Playa Phone

562 points - yesterday at 2:52 PM

Source

Comments

aaron42net yesterday at 4:24 PM
This phone is my project. I'm happy to answer questions.
solfox yesterday at 3:41 PM
Our first time out on the playa together, my girlfriend and I stopped by this phone booth and made a couple of calls. And because we stopped, we saw the FSM camp next door, and a giant sign saying "Weddings Here", so we inquired. They offered us free rings and then announced our wedding over a loudspeaker. In 2 minutes we had an entire wedding party, complete with best man, an elder to give away the bride, 25+ guests, and an officiant. My newly-minted best man even gave me one of my favorite playa gifts ever as a wedding gift. We opted not to "make it official", though they offered. It was a truly incredible experience. Thanks FSM!
brinepot today at 5:10 AM
Nokia feature phones were always the ultimate "playa phone." Dropped it a hundred times, still worked.
cjflog yesterday at 6:16 PM
This is a great project! I've been to Burning Man 10x and interactive projects are my favorite part.

Also, if I may, for folks that might appreciate more phone-based spontaneity, I've built an app to revive the social phone call. It works like a bat signal. Light your beacon and it reaches all your friends at once. The first friend to answer connects 1-1 and every other signal quietly drops. Check it out at trybeacon.chat

dalton74 today at 5:06 AM
Lost my main phone to the playa dust once. Now it's always a €20 burner, zero regrets.
hackingonempty yesterday at 3:42 PM
Brad Templeton did this 20 years ago, https://www.templetons.com/pq/build.html
throwayay4929 yesterday at 3:23 PM
Is Burning Man fun? I got the rather cynical impression that it's mostly very well off tech people and even better off finance/political people.

Not trying to be flippant, genuinely curious if my impression is based on reality or am I making things up.

azhenley today at 3:50 AM
I'm not sure why, but my ISP blocked this page and sent a push notification saying, "This device tried to visit a website that may compromise it or contain dangerous content."
dole yesterday at 3:13 PM
Burning man livestream here, still early and setting up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BgytKvsORM

Page says it's on "Chomolungma" but it's "Ceiba" on the maps, just in case you can spot the phone on the stream.

simian1983 yesterday at 10:03 PM
I called. Talked to a perfectly decent guy who was there for the first time. He was there with his wife, but didn’t bring his younger children. Pleasant conversation. And there was a line of people waiting.
NelsonMinar yesterday at 6:22 PM
There's a bunch of neat public payphone art projects out there. A friend of mine runs Futel, which has some fairly elaborate voice menus and several phones installed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futel
numberwan9 today at 2:07 AM
For a moment I thought this would be related to 2600's payphones of the world [1]

1. https://www.2600.com/payphones#0/19/8

kripy yesterday at 7:36 PM
In Australia, Telstra is required to keep the payphone network up and running. You can make free outgoing calls to landlines and mobile phones. And I just read that you can call inbound as well (which I did not know). Now the fun begins.
victor22 today at 2:14 AM
Wish I was on playa right now… thank you for your gift! Hope I’ll be home again soon

)’(

aussieguy1234 today at 4:30 AM
In Australia, all payphones have been made free.

These provide a lifeline to homeless people, domestic violence victims whose phones may be monitored and others in vulnerable situations.

Statistics show a large percentage of calls go to support services such as domestic violence hotlines.

ginkgotree yesterday at 5:09 PM
Brings whole new meaning to "Burner Phone." Nice.
RufusJacksons yesterday at 10:21 PM
I just had a great chat with Michael, who was having a hard time because his girlfriend didn’t come with him to Burning man. Great chat!
doublesocket yesterday at 7:10 PM
I always wanted to build a local mesh network of pay phones on the playa and call it Black Rock Telecom. Maybe 12 or more phones set on plazas. Geographically not being located in the US made this project tricky to realise.
barbs today at 4:05 AM
Just gave it a go, but I'm getting "That number is no longer in service", so there might be power/connectivity issues?
EQVEYWDCHQ yesterday at 3:59 PM
called and got through after three attempts, had a pleasant conversation and it uplifted my mood. thanks!
k7peak yesterday at 5:23 PM
This is great. I have a COCOT myself with an ATA adapter. So so much fun, great job!
isoprophlex yesterday at 3:10 PM
phone rings

