Ruggedized Rainbow Box

Technology
Ruggedized Rainbow Box

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Nick Poole, a technologist for SparkFun Electronics, built this beautiful Arduino-powered rainbow box:

Recently, I had the opportunity to see Phil Lapsley talk about his book “Exploding the Phone,” a history of phone phreaking. When I found out that he was coming to give the talk, I was reminded of a project that I had been wanting to undertake for some time now but had never gotten around to. In an afternoon, I turned an Arduino, a keypad and a buzzer into a “rainbow box,” which emulates five different phone phreaking tone generators. I gave it a little bit of retro appeal as well with a heavy aluminum enclosure, lots of masking tape and some 2600 Magazine stickers that I printed on the xerox.

I got to see a real BlueBox from the 70s, which Phil brought with him. It was awesome. A true hack.

6 thoughts on “Ruggedized Rainbow Box

  1. Erik Kringen says:

    I had no idea phone phreaking until now. This lead me to the definition of phreaking on Wikipedia and how the magic 2600 hz frequency was discovered. Very interesting.

  2. Margot Paez says:

    I remember reading through the Jolly Roger’s cookbook when I was in middle school and dreaming of building all these different boxes. This makes me really nostalgic.

  3. SquareOne says:

    This is a Chameleon Box, not a Rainbow Box

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My interests include writing, electronics, RPGs, scifi, hackers & hackerspaces, 3D printing, building sets & toys. @johnbaichtal nerdage.net

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