Nate Strech has found a way to interface Cisco IP phones and Arduino boards running Ethernet web servers which allows you to control an Arduino right from the menu in the phone. Although the demonstration is simple, it opens up a whole new world of possibilities with regards to controlling remote devices from your office telephone. Watch the following video for explanation and demonstrations:
Kudos to Nate for such a useful project. For more information and code, visit the project page here. And we're on twitter, so follow us for news and product updates as well.
You may have noticed that Nate was using separate Arduino boards for his server, which is cumbersome unwieldy. Instead, you should use the Freetronics EtherTen. Apart from being fully Arduino Uno-compatible, it has onboard Ethernet, microSD socket and supports optional Power-over-Ethernet - which (if available) could make powering the entire project possible over the existing network infrastructure:
