Cup Phone

Inspiration

As a child you might have tried a string between two cups or cans so that you could talk with a friend on the other end. Taking this idea of a "cup phone" we have made a cup with cellular capabilities, that you can now call your friends from.

How we built it

Using an Arduino Feather Fona's cellular enabled capabilities, OLED display, and flexible keypad we created our phone. This was mounted to the side and inside of a plastic cup, along with a microphone and speaker. One can simply select dial on the menu display and type in the number they wish to call.

Challenges we ran into

The largest problem we ran into is getting cellular reception inside the Student Union here a Embry-Riddle, as the we are on a T-Mobile 2G line. Without this it was nearly impossible to test any functionality without exiting the building and walking around until we connected to a tower. In addition we ran into problems constructing the menu tree and getting the phone number to enter on the proper layer, and we are still troubleshooting this as I am writing this.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The main accomplishment is that we were able to make calls from the cup, even if we had to start the calls from the computer rather than the keyboard. The ability to scroll thru the menu was also quite rewarding as neither of us on the team had any experience creating a menu tree.

What we learned

We now know how to make an operational menu display that we can scroll through, as well as how to tie a keyboard to a function that will call the entered number. In general we now have an improved understanding of Arduino functions and function calls, as well as syntax as one of our team members was not well versed in C.

What's next for Cup Phone

Next we will strive to make the calling process more fluid and bug free, through more thorough error checking in our code and possibly a better cell provider. We also hope to upgrade to a better cup other than a thin plastic one obtained from the ERAU Housing Department, possibly being a tumbler where we could store the electronics in the space between inner and outer layers.

Built With

• arduino
• feather-fona