The "Phonome" control box, showing the holes drilled in the side for the speaker and also the electret microphone glued in position.

I’m sure there have been many times when you have been away from home – perhaps on holidays – and wondered if you’ve forgotten to turn something on or off.

Or perhaps you would have liked to monitor the alarm system or feed the goldfish or wondered if the dog is barking. Maybe the next-door-neighbour has called your mobile to say there are noises coming from your home. You’d love to be able to "listen in" to home before calling the Police.

With the Phonome you can do all this and much more.

The Phonome (phone home, geddit?) is a PIC-microcontroller-based unit that sits alongside your hands-free tele-
phone or speaker-phone.

It listens for a ring from the telephone and when that ring is detected, it operates a solenoid that presses the speaker button on the telephone to answer the call. The Phonome then listens for a DTMF password from the speaker.

If it gets that password, it maintains the call, allowing you to control things by pressing keys on your telephone, or simply to listen in via the speaker-phone. When you are finished, you enter a command that operates the solenoid again releasing the call.

What things can you control? That’s entirely up to you. We simply provide a couple of relay outputs and some opto-isolated signal inputs for you to do or control anything you wish.