Blue Box

First: If you’re having trouble with this app… be sure to slide the switch on the side of your phone to in-mute it. If your phone (or iPad) is muted, it can’t generate nor decode audio. To the developer: Great UI design. I’m using this in my telephone systems class and it’s great. Thanks for writing such a great app.

If only the author could get the correct tone matrix for the Blue Box. Wikipedia and other sources have the list of tones required. It should be easy to fix.

Unfortunately this app does not work for me. After switching from dial to listen back to dial the output seems to be muted. Need to restart the app to regain output again. Listen mode only picks up noise, but no actual tones. Tried to adjust settings, but it got only worse. Installed a different app to decode tones which worked out of the box.

Idk why this didn’t work at first. Without updating it now works. Sorry for the poor initial review!

I'm really happy and very surprised that this exists. Works very well. Only phone phreaks know what this is really used for, or what it used to be able to be used for.

I've had this app for years now. Working in the telecom industry it has proven highly valuable.

Either it is incomparable with the iPhone 5, or iOS 6, but the decoding feature, which is the only reason I bought it (who needs to listen to dial tones?) is not working. I read all the trouble shooting methods, but it is obviously a version issue. Will be slightly less of a waste of money if they ever update it. Still don't know if its worth 3 bucks just for a decoder, but I needed one for work, and had to have it. What a let down.

Nice additions to Version 3. This is a really nice app and brings back fond memories.

Update is great! I wanted a portable bluebox to use with project MF and I got one great job!

Back in the late 60's and 70's, when AT&T deployed #5 Crossbar switching systems, Blue Boxes were used to emulate the in-band signaling needed to route long distance telephone calls and "surf" the dark unexplored recesses of the long distance telephone network. #5 Crossbar was phased out and replaced with SS7's "out of band" signaling in the late 70's through early 80's rendering the blue box an impotent artifact of ancient history. Nevertheless, the novelty and folklore of the devices continue to persist. I would have liked to have rated this app 5 stars, but had to deduct 2.5 stars because the app name erroneously lead me to expect a DTMF encoder that actually emulated the tone matrix of a true "Blue Box" on the iPhone. When the author includes the correctly tuned matrix in the app I'll update my rating. There's no longer any applicable reasons not to (and haven't been for almost 3 decades). I also had some difficulty with the decoder and subtracted a half point for failing to buffer the touch tone strings detected by the software to work around the frequency detection / number identification issues. Otherwise, the app does everything else it claims, and the ability to adjust pulse and interval lengths was a nice touch. Please fix the frequency encoder and allow the user to switch between Blue Box DTMF and "standard" DTMF.