Final Project: Ode to Analog
- Summer Thompson
- Dec 18, 2018
- 4 min read
The following Project was created for my final project for the Object 2018 class at CU Boulder. I worked extensively with my partner, Abbie, you can read her report on the project here. This project started with an idea, perhaps a theme, of reusing a rotary telephone as a controller... The project underwent many transformations, but through all of its individual parts stayed true to the theme of reuse. The Violin, I found in my grandparents attic. I don't know how long its been there or where it came from, but it was the most broken Violin I had ever seen. My grandparents were extremely frugal people, making or thrifting most of their possessions. After loosing them this semester, their spirit of creative problem solving has been in my mind and in my work.
Materials:
Scrap wood for Shelves
White craft paint
Patterned paper
Wire
Brass gears from an old timer
A thread spindle
A melted thermostat (courtesy of Thanksgiving at the Thompson's)
Random Pinball parts
An old brass gear from a vintage timer
Procedure:
Part 1: The Rotary Phone
The first challenge of this project was reverse engineering a rotary phone in order to interface it with an Arduino. A multi-meter was crucial at this step as we needed to know what was connected to what and what happened when we turned the rotary dial. We found this Instructibles tutorial which gave us an idea of how the phone worked. There is a GitHub repository referenced in the middle of this tutorial where we got most of the code for reading the number dialed. We found that the rotary mechanism has two sets of outputs, one which told us whether or not the dial was turning, and the other that clicked every time a number was passed. We connected one side of each of these circuits to ground and the other to an Arduino pin using the pull-up function, in order to read the dial output. Here is the adapted code we used for reading the numbered dialed in our final project.
We also thought it would be a cool idea to use the phone as an output device
so we ordered Sparkfun's MP3 Breakout WT2003S board and used their Arduino library example code to play music we had loaded onto a micro SD card. We initially tried to get the sound board to work with our Arduino Mega, but we found that with all of our other outputs, we couldn't get consistent 5v poser to the board. We decided to connect the board to a separate Arduino Uno and house that in the rotary phone.
Part 2: Outputs
The first output we decided to include was a seven segment number display to show which number had been dialed. We checked each pin of the number display to see which segment it connected to, then connected to an Arduino and wrote this code to display the appropriate number when dialed. Here is a video of us first getting this output working.
The next output I really wanted to include was some kind of bell. Unfortunately the green rotary phone we started with, was missing an analog bells. So instead I found another old analog dial phone and pillaged a bell from it. We learned early that we would need a ton of power to use the electromagnet that originally operated the bell.
So instead we used a 5v servo, mounting it between the housing and the bell unit. This worked much better than electrical tape.
We decided we also wanted to include was a DC motor. We attached an old gear from a timer to the dc motor to connect it to our aesthetic.
Part 3: Putting it all together
We initially thought of using a doll house as a project enclosure then mapping numbers to rooms or actions in the house. Finding a cheap, used doll house posed more difficult than imagined and after some desperate sole searching I found myself in miniature dioramas.
I thought of constructing something out of cardboard or using an old case but when I found a very broken violin in my grandparents attic, I know it was our alternative housing.
The Violin was falling apart when I first found it, so I slowly chiseled the front cover off the body of the violin. We decided to keep this piece and cut it on the band saw so the other components would fit and the wires and Arduino Mega was covered.
I was very inspired by the concept of exploring personal/private space in a
I had found an old pinball machine component, that perfectly held the DC Motor, which we used to anchor the motor to the shelf. We added a thread spool.
The last component I was inspired to include were the violin strings with LEDs.
The string LED's were inspired by Peter Voggel, who utilizes exposed circuits for both form and function in away that lends function to the aesthetic of the piece. I was inspired by his work to incorporate the resistors and LEDs into the strings of the violin.
Above is the schematic of the final components connected to our micro controllers.
I just ordered a violin stand and I hope it will arrive soon to properly display the violin. Bellow is the final video we made of the project working.
Conclusion:
Finishing this project was extremely satisfying. We certainly learned a lot about analog and interfacing with old telephones and I think we succeed in creating a one of a kind piece of art that expresses a lot about the value in recycled objects that would otherwise be considered trash.
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