FIRST COMMENT!!! hehe

second comment!!!!

3rd Comment

anybody see a partern here? :P

You really have no life. Oh, and BTW, nice job destroying your $100 calculator. Drop the soldering iron? What a shame.


Anyway, the phone line idea is interesting, albeit not that practical. I think the time would be better spent creating a power adaptor to plug into the wall.

KnightRT

At the beginning of war in Bosnia in 1992., we had telephone, but not electric power and batteries. We were under siege.

The radio is the most important item in war, because the informations given from radio can save your life.
Some people got to idea to power radio from telephone current. But:

1) When your telephone rings, voltage jumps to 60V, and that destroyed the radio aparates!

2) Even in war conditions, state PTT (mail and telecom) does not allow to connect to telephone lines any uncertified devices, and as consequence they can switch off your telephone line. In normal conditions I think that PTT organisations are even more strict! Additionaly, signals differ in many countries.

3) I hope that no one will have war near your house as I had, so, where you can find telephone, in almost 100% cases you can find electrical cord. According to informations I have, calculator itself has too weak current that in can not be registered in consumed energy counter. I think that classic power transformer will be more useful!

I didn't know that the power jumped when we get phone calls, but now that I think about it, it is pretty obvious. It probably spikes so the phone has enough power to ring and to enhance the signal so yuo get more realistic sounds. If Luigi wants to make a cord that uses the telephone line power...he's gonna need something a lot like a shock protector for your computer/tv/other devices. This would protect your calculator, but every tmie you got a call, this device would blow the fuse, turning off your calculator. Then you would have to reset this device every time, which would get annoying. And if it didn't work right, there goes a 100 dollar calculator. This Idea, I beleive, is interesting, but not that practical. If you want to try this, go ahead..but beware and careful.

When you use this device the phone is BUSY so no phone calls can get through. Its like leaving your phone off the hook for a long time.. The only thing I caution is when you first set up the device to be carful with the voltage.

When you use this device the PHONE IS BUSY. Its like leaving the phone off the hook for a long time. No one can get through to you.

Actually, using this shouldn't couse your phone line to be busy, because it wouldn't draw enough current. And using this would be possible if the right circutry were involved. Like if you used an adjustable voltage regulator, and set it up for the correct voltage. These will out put the specified voltage no matter what the input voltage is. However even more circutry may be needed due to the large jump in voltage caused by the phone ringing. This may be too much for the voltage regulator to handle.

The idea for an outlet powered adaptor may work, however. And due to the low power requirements of the calcs only a small transformer, and a little circuitry (using the adjustable voltage regulator) would be neccesary.

|-------|
+------+--+ LM317 +--+-----+---> +
T1 | | |---+---| | |
>------) || (-----+ C1 | R2 |
) || ( | / \ | +------+ | Out to
AC line ) || ( ++D1 +-+ | C2 Calc
) || ( \ / | R1 |
>------) || (-----+ | | |
+------+------------+---> -

T1 = small transformer (around 6 volts)
D1 = bridge rectifier
LM317 = adjustable voltage regulator
R1/R2 = used to set output voltage
C1/C2 = filter capacators (removes noise)

all parts should be available at radio shack. This is a very simple circuit. We would need to find a way to connect it to the calc, but that shouldn't be hard.

contact me if you have any questions.

I guess that schematic didn't turn out right. Sorry.

There. You'll have to ignore the "."'s but at least this will give you an idea.


..................+-------+
.........x------x-x LM317 x--x----x-->
......T1.|......|.+---x---+..|....| -
>----)|(----x...C1....|......R2...|
.....)|(.| / \..|.....x------x....| Out
AC...)|(.xxD1 x-x.....|...........C2
.....)|(...\ /..|.....R1..........|
>----)|(----x...|.....|...........| +
................x-----+-----------+-->

I guess that doesn't work either.

Oh, well.

Try writing the thing in the same font as proportional fonts are viewed in for your browser.

moron!

you can get a few mA at best from the phone line with out the phone company comming over to your house! they'll think one of your phones is malfuntioning because it's sucking up all the jucice.

stupid stupid stupid

Hey, easy on the flames there.
Actually, it probably would equate the phone with being off the hook. If your calculator requires 4 AAA batteries to run, whereas how much power does a phone really need to run when it's not ringing? They seem about the same to me.
So this circumvents the ringing of the phone blowing up the calc problem, because it would just send whoever called a busy signal and leave you alone.
Now the other problem depends entirely on your phone company. They might notice that you are not placing calls but that your phone is always off the hook but you're never calling, and be suspicious, or not. It really depends on the level of automation in their record-keeping/billing and the quality of management thereof.
But we're hackers, right? Social Engineering! Problem solve! I know this is from a mostly dead era and I'm talking to a largely non-hacking crowd here, but it couldn't hurt to do some good old fashioned garbage scouting. For my case, there are other things I'd like to learn about my phone company's internals as well, so I could kill a few birds with one stone here. (although I don't really care about having a cord for my calc so that portion is moot)
Actually, now that I think of it if you could find a way to drain excess power so that your calc matched more closely the typical phone, the company would have no real reason to investigate because people frequently put their phones off the hook to avoid incoming calls, like during sex. Or at least that's how it goes in the movies. :}

Wouldn't this be like stealing power from the phone company? (Sorry if that's a stupid question)

ya, I would think it would be.
-----------------------------simpsons rock

I agree. I don't think it's actually legal in the USA. You can be prosecuted for theft of electricity. The current draw could also lower the volume on the line. It's a whole lot simpler to use batteries or wall current. Where would this acually be useful? Certaintly not in school.

Yeah. What would the teacher think if u said:
"Can I rip the phone out of the wall so I can add 2+2?"
Not practical in school at all.

<jest> My teachers don't mind when I rip the phone out of the wall. In fact, they usually expect it. They might be less edgy, though, if I gave some justification for doing it. "This time I'm ripping the phone off the wall so I can play Boulderdash, Mr. Gray."</jest>

Really, I think it is much better to actually use batteries *gasp* than hook it up to the wall. It keeps your portable calculator, well, portable.