Upcycled Landline Phones

Developer Natya Vidhan Biswas has transformed a defunct Beetel M59 landline telephone into a functional, modern music control interface, demonstrating the potential of upcycling legacy hardware. By reverse-engineering the device’s keypad matrix, Biswas integrated it with an Espressif ESP32, enabling the phone to operate as an input system for digital music playback.

"I was cleaning. Music was playing, and I kept needing to go back to my laptop to change songs," the developer explains. "And at some point my brain went: what if I could just… press something nearby? Then I looked at the phone again. And yeah. That was it," said Biswas.

The redesigned device allows users to lift the handset to activate the interface and dial specific number sequences linked to songs on Spotify. Additional functionality includes dynamic volume adjustment—lowering playback during input and restoring it once complete—along with a repurposed display that provides real-time feedback on selections.

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