Hello all!
Dan's the name. I am new to the PLA forums but have followed the prank call rotations for quite some time, and have also held an interest in modifying/hacking electronics for for totally new purposes. Many apologies if I have posted in the wrong forum...
I recently was struck with the idea that soundboard prank calls could, in fact, be made just as easily and perhaps with better call quality from a payphone than from a computer-based VOIP service (Skype). This coupled with the fact that Skype is, in fact, traceable, has motivated me to begin designing a portable unit that can attach to any payphone receiver and allow audio from an external source to be fed through the mouthpiece.
From what I have gathered, the hollow, black plastic payphone receivers are fairly standard, usually having a mouthpiece/earpiece than can screw off to allow installation of new audio elements. I have an old rotary phone which I bought than I think has a receiver quite similar to these (I will post some photos as soon as I can). After removing the mouthpiece cover and mic element you will see two metal tabs that connect to two different portions of the mic element. My idea was that a new mouthpiece cover could be designed that would fit to any payphone inconspicuously and allow an external, hi-output audio source to be fed in, such as a BlackBerry or portable, handheld sampler. Modifying the mouthpiece may be as simple a matter as drilling a few tiny holes and placing new contacts.
I am fairly confident that this would work in itself, though finding something to play Flash soundboards in the palm of one's hand may be more of a problem. What I have thought of was a small microcontroller that could store WAV files from a memory card (modified MiniDisk player?) and play them back with a series of buttons, perhaps 30 or so. Any suggestions? Any ideas/critiques/thoughts will be greatly appreciated!
Dan
