Here is a handy little hack in case of an emergency and you desperately need power to charge your cell phone or even power a small LED when the power goes out. Let’s face it Eskom’s power problems is not going to go away anytime soon so we have to come up with clever ways to harness power when we need it most and in this blog post I want to talk about getting power from your Telkom phone line! Yes that’s right your phone line carry’s a DC voltage that can be harnessed with the help of a few resistors, regulators and diodes. There are tons of examples on the net where users have demonstrated how they have extracted power from their phone lines but here are two notable ones and please don’t forget safety first! Note: Attempt at your own Risk! Please take the time to read our terms of use.

Here is a video by DIY Hacks and How Tos using a telephone line and a USB cable to charge a cellphone. Click here to view the whole build process.

Here is a another video by Kipkay over on instructables shows us how he used a phone line to power and LED torch. You can view the entire build steps by clicking here.