My pet project right now is a little box to connect between my AT&T princess phone and it's handset, and will add features such as a mute switch, volume control, and maybe some kind of speaker/headphone connection. I need most of these since I mainly use the phone for customer service/ emergency calling, since it's the only phone in the house that doesn't need external power.

I'm planning on using a 2-port leviton surface mount box I have lying around with two 6p6c (rj11) jacks inserted for a project box (the handset cord is 4p4c, but it should insert fine). The mute switch should be simple enough to install, since the microphone and speaker each seem to have their own wires. I'm just starting out with this stuff, so any help with that or any other thing would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance

Oh, and I'll think of a better name later...

 

I'm not sure any of this is a good idea. You would most likely make the phone less reliable this way. If someone wanted to use the phone in an emergency, perhaps in the dark during a house fire, would they thank you for installing a mute switch?

 

Fair point, and I'll take that into consideration. But the phone is on my desk, in my room, and quite away from the door; that, and I'm the only one that ever uses it; so I don't think it will be a problem. And by "emergency use" I more mean dealing with the power company/telco/etc when things aren't working. For real emergencies we'd probably use our cellphones. In light of this comment I will however see if I can find a good place for my other basic phone that's not connected right now. Thank you for your thoughts.

 

In a real emergency, the cell phones will not work. Commercial power is out, has been out for 10 days, no estimate of up time. Cell tower batteries are running down, and heavy cloud cover hampers the solar rechargers. Ask the people who survived Katrina in New Orleans.

 

The phone office(which supplies the power to unpowered phones during power outages), runs on generators/batteries too.

So in your ten day scenario, the idea of having a working phone that isn't cellular is not well thought out. It will all go out without widespread restoration of power.

 

Well for one, I live in the CT, so I'll let you know next time a hurricane leaves the entire area devastated for 10+ days. But that really doesn't matter, because the lifespan of the batteries on the cell towers is still a heck of a lot better than the lifespan of the nonexistent backup battery on my modem which supplies my home phone. One of the worst storms we ever had was a big windstorm last Feb/March, and while there where some people without power for a week, we got ours back in about a day. Even then we had to wait another day or two for the cable co to get its systems back on; the cell towers, however, never went out.