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Archive for the ‘cellphone’ Category

We live in a connected world, but that world ends not far beyond the outermost cell phone tower. [John Grant] wants to be connected everywhere, even in regions where no mobile network is available, so he is building a solar powered, handheld satellite messenger: The MyComm – his entry for the Hackaday Prize.

The MyComm is a handheld touch-screen device, much like a smartphone, that connects to the Iridium satellite network to send and receive text messages. At the heart of his build, [John] uses a RockBLOCK Mk2 Iridium SatComm Module hooked up to a Teensy 3.1. The firmware is built upon a FreeRTOS port for proper task management. [John] crafted an intuitive GUI that includes an on-screen keyboard to write, send and receive messages. A micro SD card stores all messages and contact list entries. Eventually, the system will be equipped with a solar cell, charging regulator and LiPo battery for worldwide, unconditional connectivity.

2016 will be an interesting year for the Iridium network since the first satellites for the improved (and backward-compatible) “Iridium NEXT” network are expected to launch soon. At times the 66 Iridium satellites currently covering the entire globe were considered a $5B heap of space junk due to deficiencies in reliability and security. Yet, it’s still there, with maker-friendly modems being available at $250 and pay-per-use rates of about 7 ct/kB (free downstream for SDR-Hackers). Enjoy the video of [John] explaining the MyComm user interface:

The HackadayPrize2016 is Sponsored by:

Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Cellphone Hacks, The Hackaday Prize

RePhone Kit CreateToday SeeedStudio launched an intriguing new Kickstarter project, the RePhone. Reminiscent of Google's Project Ara, the RePhone is a modular phone built from open source components.

Read more on MAKE

The post A First Look at the RePhone, a Modular Cellphone You Build Yourself appeared first on Make: DIY Projects, How-Tos, Electronics, Crafts and Ideas for Makers.

Nov
19

The Light Blue Bean Goes Mobile

arduino, bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, cellphone, IDE, iOS, mobile, Release Commenti disabilitati su The Light Blue Bean Goes Mobile 

The iOS Bean Loader with the Light Blue BeanToday the Light Blue Bean just because the first Arduino compatible board to allow you to write, compile, and then upload a sketch directly from your iPad.

Read more on MAKE

 

Hanging out at one side of the Atmel booth at Maker Faire was [Pamungkas Sumasta] who was showing off his Arduino cellphone called Phoenard. We really like the form-factor but its hackability is where it really shines. [Sumasta] showed off the menu system which is quite snappy and makes it simple for you to add your own applications. Software isn’t the only thing you can customize, as there’s a connector at the bottom of the phone. He showed off a breadboard attachment which was hosting LEDs of various colors. Their intensity can be altered using a simple slider app on the touchscreen. But there’s more power if want it. Also on exhibit was a self-balancing robot body which has a connector at the top for the phone.

[Sumasta] won the Atmel Hero contest and we assume that’s how he made it all the way to San Francisco from The Netherlands for Maker Faire. You can learn a few more technical details about Phoenard on the Facebook page.


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Cellphone Hacks, Featured
Ott
11

Arduino Yún as a possible Mesh Extender Platform

cellphone, serval, Yun Commenti disabilitati su Arduino Yún as a possible Mesh Extender Platform 

Serval Project Yun

It’s great to have Paul Gardner-Stephen as the guest blogger of today after he spent some days in experimenting with Arduino Yún . He’s based in Australia and the founder of Serval Project, making tools to let people communicate without carriers by enabling smart-phones to talk directly to one another to form Wi-Fi mesh networks and “Mesh Extenders”, allowing a single unit to cover hundreds of homes, even in urban areas. We like their motto:

“Communications should not just be for the geographically and financially fortunate — communication should be freely available to everyone”

————————————-

Regular readers of my blog will know that we have been looking at a variety of hardware options for the Serval Mesh Extender.

