News This old phone reads poetry to you using a Raspberry Pi Zero

[Admin]

Maker and developer Rootkid is using a Raspberry Pi Zero to power an old phone, giving it the ability to read poems to you when you lift the receiver.

This old phone reads poetry to you using a Raspberry Pi Zero : Read more

 

[8086]

This is nothing new. Circa 2005-08, sparkfun electronics offered a kit or a ready to use converted rotary phone for sale.
https://gizmodo.com/sparkfun-portable-rotary-cellular-phone-103361

US vendor ships mobile-ready hotline rotary phone

Perfect companion for the Nuclear War USB hub?

www.theregister.com

 

[klatte42]

This is nothing new. Circa 2005-08, sparkfun electronics offered a kit or a ready to use converted rotary phone for sale.
https://gizmodo.com/sparkfun-portable-rotary-cellular-phone-103361

US vendor ships mobile-ready hotline rotary phone

Perfect companion for the Nuclear War USB hub?

www.theregister.com

Putting together an online poetry database, using AI to edit out non-poetry, and doing the audio filter to make it sound right as an old phone it’s pretty different from just making a handset into a cell phone handset. This is sublime; the other is neat.

You have the poets themselves reading you their poems over what sounds like an old landline. No artificial voices, just accurate encoding.

 

[abufrejoval]

Putting together an online poetry database, using AI to edit out non-poetry, and doing the audio filter to make it sound right as an old phone it’s pretty different from just making a handset into a cell phone handset. This is sublime; the other is neat.

You have the poets themselves reading you their poems over what sounds like an old landline. No artificial voices, just accurate encoding.

I was reay do dismiss this as yet another silly Raspy project, too.

But this one caught a heartstring.

As my mother becomes physically ever more frail and can't easily go to places any more, she's quite often reduced to send a message for family events from birthdays to funerals.

They have been verses for decades, but her very lively physical presence tended to push them into the background. Now they are what we see and enjoy most of her.

Many of her talents didn't pass onto me in their active form. Her abiltiy to create beauty in nearly every imaginable form has become a mere appreciation for beauty in language in my case, poetry is well beyond me.

But it seems to have found its way into my daughter, who can push out verses with seemingly little effort, even during school exams.

That's a generation I felt lost to literature of any kind, but the beauty of the spoken word can touch their soul and inspire them to aspire, too. Song and tale have formed humanity long before they got written down.

I can just imagine kids on a visit to an elder relative playing around with such a device with that typical mixture of boredom and curiosity ...getting enthralled by a totally unexpected performance.

This project as a stroke of genius, I'd call it art. Thanks Ash!