After seeing This reddit post and image gallery I've decided to create my own :)
This repository of code - based on https://github.com/hnesland/aselektriskbureau also documents my progress and can serve as a tutorial on building your own phone.
I have next to zero expirience with Raspbery Pi, electronics and very little python expirience, so this project is a way for me to learn all of those :)
Guide is localized to Poland, most links to shops, items, etc. will lead to polish shops and allegro. But google and ebay are your friend and all of the components are available worldwide (and usually the cheapest option comes from alliexpress).
- Respbery Pi - Version 2 or 1B - Costs around 120 PLN - Allegro
- USB sound card - 5 PLN Allegro - As above, check if it works on Linux, but practically all of them do.
- MicroSD Card - 20PLN - You can buy a SD card especially formated for RPi (with bootloader called NOOBs) from Official Shop. You can also buy any other brand one from allegro. RPi recommends Class 4 SD card with 8GB capacity. I got a GoodRAM one. Check http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards if card works with RPi before you buy!
- Micro USB power adapter. To power your raspberry Pi. If you have standard mobile usb charger, it'll work.
- WIFI USB Dongle - 15 PLN - Allegro, Official shop - It's good to check if the model you choose is supported under Linux (everything that works under linux should also work under RPi). Buy if you want to use Wifi instead of Ethernet cable
- Xiaomi Power Bank - 70 PLN Allegro. Buy if you plan on making your phone completelly wireless (at least for periods of time). It's absolutelly crucial that the power bank has pass-through feature, that allows it to charge while at the same time providing power to RPi. Make sure you get genuine Xiami Mi power bank - counterfits do not offer that feature Identification Guide. You can get larger versions of power bank to (10400 and 160000 mAh) if you want for your phone to last longer on battery, keep in mind they also have larger physical dimensions.
- Keyboard
- HDMI cable (at least on one end :) )
Folllow a guide at https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/ or steps bellow if you're on Linux (based on: http://qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk/blog/2013/06/noobs-for-raspberry-pi/ )
# Download NOOBS from the site.
wget http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/NOOBS_latest
# While it's downloading insert SD Card into a reader.
# Check which device it's listed at.
ls /dev/mmc*
# Check if it's not mounted. Make _sure_ you're using correct device.
export RPI_SD_CARD=/dev/mmcblk0
# Wipe the SD Card partition table
parted $RPI_SD_CARD mklabel msdos
# Make partition for whole drive
parted $RPI_SD_CARD mkpart primary fat32 0% 100%
# Format the partition
export RPI_PARTITION="${RPI_SD_CARD}p1"
mkfs.vfat $RPI_PARTITION
# Mount the partition
mkdir rpi
mount $RPI_PARTITION rpi
cd rpi
# unzip the NOOBS
unzip ../NOOBS_v1_*.zip
# Unmount SD card
cd ../
umount rpi
rmdir rpi
- Insert the SD card into your RaspberryPi, with the power disconnected and then connect or turn on the power.
- After powering up. Install Raspbian (+ optional data partition) on your RPi (this might take a while ~ 30min).
- After installation you can configure machine (eg. change password, set time zone, languages, etc.). You should configure:
- Hostname (for logging in later).
- Enable the SSH server
- Time zone
- Change password!
- After configuration, reset RPi. and log in. Defaults are login: pi password: raspberry
If you're using ethernet then simply plugging in the cable should be enough.
If you're using WIFI you might need to configure it either through GUI (which you start with startx), or via console by following this guide: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md
sudo -i
iwlist wlan0 scan
nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
# Fill network details.
ifup wlan0
tail -f /var/log/syslog
# Observe logs and check if it connects sucessfully
# Check your IP address. Replace wlan0 with eth0 if you're using cable. You can simply call `ifconfig` to get all the information.
ifconfig wlan0 | grep 'inet addr:' | cut -d: -f2 | awk '{ print $1}'
Once you get the IP address you can perform rest of the operations by logging in to your RPi via ssh.
ssh pi@192.168.1.2 # Set IP number you've got in previous step. In some cases you might be able to use hostname you've set in setup.
We'll now setup a public key on our raspberry pi to login without password.
