4 ms·
My keyboard wasn't mechanical enough, so I upgraded to a rotary phone
- mvdtnz 3y agoThe user's input didn't seem to have any relationship with the text output? Obviously there's no simple one to one mapping but it would have been much more fun to use the actual letters from the phone with some kind of software to guess the intended word.
- SanjayMehta 3y agoT9 text with a rotary phone. That would have been fun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text)
- xxs 3y agoI thought it'd be T9 - that was a glorious system.
- aschmelyun 3y agoI still miss it to this day, for basic texting it was the superior system.
- dontlaugh 3y agoIt was useless if your language isn't supported, though. For many, T9 was no longer relevant by the time their language got support.
- danbruc 3y agoHe is dialing the ASCII codes, 114 for r, 108 for l, 100 for d, and 33 for !. Or maybe Unicode code points, impossible to tell from this demo.
- aschmelyun 3y agoYou're correct with ASCII! My original idea was to use T9, but my ultimate goal is to use this as a way of writing code. Currently waiting on a small oled screen to print out the # inputs and corresponding last-typed character.
- m463 3y agoI think on a PC keyboard you can simulate this by holding ALT and typing 114 on the numeric keypad I wonder if you can change the rotary phone to octal? that would be great to boot a pdp 11/34.
- jstanley 3y agoI'm guessing it works out how many digits to expect for each codepoint by looking at the first digit (i.e. if it starts with a 1 then it has to be 3 digits, otherwise it is only 2). Does this mean it's impossible to type a newline character, or a backspace, for example?
- danbruc 3y agoYou could dial 013 and 010.
- jstanley 3y agoAh, so the logic is that if it starts with either a 0 or a 1 then you need to type 3 digits, otherwise 2? Nice.
- danbruc 3y agoNo idea, I didn't build the thing, just suggesting how it could work. If you want to cover [extended] ASCII, then every first digit could indicate a one or two digit code, one and two also a three digit code. So one possibility would be to have three digits for first digits zero, one, and two and otherwise two digits. All single digit ASCII codes require two leading zeros and all two digits ASCII codes starting with one or two require one leading zero. You could of course also make everything three digits with leading zeros as needed, would be easier at the cost of more dialing. Or use a timeout, if no new digits arrives within a specific time, then a new character starts.
- xxs 3y ago>there's no simple one to one mapping Why not: you can count the letters A=01, Z=26 and use that, use 2 digits each time, numbers start w/ 3 (e.g. 0=30, 9=39) That's inefficient but trivial to understand, then there is the T9 which use to be the very standard for the first mobile phones. It's language dependent obviously for prediction but pretty cool, too. Then there is Morse code which would be implement as well. Overall I'd not call the 'demo' impressive at any form.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoHe’s using ascii codes. Overall, I’d not call your “analysis” impressive in any form.
- thedailymail 3y agoHijacking this post for some history trivia. The first patent on a rotary dial was granted to a guy named Almon Brown Strowger, a mortician who had become convinced that the wife of one of his rival morticians was using her position as a telephone switch operator to reroute calls intended for Strowger's funeral home to her own husband's, thus causing the loss to Strowger's business of several valuable cadavers. Early ad copy for his device bragged that it was a "girl-less, cuss-less, out-of-order-less, wait-less telephone." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almon_Brown_Strowger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almon_Brown_Strowger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch
- aeonik 3y agoThe first big win in the Net Neutrality movement! Brings a tear to my eye.
- nanna 3y agoNothing new! The rotary phone was the very first interactive computer input device. Alexander S. Douglas programmed the EDSAC to play tic-tac-toe back in 1952 with a rotary phone for its input and a Williams Tube hacked for a display. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OXO_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OXO_(video_game)
- Waterluvian 3y agoIs this in any relation to a video I saw where someone made a binary keyboard and then made an adapter to make a normal keyboard actuate the binary keys instead? I hope this trend continues of doing the “creative volume input” but for keyboards.
- aschmelyun 3y agoI was directly inspired by that video, haha
- mrweasel 3y agoI love that hanging up is a newline.