RINGING IN THE CHANGES — PART TWO

In the first part of this series, which appeared in Issue No. 89, we saw the principles to be followed to upcycle an old rotary telephone. The simple circuit connected on the Raspberry Pi general-purpose input/output (GPIO) to control the amplifier buttons worked fine, as did the three LEDs used to provide some essential visual notification to the user.

Making the hardware and adapting the internal design of the phone to include a Raspberry Pi (with the circuit), the amplifier, and the batteries was a challenging task — at least, that’s what I thought until I faced the real challenge of making all the elements actually work together.

Things became more complex when I tried to accomplish the task on a Linux machine

I made this upcycling project battery operated, as the circuit of the amplifier was already equipped with a Li-ion USB-rechargeable battery. I decided to add a PiJuice board to run the