# Login to RPi.
ssh pi@192.168.1.23
mkdir .ssh
chmod 700 .ssh
touch .ssh/authorized_keys
chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys
exit # Logout
# Generate a private/public SSH keys if needed.
if [ ! -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub ]; then ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"; fi
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh pi@192.168.1.23 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys'
# type in password for the last time.
# Updates a system
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
# Install pything dependencies. This step is optional.
sudo apt-get install python-dev libffi-dev libssl-dev -y
Installing Linphone on Raspberry Pi based on https://wiki.linphone.org/wiki/index.php/Raspberrypi:start
# Download linphone for raspberry. Make sure uit's the newest release.
wget http://linphone.org/releases/linphone-python-raspberry/linphone4raspberry-3.8.0-cp27-none-any.whl
# Rest needs to be done as root.
# Install pip (Python package manager)
sudo apt-get install python-setuptools -y
sudo easy_install pip
# Install wheel packages
sudo pip install wheel
sudo pip install pip --upgrade
sudo pip install setuptools --upgrade
# Install security update to requests library. Optional (will clear warnings), requires python-dev libffi-dev and libssl-dev installed in step above
sudo pip install requests[security]
# Finaly install linphone package
sudo pip install linphone4raspberry-3.8.0-cp27-none-any.whl
python -c 'import linphone; print "Ok"'
# If it prints just "OK" then it's ok. If it throws a fit, you've fucked up something :)
git clone https://github.com/Szpeja/RotaryPi.git
First of all I had to figure out how the dial works.
I set up a breadboard and connected it to Raspberry PI. The breadboard and 2 other connecting boards I've used came from failed Kickstarter project I've contributed to (I got some of the parts I've paid for). I hoped the'll be useful here as they allowed me to easilly connect Raspberry PI to a breadboard using cable. It turned out not to be as easy. First of all boards were initially made for arduino pins, second, while idea behind those was quite nice, the implementation was shity, mislabeled pins, shorted traces, etc.
So after figuring out which pin on cable connects to which pin on breadboard I've come to the conclusion that some pins on breadboard were shorted, which could unfortunately fry RPi if I connected it to the breadboard. Luckilly I caught it in time and severed few traces on PCB which resulted in Pin 14 on BB to be connected to Pin 7 on RPi, and pin 14 to be not connected at all. But besides that everything seemed to work fine.
Surprisingly the result of all that work was quite nice mapping that can be found in RPi2Breadboard.md except for unfortunate short of Pin 7 and 14 rest of mapping is 1-1 from markings on Breadboard to RPi board numbering. This works assuming the 15 wide tape is connected in the middle leaving 2 empty rows on each side of Raspberry Pi B.
Next step was to setup a three external pull up resistors to make sure I don't fry RPi while debugging the rotary dial.
To help with the debugging I wrote a small tester which would light leds if cables get connected. My rotary dial had 4 cables so I quickly tested 6 possible connections making sure to rotate dial with each connection.
The result was that White and Brown cables would be on when dial was rotated and Blue-Yellow pair would be on all the time except when number was passed.
This was promissing developemnt, in theory I could have just started counting HIGH impulses after the rotating pin goes LOW. It turned out that it's not that simple. First of all impulses are triggered both on the way up and on the way down. Ok. So you can just count impulses and then divide them by 2. Right, except aparently some impulses can be triggered before rotating pin going LOW. So what now?
First I've tried counting impulses all the time and then just displaying result when rotating pin goes HIGH again.
That didn't exactly work well, and exprimenting with debouncing did not yield expected results, so I threw out all the debouncing and instead created a counter class which counts all triggers and after half a second since last one prints the timing table. See counter.py @ 2079f98
After reviewing timing tables tehre clearly needs to be some debouncing done. I've started with value of 10ms. Unfortunately it turned out the GPIO library for Raspberry Pi is buggy and doesn't handle debouncing that well + aparently detecting edges does not work correctly either whebn set to FALLING or RISING and only BOTH seems to work. This means I'll have to implement the whole logic on my side just like it was done by original author.
After carefully inspecting the hardware rotor I've also found why sometimes extra pulses were emmited. The flywheel sometimes backed few milimeters causing old connection to disjoint and emit a very short pulse.
Next I spent several hours learnign more python and trying to implement sane debouncing to work around concurency problems in RPi.GPIO module. After I was reasonably sure my code is correct, and I've discovered all the bugs/problems in the RPi.GPIO I started working on a rotary dial again. It turned out that one of the stoppers that should have stopped a flywheel from backing got worn out and after bending it back into shape, I manged to get consistent results with the rotary dial.
It's quite interesting/frustrating how combination of two bugs one in software library and one in hardware itself - both trivial to solve on their own - created a problem that took me several hours to figure out.
At this point I have a working IO library ( Rio :) ), with working and testable debouncing, working counter script, and I'm ready to move forward. The revision is 59ea9f1a60d18da8fe8ce6a17f3f5a125ff85902
This Python-script integrates the old rotary dial and handset on the AS Elektrisk Bureau pulse phone to use SIP.
It uses GPIO on Raspberry Pi to communicate with the rotary dial, and the onboard soundcard for ringtone. An USB-soundcard is used for mic and handset audio.
Some configuration on the Raspberry Pi is needed to make everything work, including installing the dependencies and configuring PulseAudio and ALSA to enable software mixing of sounds.
Linphone (linphonec for console) is also required because it handles the SIP-connection.
There is some code to use Pjsip, but it's not finished.
For more information on the build, see http://imgur.com/a/HECDL/.