The Serval Mesh Extender is a device that combines ad-hoc WiFi meshing with long-range license-free UHF packet radio to allow the easy formation of mesh networks spanning useful distances. Typically the UHF packet radio has a range about ten times greater than WiFi. This means that in ordinary suburban and urban areas we get a range of a block or two, and in open rural areas the range can be in the kilometres.

We run our award winning Serval Mesh software over the top, providing an easy to use communications system that lets you use your cell phone without cellular coverage, for example, during a disaster, or when you and your friends are near one another outside of the range of your native network. For example, if you are at an international gathering and don’t want to pay $4 a minute for the privilege of calling someone a few hundred metres away.

The challenge with the Mesh Extender design is that we haven’t had the budget to design our own device from the ground up. As a result we have been using existing hardware platforms, and trying to adapt them to accept the excellent RFD900 UHF packet radios we source from RFDesign (their link margin is probably about 10dB better than competing radios that we are aware of).

This means that we have been doing things like modifying TP-LINK MR3020 wireless routers to build prototypes. While it works, the process is far from satisfactory, and the physical steps take a couple of hours per unit, which makes the effective unit price very high, despite the low cost of the MR3020 unit itself.

This is where the Arduino Yún  is very exciting for us. It has all of the functionality of the MR3020 in the form of the mesh-friendly Atheros processor and WiFi system-on-a-chip running Linux, and of course being an Arduino it has plenty of connectivity options for us to connect to the RFD900, which just uses RS232 serial. As an added bonus the Yun has a microsd slot, so we don’t need to use a USB memory stick for mass storage, which actually makes a noticable impact on power consumption. The larger flash on the Yún is also welcome, as the 4MB flash on the MR3020 is, frankly, a pain to work with.

While we are still working on the integration, the prospect is there for the Yún to save us a lot of time, and hence cost, in making future prototypes, and the Yun board itself could be the basis for a customised PCB that exactly meets our needs, and allows us to just plug the radio module directly onto the PCB. In the picture above you can see the Yún connected to an RFD900 radio ready for integration testing.

In short, the Yún is opening a new opportunity for us to innovate faster, more affordably, and with a better result.

—–

Read other posts about Arduino Yún

Ago
12

Open-source, do-it-yourself cellphone (built with Arduino)

arduino, cellphone, diy, gsm, mobile Commenti disabilitati su Open-source, do-it-yourself cellphone (built with Arduino) 

9162546574_282ef18bcc_z

David A. Mellis writes:

For a little over a year, I’ve been working on an open-source, DIY cellphone as part of my PhD research at the MIT Media Lab. The current version of the phone is based on the Arduino GSM shield and Arduino GSM library. It sports a deliberately low-resolution screen (8 characters, each a 5×7 matrix of LEDs), a laser-cut wooden enclosure, flexure (living hinge) buttons, and a ~1000-line Arduino program that powers the user interface. The phone can make and receive phone calls and text messages, includes a phone book and caller id, and keeps the time. Everything you’d expect from a 20-year old Nokia! (Except snake.) I’ve been using various iterations of the project as my primary cellphone for the past six months or so.

[via]

Open-source, do-it-yourself cellphone (built with Arduino) - [Link]

Ago
12

My open-source, do-it-yourself cellphone (built with Arduino).

cellphone, CNC, Eagle, gsm, laser cutter, matrix, wireless, wood, Workshops Commenti disabilitati su My open-source, do-it-yourself cellphone (built with Arduino). 

DIY cellphone (in hand)

For a little over a year, I’ve been working on an open-source, DIY cellphone as part of my PhD research at the MIT Media Lab. The current version of the phone is based on the Arduino GSM shield and Arduino GSM library. It sports a deliberately low-resolution screen (8 characters, each a 5×7 matrix of LEDs), a laser-cut wooden enclosure, flexure (living hinge) buttons, and a ~1000-line Arduino program that powers the user interface. The phone can make and receive phone calls and text messages, includes a phone book and caller id, and keeps the time. Everything you’d expect from a 20-year old Nokia! (Except snake.) I’ve been using various iterations of the project as my primary cellphone for the past six months or so.

