
Phonos – A Wall Mount Phone retrofitted with a C.H.I.P. to Voice Control your Smart Home.
Hardware hacker jezra has two rad C.H.I.P. projects primed for a weekend build: a Bluetooth toaster and a wall mount rotary phone for smart home voice commands.
Hacking hardware with C.H.I.P. is a favorite Next Thing Co. past time, from C.H.I.P.py Ruxpin to the Alex ‘n Say to pretty much anything PocketC.H.I.P. There was a collective woooweee passing through the NTC office when we came across forum user jezra‘s recent C.H.I.P. projects: a voice control input system housed in a wall mount rotary phone and a Bluetooth speaker disguised as an antique toaster. While they may seem like surprising choices for a hack, we can’t find any fault with his reasoning.
“All devices eventually speak, and they always say the same thing. Sometimes their words are a deafening roar, and sometimes they whisper ever so softly, but their message never changes. Take me apart! Who am I to ignore such a plea? :)” Well said indeed, jezra.
Phonos: The Smart Home Rotary Phone

Hey! You could put a C.H.I.P. in there!
Rotary phones must speak to hardware hackers in a deafening roar. Like Dial-a-Grue earlier this year, Phonos packs a C.H.I.P. with the Blather voice recognition software into a wall-mount phone. Resurrecting the phone into second life required soldering wires to the cradle set and rewiring the handset with a new speaker and puppy-chewed microphone.

The entire Phonos process is given a great two-part write up on jezra‘s blog (Part 1 – Part 2). For those interested in getting meta, hear jezra’s own words on this Hacker Public Radio piece about Phonos recorded on Phonos.
Life Beyond Toast: A Bluetooth Toaster Story

Antique Toaster, complete with mood lighting
When an antique toaster came into his life, there was only one course of action: transform it into an audio playing web accessible thing. On his blog, jezra gives an entertaining run-down on the process (complete with code!) to empower the appliance to be a Bluetooth speaker, a web accessible text to speech device and a Muttonchip audio player.

Hey! There’s a C.H.I.P. in the Toaster!

If you have a C.H.I.P. project, we want to see and share it! Snap some pictures, record some video and tweet your projects to @nextthingco, post in the NTC forums, or write them up at Hackster.io!
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