need circuit/details on pickup./pressing buttons in telephone?

Question

Say i have a telephone, i want to automate pressing keys and also pickup the cradle, how do i automate them using a circuit connected to the pc and if i send signals it should pickup the cradle or press buttons, how do i achieve this?

thanks very much! great detail.

http://www.wagonbutterworth.com/projects/xbox_controller/

is it similar to the above, can i get any sample circuits?

Answer 1

Picking up is done with a relay to get isolation the telephone people want. You can buy a chip that will produce the touch tones.
If you are talking about taking a phone and pushing the buttons and lifting the handset, then you need to look at solonoids. There are solonoids that push, but they cost more and are less powerful than pull solonoids. Using pull solonoids to push requires using levers, so you have to build a frame to mount the solonoids to the sides and hold the pivots and aim the ends of the levers at the keys. You then have to take the low level signals from the computer and increase them in power via driver circuits, optical isolation, or relays.
One source of output from a PC is the parallel port. Others are serial and USB adaptors which provide I/O signals.