Summary
- Cheap vintage rotary phones make great shells for DIY projects – easy to find at flea markets or online.
- Drop a Raspberry Pi and USB sound card inside to turn it into a voice AI using Google Gemini 3.8 Live.
- Pick up the receiver and dial 1/2/3 for German, English, or Turkish – works with other rotary phones.
If you’re a tinkerer and have never gotten into modifying retro hardware, you should give it a try. There are plenty of units out there selling for very cheap because nobody has a use for them, and they can act as the perfect shell for your next project. If you need some inspiration, someone scored a vintage rotary phone at a market and got to work turning it into an AI-powered assistant.
This rotary phone got a new life as a Google Gemini assistant
It has a dial tone and everything
Credit: Ramazan Eren Arslan
Over on Hackster.io, Ramazan Eren Arslan managed to get their hands on a Deutsche Bundespost FeTAp 791, a German rotary phone. The cool thing about these projects is that getting the phone itself is pretty cheap; Arslan says he got his off a flea market, but notes you can probably score one for even cheaper if you look hard enough online.
Arslan pried the phone open and stuck a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B in there, alongside a USB sound card. When you pick up the receiver, you can dial 1 for German, 2 for English, or 3 for Turkish. Whichever number you pick, you’ll be directed to Google Gemini 3.8 Live, which will answer your burning questions. It’s sort of like those advice hotlines from back in the day, but without the really high calling rates.
Arslan says that this project should work on other rotary phones, so if you have one sitting around (or you’ve spotted one for cheap in a nearby second-hand store), head over to the Vintage Phone AI Assistant Hackster page and give it a try.
Related
Take ChatGPT retro with a Raspberry Pi-powered rotary phone hotline
If you want a retro way to talk to ChatGPT, this project harnesses the power of Pi to turn a rotary phone into a ChatGPT hotline