Hackathon Project: Repurposing a Rotary Phone with Raspberry Pi and AI
By
Oscar Poke
A bagel you'd recommend to a friend without hedging.
Summary
A developer recounts participating in a Vilnius hackathon where he and his teammate repurposed an old rotary phone by wiring a Raspberry Pi into it. The setup used a single websocket connection to control two-way audio, a custom bell ringer, and the hangup switch. For the demo, they integrated an AI agent capable of researching music, creating playlists, and playing collections.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledI brought along an old rotary phone and our two-man team spent the next 48 hours sticking our fingers in it.
We wired a Raspberry Pi into the phone which interfaced with all of its IO and communicated with our server via a single websocket connection which controlled everything from two-way audio, the bell ringer (with custom frequency and audio patterns) and the hangup switch.
For the demo, we set up an AI agent which could research music, create playlists and play collections
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