Hello folks! I was thinking about using the dialing disc of a old phone as a Keypad on my computer. I've seen the Dialup but i could not find a guide about converting one of those rotary dials into a multifunctionel (usb/serial?) keypad. I want to be able to dial numbers as well as quickstarting programms by the turn of a wheel... Do you think tha's possible? Thx a bunch D.R.
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php?cPath=96 have done some work of modding a cellphone into an old school phone http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/present.php?p=Port-O-Rotary for more info.
It's pretty close, but expensive , thx for the link though! Actually i was looking for a tutorial or so, so i could use one of these old phone dials to control winamp and such and to start applications.
the second link is a how-to connect it to a phone, I beleive they used a pic with a serial interface to do it, you may need to fiddle with some serial port software to make it useful but im sure its doable.
Before the time of DTMF tones, the rotaries would create a series of pulses that the phone exchange picked up. These would be generated by one of the switched on one side of the dial mechanics shown in the images in the links from Cabe. The other side it to generate a different click that told the exchange when the user had moved the dial, and when to stop waiting for pulses because the dial had returned to the home position. On the USB side, if you can find something you can set up as a standard HID keyboard, you can set up your project to act as the numpad on the keyboard. With a little extra hardware to detect what number you dialed on the rotary, you may even be able to mod an off the shelf USB keyboard and avoid the USB development issue all together.
