3 ms·

My mum's 70th birthday is coming up and I love the idea of giving her a gift like this. However, she is probably not the kind of person who will have fond memor

by spuz 5y ago

My mum's 70th birthday is coming up and I love the idea of giving her a gift like this. However, she is probably not the kind of person who will have fond memories of rotary dial phones so I'd like to implement it in another way. Does anyone have any other suggestions of some piece of technology that she can input random numbers into and receive pre-recorded messages?

iamstupidsimple 5y ago
TV Remote?
spuz 5y ago
I think I have settled on this: an "FM radio". She listens almost exclusively to Classic FM so doesn't really have much reason to touch the dial. But I think she would get a real kick out of adjusting the channel to "tune in" to her friends and family. Some other ideas in case people are also looking for other ideas: - A "safe" dial (when she bought her house they found an old antique safe under the stairs which became a source of some mystery until it was cracked open (it was empty)) - A numeric keypad (my mum used to use this a lot when she worked as a translator and had to memorise the unicode for all the French characters) - Just a simple box with a big rotary dial knob on the front - can't really think of a good story for this though.
matthiaswh 5y ago
I'm not sure why you specifically want to make it [input random number] -> [output message], but if the [input random number] is not the important part... You could buy a portable digital voice recorder and pass it around the family to record their messages. This may not be as much "fun" because most probably won't have the random playback factor. To get that, you could record the messages and load them up on an MP3 player. That will enable shuffle mode. If doing some sort of custom hardware project was an important part of the idea you could wire up a permanent speaker and maybe do a 3D printed enclosure. You could take it a step further and eliminate the MP3 player and do it on a Pi with some hardware buttons. If your mum is or was into vinyl records, there are places that will custom press vinyl.

by spuz 5y ago

iamstupidsimple 5y ago

TV Remote?

spuz 5y ago

I think I have settled on this: an "FM radio". She listens almost exclusively to Classic FM so doesn't really have much reason to touch the dial. But I think she would get a real kick out of adjusting the channel to "tune in" to her friends and family. Some other ideas in case people are also looking for other ideas: - A "safe" dial (when she bought her house they found an old antique safe under the stairs which became a source of some mystery until it was cracked open (it was empty)) - A numeric keypad (my mum used to use this a lot when she worked as a translator and had to memorise the unicode for all the French characters) - Just a simple box with a big rotary dial knob on the front - can't really think of a good story for this though.

matthiaswh 5y ago

I'm not sure why you specifically want to make it [input random number] -> [output message], but if the [input random number] is not the important part... You could buy a portable digital voice recorder and pass it around the family to record their messages. This may not be as much "fun" because most probably won't have the random playback factor. To get that, you could record the messages and load them up on an MP3 player. That will enable shuffle mode. If doing some sort of custom hardware project was an important part of the idea you could wire up a permanent speaker and maybe do a 3D printed enclosure. You could take it a step further and eliminate the MP3 player and do it on a Pi with some hardware buttons. If your mum is or was into vinyl records, there are places that will custom press vinyl.