suits you. If you can’t find one at a thrift store, try your local freecycle - someone probably has one of these old phones in their basement.
The first thing to do it to disassemble the headset. Your mileage may vary, but mine was simple to do. The body was simply puleld apart with a small screwdriver. A few little tabs hold everything together and they just need to be pushed in while pulling the two halves apart. Once you get it, the two halves come apart very easily.
Once that is done, it’s time to take apart the actual speaker assembly. One the model of headset I used this was pretty trivial. The piece that holds the headset speaker to the main part of the headset is pushed into the headset where two tabs hold it in place. I used a pair of needle nose pliers to push the two tabs together and pull the speaker out. Voila!
Now you can cut off the speaker, leaving as much wire connected to the main board as you can so you have a little bit to play with.
Now it’s time to mess with the handset. Go ahead and unscrew the piece covering the microphone end of the handset, pull the microphone off, and cut it away. You should now have two wires coming from the speaker end of the headset. Simply splice these wires in to where the speaker was connected in your bluetooth earpiece. The voltage on the speaker is low enough that the BT headset has no problem driving it - it’s actually pretty loud.
Use whatever you want to hold the earpiece in place once it’s hidden inside the microphone end of the phone. You will be using the original earpiece’s microphone, so position it towards the holes on the handset’s screw-on cap. I used some crumpled up paper to hold the earpiece in place, but you can use some silly putty or get creative with something else.
That’s it. Follow the instructions in the manual for your earpiece to pair it to your phone. You can go nuts and wire the buttons on the earpiece to the outside if you want, or you can just leave the volume at maximum (like I do), and open it up if you need to change anything. You will also need to open it up to charge the earpiece.
The last step is to go to a crowded place and have someone call you. I set the ringer on my phone to sound like an old school phone for maximum effect. Pull out your retro handset and start talking away! You’ll be suprised by some of the looks you get.
Tags:
Retro Handsets for your cellphone…
Sam writes - “As promised to all of you we ran into at the Maker Faire, here are instructions on making your own retro handsets for your cellphone. I apologize for the delay in posting - but one of……
[...] -Link [...]
This makes me ponder what other blue tooth headsets we could make:
The shoe phone (from get smart)
A zucchini phone head set
a clock radio headset
plastic bannana
a boom box headset
Yes yes yes…. shoe phone from get smart. That should be the next one.
How about a Star Trek earpiece like Lt Uhuru.
I think the communicator has already been done…
Or a Lobster a-la Salvadore Dali.
What about the the giant cell phone from Trigger happy TV?
Photo here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1144917.stm
Wow! I have got to try this! Well, actually I need a bluetooth phone first
Nice work!
I always wanted to convert a spongebob or other kids phone:
http://www.polyconceptusa.com/showproduct.asp?key=255
Moding a cell phone would be too permanent.. I think you’ve got the right idea with bluetooth!
Also, for recharging the headset, you could use inductive charging so it wouldn’t require any wires. Just take apart an old electric toothbrush and probably add a regulator (along with a diode bridge and a capacitor).
Trigger happy tv phone - why not just use a wired headset? The phone would fit easily.
summary: very cool!
- John from next door at the Faire.
ps. I did *not* give you black death. I didn’t get it, either.
I loved morcheeba’s induction charging idea, could anyone be more specific? Ideally step by step, for those of not talented in this area. I cant wait to build my own bt hand set, I already have the perfect one.
Love the idea
You should add one of those old twisty phone cords (the ones that are forever tangled) and use it as a lanyard, so you can wear it around your neck, Flav o Flav style.
The induction is a great idea - you could even build it into the base of the phone, so to charge you just “hang up.” I’ll have to pick up an induction charged toothbrush next time I see one…
Induction would be cool, but I think I have a better idea. First off figure what voltage the headset batteries are. Then make a new battery using AA cells. It will run for weeks. Then wire the charge connections to the cord jack. Just adapt the little clear end to the charger and hook it up.
if you like this idea but don’t have the time to make one then come to hulger.com. that said we sold out of bluetooth handsets for now but have a new shipment in soon. we used to be called pokia and make one offs like this in a few years back.
I want to turn an old rotary phone into a bluetooth accesory for my phone. I want to recieve and place calls from the rotary phone. I want to be able to dial my phone using the rotary dial and have the bells in the rotary phone ring when the phone is called. I wanted to make a whole rotary cell phone like these guys. But then I realized they base their phone off of a ~$200 cell phone module and I figured it would be cheaper to just use the phone I already have and make the rotary phone a bluetooth device… Does anyone know of an existing bluetooth device that can cause the phone to place a call as well as just answer one? I have been looking around for such a device, but have not had any luck…
Fred - That sounds like a good and less expensive alternative to the sparkfun mod. The only way I can think of doing it is using the voice dial feature. Like, have a module that will speak the numbers into the headset as you dial them. It’s ghetto-tastic but it just might work.
[...] Retro Handset to Bluetooth Modification [...]
I loved you guys at the Maker Faire!
I just bought a Payphone headset with the metal cord coming out. I’m going to thrash the wires so that it looks like it just got ripped off of a payphone. I think it gives a couple bonus “crazy points.”
Thanks for the how-to!
Cool - Send pictures!
[...] I have already made a retro bluetooth handset, so why not make something else totally weird and arbitrary into a bluetooth handset? I went to my workshop to grab the bluetooth headset and shiver me timbers right there next to the phone was the perfect device - an old NES controller! [...]
[...] Last night I was contemplating other strange form-factors to use as cellphone handsets. We’ve already tackled wired retro handsets as well as bluetooth handsets, so I wanted to do something a bit different. It struck me that a Nintendo controller would make the ultimate handset. [...]