Have you ever wanted a 1950s rotary telephone turned into a Bluetooth headphone? Here's one anyway

I love weird tech stuffed inside other weird tech. It's the reason I still write about hardware. One person's rotary phone turned into a Bluetooth headphone is one of the most creative Frankenstein's Monster-style creations that I've ever seen. It's alive!

Hackaday reported that Jouke Waleson had owned a Dutch rotary telephone called "1950" since 1995. In the last few weeks he has converted it into a Bluetooth headset. In their blog they describe the painstaking process. It's fascinating.

This was done with an ESP32 chip controller, which has both Wi-Fi capabilities and Bluetooth capabilities. They were able to get it to work in Google Meet and be able to speak to and hear their unwitting colleagues. Woukes reports that a participant listened to the audio quality and said: "I didn't realize how much I missed it! Beautiful. "We could hear you perfectly, without distortion."

After removing the original phone and noticing that the 3.5 mm jack was there for a previous project a decade earlier, they checked each individual part worked and bought a stereo ADC board which converts analogue signals, as well as a DAC encoder. "I spent two days trying to learn about the microphone and I2S, and I could tear out my hair at some points. It would have been impossible to do this without an oscilloscope.

If you want to make it yourself, or something similar, you can access Github for more information and inspiration. There is also a YouTube video that explains how it works.

Waleson turns on the phone, which flashes an indicator, and then picks it up to demonstrate Google Assistant integration. When they ask Google what's on the agenda, Google will tell them what is on their calendar. It can connect to other devices via Bluetooth, but it can also be used as a phone using the numbers on their device. It's a truly bizarre piece of ingenuity, which I love.

Waleson's desire to place the device on their bedside tables so they can leave behind their phones at night is perhaps the most practical aspect of a gadget that (let's face it) wasn't designed to be practical. This DIY project is perfect for that purpose and may be more useful than it appears.