Convert your old phone into a remote switch

Details

Ever wondered what to do with your old basic phones? The advent of a smartphone in last decade made all the basic phones obsolete. Even though they had good battery life and decent look they are less when compared to big smartphones which have big screens and lots of features. Even I had lots of these phones lying around. I did this project long back i.e 5 years back when I was in 11th grade. Here I did slight advancement when I saw this old project. In this instructable, I'll use an old basic phone as a remote switch which can be turned on and off from practically anywhere in the world. ( P.S: Where there is cellphone network) In India, the power supply is not 24x7 in many rural areas. Farmers in the rural area have to supply water to their fields consistently otherwise there might be the loss of crops due to water shortage. The fields are situated far away from their houses. Therefore this project aims to provide a solution for switching pump set remotely to help farmers. But this can be used to switch anything.

Files

Distant_Switch.ino

ino - 1.05 kB - 07/11/2018 at 18:57

Download

Components

1 × Arduino Nano

1 × LCD 16x2 (Optional)

1 × Relay module

1 × Old mobile phone

1 × Soldering Iron

Project Logs

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Just another old analog mechanism

Vishwas Navada B • 08/27/2018 at 13:58 • 0 comments

I had this old mechanism used to actuate the switch by the motion of motor i.e rack and pinion mechanism.

Testing of the setup

Vishwas Navada B • 08/27/2018 at 13:52 • 0 comments

Call the phone and test it by reading the voltage of vibration motors

Connect everything

Vishwas Navada B • 08/27/2018 at 13:48 • 0 comments

Solder everything on pref board.

Identify the point

Vishwas Navada B • 08/27/2018 at 13:45 • 0 comments

Identify the point where you need to connect the points i.e the vibration motor.

Dismantle the phone

Vishwas Navada B • 08/27/2018 at 13:40 • 0 comments

Here I dismantled my old phone. Please follow the video.

Build Instructions

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Step 1 : Gather everything let's get our hands dirty...!!!

Gather all required parts.
Now you need to disassemble your old phone so that you will have access to the vibration motor connections. I have attached a video of disassembly of Nokia 3310. But the procedure will be same for almost all basic phones.Open one by one till you reach the main PCB. There you can see a vibration motor inside.
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Step 2: Disassembly done

Vibration motor: It is used to provide haptic feedback to the user when a message or call comes. In vibration motors, there are two types,

1. Coreless motor with an unbalanced weight on the shaft. This results in change in moment of inertia resulting in wobbling and hence the vibration.
2. Coin cell type vibration motor which is sealed.

We have to find the connection points of vibration motors.
And solder these points with 2 wires for extending it. Pretty much every basic phone has a vibration motor either of two types.
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Step 3: Connect everything

Connect these wires to one of the GPIOs of Arduino. Here I'm using pin number A0. And negative pin to ground. LCD connections are as usual.
Relay module signal pin to pin number 4 and VCC, GND to Arduino's VCC and GND. You can use jumper wires for the connection here I have made a perf board circuit by soldering all components.