“This old and unusual dial-less telephone now helps well-being and productivity to co-exist in the home office! Beneath its vintage grille a neopixel ring lights up its 24 LEDs in sequence for an hour, switching to an eye-catching rainbow display when it’s time to take a break. Ignore the rainbow and the LED ring starts flashing red, accompanied by a subtle but un-ignorable beep from the phone’s original buzzer unit.
To cancel the beeping or reset the timer at any time I just need to either press the button on the phone or momentarily lift the handset - both of which force me to get up and walk across the room, then seeing as I’m up anyway I may as well stretch my legs, grab a coffee….you see how it works.
The whole thing is powered by a nice old Raspberry Pi 2, using the phone’s original switches and buzzer alongside the neopixel ring.
It’s powered from a USB hub on my work laptop, and boots up automatically when I start up in the morning, so there’s nothing to do but reset the timer when I take a break.
In case you can’t see the embedded YouTube video it’s at https://youtu.be/tvHFPuEaWAI
Supplies:
- Raspberry Pi 2
- NeoPixel Ring (24 LED in this case)
- 1x White LED for the lamp holder
- Jumper Cables
- Vintage Telephone”