The awesome friends cable

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2006/06/16 @ 4:12 pm
Category General

Formal Play made a simple phone to mic cable – “I have the awesomest friends. (If you think you do you are wrong. Because I do.) And sometimes they leave me the awesomest voicemails and I have been wanting a way to save them. The old method of micing the phone itself never really worked well and I realized that the phone does have an audio out so I made this cable last night so that I could get phone activity directly into a recording device. “ – Link.

BY Phillip Torrone

Editor at large - Make magazine. Creative director - Adafruit Industries, contributing editor - Popular Science. Previously: Founded - Hack-a-Day, how-to editor - Engadget, Director of product development - Fallon Worldwide, Technology Director - Braincraft.

In the Maker Shed

10 Responses to The awesome friends cable

Oracle1729 on June 16th, 2006 at 4:31 pm said:

This is the device you’re looking for: http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/TPX-1/search/TELEPHONE_PICK-UP_.html

If the phone has a handset speaker, this will pick up the audio.

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milleker on June 16th, 2006 at 6:34 pm said:

The old magnetic ‘Suction Cup’ pickup is only really a few steps above actually recording in analog, it usually requires an ‘old timey’ heavy headset and didnt seem to work too well on newer telephones and certainly not cell phones. Still though, a nice tool to have (expecially for two bucks).

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Oracle1729 on June 16th, 2006 at 9:22 pm said:

A few steps above recording in analog???

The project listed here records in analog, as does the pick up coil. That’s a good thing since the signal itself is analog.

The suction cup pickup inductively picks up the signal in the electromagnet that drives the earpiece speaker. Since it’s inductively picked up, there’s no ambient noise or vibration noise added to the signal.

I’ve never tried it on a cell phone, but it’s worked wonderfully on every phone I’ve every tried including some very tiny cordless handsets.

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HGPilot on June 16th, 2006 at 10:10 pm said:

There’s a much easier way. Sign up for the free account at GotVoice.com, set it up with your phone numbers for your home or cell phone voice mail, and you can download voice mail messages as MP3s.
Bonus tip: Some people are going to be uncomfortable about giving this site your voice mail password, but obviously they need it to access your voice mail. What you can do is just tell this site that your password is 1234. When you want to use it, set your password to 1234, download your messages, then set it back to your normal password. It’s tedious, but some people may feel it’s worth the effort. For what it’s worth, I’ve used this site for at least 6 months and they seem trustworthy.

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formalplay on June 17th, 2006 at 12:03 pm said:

the thing that interests me the most about this cable is that it can capture any sounds coming from the phone, more than just voice mail.

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panocamera on June 17th, 2006 at 5:42 pm said:

Wow, this dude just invented Radio Shack Catalog #: 274-397. What’s next from Make? “Cylindrical tube of extruded plastic allows liquids to magically levitate from a glass to your mouth, using only suction.”

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gordonE on June 18th, 2006 at 5:50 am said:

I think you are missing the point. The cable post says “made” not “invented”. This quote is from the comments to some similar responces over on the blog post:

“I’m sure there is something out there that also does this. I am sure that I did not invent this… but what I did do is make something I needed from broken parts that would have otherwise been garbage.”

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panocamera on June 18th, 2006 at 12:13 pm said:

A missed point, yes. I was kidding.

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panocamera on June 18th, 2006 at 12:14 pm said:

A missed point, yes. I was kidding.

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panocamera on June 18th, 2006 at 12:15 pm said:

D’oh.

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