DIY Cellphone (LED matrix variant)DIY Cellphone (LED matrix variant)

The phone is open-source and the design files are available on GitHub (hardware, software). Assembly instructions are on my website, although I wouldn’t recommend making your own unless you have experience with soldering surface mount components.

Second DIY cellphone workshop

Of course, it’s not just me that’s been building these phones. I’ve run two workshops in which other people have made them for themselves. A few people have been building them on their own, including someone who posted his result on Twitter.

Ben Peters' Phone.Dena's purpleheart phoneNadya and Jeff making cellphones

Here you can see some the variations on the enclosure that my friends have made. On the left is a 3d-printed case by Ben Peters, the middle is a CNC-milled purpleheart wood case by Dena Molnar, and on the right is a hand-cut cardboard case by Jeffrey Warren.

DIY Cellphone Prototypes

The phone has undergone numerous revisions as I’ve tried to get it into a robust, useable form. Here you can see some of those variations. I started with an LCD screen like those found on old Nokia phones, but it would break after a month or so in my pocket, so I switched to the more-robust LED matrix. The enclosure has had a few tweaks as well, primarily to find a good design for the flexure buttons.

DIY Cellphone (LED matrix variant)

Overall, I’m pretty happy with the current incarnation. It seems to be relatively robust, simple enough to assemble by hand, and functional enough to use everyday (although a long way from a smart phone). That’s my DIY cellphone.

Lug
21

Arduino cellphone

arduino hacks, cellphone, Cellphone Hacks, GPRS, shield, TFT Commenti disabilitati su Arduino cellphone 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The fact that you can build a cellphone around an Arduino is pretty neat. But we’re drawn to this project more as a testament to the advancement of hobby electronics. An [Average Joe] can build this thing with a minimum or background knowledge and without breaking the bank. Wow.

Of course this isn’t the first DIY cellphone we’ve come across. One of our favorites is this one which resides on a home etched PCB. There was even another Arduino offering with similar components back in September. But the one seen above really pulls it all together into a package that is usable for everyday life. The components include and Arduino Uno, GPRS shield from Seeed Studios, a TFT touch screen, Lithium battery and charging circuit, and a few other bobbles. All of it is mounted inside of a 3D printed case.

A simple phone calls for a simple UI and that’s included as well. The main menu has two buttons, one for placing a call, the other for sending a text. From there you get the virtual keypad seen above for typing out the phone number or composing a message.

[Thanks Victorzie]


Filed under: Arduino Hacks, Cellphone Hacks
Feb
26

Critter cam hacked from an old cellphone.

arduino hacks, camera, cellphone, pictures, touchscreen, wildlife Commenti disabilitati su Critter cam hacked from an old cellphone. 

critter-cam-hacked-from-old-cellphone

[Art Barrios] kept having night-time visitors who were raiding his dog’s food storage bin. It’s a plastic tub with a lid that latches but the critters were knocking it over and popping that lid off. He wanted to find out which animal was the culprit so he hacked together an automatic camera system using an old cellphone.

You can see the majority of the hardware he used in the image above. There’s an Arduino on the left. This monitors a switch which he added to the lid of the food storage container. It triggers the system when opened, switching on an LED light and snapping pictures.

The touchscreen button is used to trigger the shutter. That’s what all of that tin foil is about. Some experiments led [Art] to realize that a metal ‘finger’ could register on the screen if there was enough foil attached. To move the metal bracket he uses a solenoid. The last problem he faced was keeping the cellphone screen awake. He figured out that power cycling the charger does the trick. The Arduino manages this using a mains-rated relay.

The system successfully captured images of a family of raccoons feasting on the tasty morsels.


Filed under: arduino hacks


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