microcontrollers

[spacebug]

There's a little interactive art project I want to make- I want to take an existing phone, and have each of the number keys trigger a sample (or mp3, or whatever, quality isn't super important) through the receiver's speaker. If possible, I think it'd also be fun to put a proximity sensor on the ringer so that it rings when someone approaches it. I know this should be do-able with a microcontroller, but I have no experience with them and very little programming experience (though I'm working my way through MAX/MSP, which, while not a true programming language, can communicate with ardunios.)

Any advice or online resources from you Makers?

Comments

[buckminster.livejournal.com]

PS. Gut an old 1970's phone, you should have enough room inside. I'm assuming you want this to be portable with no wires running to hidden electronics...

Although if you can have a wire going back to a laptop....
Hook a shift register up to the buttions of the phone and use that to send serial info back to a laptop running max/msp. Then MAX/MSP sends sound back to the receiver. You'll probably want to use an ethernet cord so that you have enough wires.

Oh, and for the motion sensor- these $8 gizmos are great for answering the question "has anything moved in the last few seconds", which should be enought for this project http://parallax.com/Store/Sensors/ObjectDetection/tabid/176/CategoryID/51/List/0/Level/a/ProductID/83/Default.aspx