Do you have old landline phones laying around the house, with touchtone buttons or rotary dials? Perhaps you’d like to do something with them! [Scott Dylewski] has built hardware to let you do just that, since your local utility might have pulled down the lines already.
The Analog Redial is, essentially, a “little phone system you can hack,” according to [Scott]. Plug in a phone or two, and you get the functionality of yesteryear—a dial tone, ringing, and all that. You can make calls between the phones, out via a SIP server, or use the answering machine functionality. You can play around with settings via a web interface, or even set up dial codes so your phone can control your Home Assistant setup.
An ESP32-C6 does all the heavy lifting, with the aid of an ES8388 audio chip, and lets you plug in two phones for telephonic hijinks. You can even add a Bluetooth board to use your old landline as a handset for your modern smartphone. [Scott] has all the files on GitHub if you’d like to make one yourself, and you can get most of it pre-assembled by a board house if that’s your jam. It hardly gets easier than this.
We’ve featured other fun projects that repurpose old phones for new purposes, too. If you’re whipping up telecommunications witchery of your own in the home lab, be sure to notify our tipsline. Happy phonery!