This musical payphone rings on rainy days

We are not robots operating on pure logic and rationality. We’re emotional animals with moods affected by everything from scents to the weather. Estefannie feels down on dreary days, so she built this musical payphone that calls her with a tune to provide a little emotional boost when there is rain.

If you haven’t heard, payphones are teetering on obsolescence and very few exist in the wild these days. All of the payphones that used to dot city streets are now in landfills, junk yards, recycling centers, and surplus stores. With the help of Laura Kampf, Estefannie acquired one from a big surplus pile somewhere. Her plan was to convert it into a kind of jukebox that plays a song when the caller dials a number.

She achieved that using an Arduino UNO Q to read key presses from the payphone and monitor the hook switch. From there, she loaded a serial-controlled MP3 player with a bunch of different songs. The UNO Q looks at the number the caller dials, then tells the MP3 player to start the associated song. Estefannie also added sounds like the dial tone to make the whole experience feel authentic.

But any one-sided relationship is unfulfilling and Estefannie didn’t want to always be the one calling. So, she also gave the UNO Q the ability to call her when she needs it. To do that, she took advantage of the UNO Q’s single-board computer functionality and programmed it to monitor the weather using the Arduino App Lab. It even displays a related animated graphic on the board’s built-in LED matrix. If the weather is rainy, the UNO Q will activate the ringer through a Black Magic converter.

Now when the weather is bad, the payphone will ring. When Estefannie picks up the handset to answer the call, the UNO Q will play a song to elevate her mood — something cheery, like “Schism” by Tool. 

Watch Estefannie’s Instagram Reel to see it in action!