    Stoned burner picks up, mumbles "Uhhh, hullo, who dis?" into the horn while eyeing two giant wasp-colored octopi overhead making love 

    "Hello sir and or madameperson. I won't take up much of your time. See, your number was posted to the pre-eminent forum for everything that goes fast and breaks things."

   "Uhhh, yeah whatever man"

   "I'll cut right to it, seeing that you're an important, busy man like myself. I will just take one short minute to talk to you about our lord and saviour, *VC Money*."
tehnoslow yesterday at 6:36 PM
The real-time stats on the website are fascinating. Did you set those up to satisfy your own curiosity, or to give remote callers a sense of "presence" at the playa?
perarneng yesterday at 6:48 PM
0 outgoing, nobody knows numbers anymore and even if you could look it up you won't punch numbers like its 1992.

With that said, amazing project. super cool that people can call in

ElijahLynn yesterday at 5:09 PM
This is a beautiful example of hacking, making something useful!
deleted yesterday at 5:57 PM
deleted yesterday at 3:34 PM
krogenx yesterday at 3:16 PM
Would be fun to read if the calls were recorded and transcribed.
ape4 yesterday at 3:48 PM
I looked but I don't see how it works. How does it get power? I suppose it uses a some single board computer and VOIP.
kodai_tech yesterday at 5:59 PM
The live status dashboard at the bottom is a fantastic touch. Reminds me of the best kind of hacker projects that combine physical retro hardware with modern web telemetry.
non- yesterday at 5:17 PM
Phun and wholesome project. What service do you use for VoIP?
chislobog yesterday at 7:13 PM
No phonebooks there. Just a map. Oper-a-tor?
HardwareLust yesterday at 6:21 PM
Dammit I left my acoustic coupler at home.
deleted yesterday at 3:10 PM
underlipton yesterday at 7:14 PM
What do you even talk about on a phone call like this?

I have both intense social anxiety and FOMO. Knowing that this thing exists for a week and then no more is torture.

teh_infallible yesterday at 5:41 PM
I had an idea like this years ago, only my idea was to put two of these on the playa and have them only call each other. Do you could pick one up, the other would ring, and you could talk to a random person.
kris-memoket today at 2:58 AM
Dude this is a amazing idea...
nandanadileep29 yesterday at 3:46 PM
Would be fun to see how the calls went lol
Our_Benefactors yesterday at 5:48 PM
Fun! Just wished someone a happy burn.
1attice yesterday at 4:25 PM
An old injury, but I'm always devastated to see BRC stuff on HN. It's like watching Elon snap a Nazi salute at inauguration: an unwelcome but undeniable admission that something (or someone) admirable can shift smoothly to moral horror without losing (or perhaps even burnishing) its reputation.

BRC was an artistic rebellion, and now it's where people like me go to network.

I can't take me anywhere.

tobin1994 today at 3:24 AM
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Helldez yesterday at 5:57 PM
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charcircuit yesterday at 5:02 PM
I bet the dataset of who is calling who is pretty valuable. It's people related to others who were willing to drop a bunch of money to go to the desert, so you know they likely have some disposable income. If this operator isn't collecting this, it may be a good business opportunity for a competitor.
readthenotes1 yesterday at 3:24 PM
Did the original founders intend burning Man to be a parody on the trash heap that is 21st century human civilization?
languagehacker yesterday at 3:32 PM
So happy to see that the comments so far are just Burning Man hate. I appreciate SomaFM's impact on my appreciation for electronic music and alternative music streaming services back in the '90s, but outside of that I'm pretty sure it's mostly been a net negative from a cultural standpoint in total.