hat heavy rotary phone collecting dust in the corner does not have to stay a paperweight now that local landlines are disappearing. Engineer Scott Dailevski built a compact circuit board called Analog Redial that brings an old telephone back to life, turning it into an in-house intercom or a smart home controller without needing a phone company.
The hardware centers around an ESP32-C6 wireless chip paired with an ES8388 audio processor, managing a couple of traditional telephone ports. Once you plug in a wired phone, the board generates a genuine dial tone and makes the physical bell ring again. Beyond making calls between rooms, you can hook the setup into a SIP voice server for outside calls or use it as an answering machine. The entire system configures through a simple web interface, where you can program specific dial codes to trigger smart home actions through Home Assistant. You can even attach an optional Bluetooth module to use the vintage handset as an external speaker and microphone for your modern smartphone.
Scott Dailevski has published all design files on GitHub for anyone who wants to build their own board from scratch. Alternatively, you can order the components pre-assembled from a standard board manufacturing service if you prefer skipping the soldering iron.
What doesn’t add up
A forgotten analog telephone ceases to be mere shelf decor once the custom Analog Redial board steps in as a standalone home intercom. The combination of an ESP32-C6 chip and an ES8388 audio processor links vintage rotary dials straight to Home Assistant automation, yet making it work still demands ordering custom boards or assembling components using open GitHub documentation. A single open-source board with two phone jacks brings vintage hardware back to life.