Oh excuse me, my iron is talking again…
Posted: February 25th, 2010 | Author: Tony | Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »My friend Toby had the urge to convert a candlestick phone to work with either a landline or cell phone. So, we went off in search of a candlestick phone online and at various stores. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a candlestick phone that wouldn’t break the bank. Still determined to make some object of yesteryear function with a cell phone, we found a willing object: an old chrome iron.
We decided the best route would be to buy a bluetooth headset and fit it into the iron. That way we could both use the iron from time to time and we didn’t want to have our entire cellphone in the iron. We wanted to make it as normal looking as possible with still decent functionality and of course we needed to be able to answer and hang up calls with the big red button located on the handle.
First we disassembled the thing and I banged the dents out of the chrome covering. Here are the inner workings of it.
An unusual assortment of parts
I realized that we couldn’t completely gut the thing because there was a screw and a nut that held the cover on. So, I found some bottle caps and poked holes in them, they make the perfect size standoff for elevating the screw piece to the correct level.
It really does fit perfectly
So, we had a hollow Iron…. now what? Toby and I went shopping for a cheap, simple bluetooth headset. We found just the one at Newegg. We wanted something that was small but not too small so we would be able to modify it easily. Settling on this one was a good choice, it had simple one-button functionality (another two buttons for volume control), a through-hole microphone and a pretty loud speaker. It took a bit of wiggling and prying to get the plastic apart correctly but here is what it looked like all hacked apart.
Innards of a bluetooth headset
I decided it would be a good idea to layout the headset in the iron and try to make a test call just to see how well it would work. We expected it might be hard to hear and there might be some echoing in the iron. It worked…. but the echoing from the mic was a bit much. Also, the volume of the speaker could’ve been improved. Pictured is the testing layout (not permanent)
The mic is under the circuit board on the far right
Here is Toby talking into an iron…. that crazy kid.
Well... it never did look right when he held a cell phone
It was clear after the first test that we would need to do some adjusting of the microphone. Also we would need to figure out a way to answer calls with the red button in the handle and be able to charge the headset without taking it all apart.
We had to settle on a name for this thing. Toby suggested The Smooth Talker, it was settled.
More to come.
[...] has been slow on the Iron Phone this semester after the first headset mic gave out as soon as I was able to get the red button on [...]