

PiPhone – A Raspberry-Pi-based Smartphone - benn_88
http://www.raspberrypi.org/piphone-home-made-raspberry-pi-smartphone/

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userbinator
Given that Broadcom originally designed the BCM2835 for smartphones, this
could be said to be an actual "intended application" of the SoC. :)

$15 for a 2.5Ah battery is rather overpriced, however - as are the rest of the
components like the screen and DC-DC. I found the SIM900 on eBay for $15, the
DC-DC for $1.50, and ~ $5 for a battery of similar capacity. He could've put
the whole thing together for <$100. Having done some electronics sourcing in
China really changes your perspective on cost... amusingly enough, there was
actually an iPhone 3G clone a few years ago called the PiPhone.

It's an interesting project but practically speaking $100 (no contract) can
already buy a pretty good smartphone these days... and one with a more
"unofficially open" SoC too.

The antenna sticking out of it is the best part.

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dec0dedab0de
_Having done some electronics sourcing in China really changes your
perspective on cost_

Do you have any tips on doing this? Other than alibaba?

~~~
jayfehr
I've used [http://www.dx.com](http://www.dx.com) quite a bit. Prices are
really, really low. Shipping is free. However, you may have to wait two months
for your products to arrive.

Since most of this stuff is based off of open source hardware it's pretty much
identical to the name brand stuff. So it pretty much comes down to a cost/time
ratio consideration when first starting out. Before you know it though, you
will have quite a large collection of parts built up.

Also remember you can hit garage sales, recycle yards, and thrift shops to
find a lot of old hardware that you can salvage valuable parts out of for less
than the price of the parts themselves.

Edit: made link clickable

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fest
Having ordered lot's of cheap prototype/evaluation boards through
dx.com/ebay/aliexpress.com, I can say for sure, that quality does differ.

Seed and co have higher standards for soldering/reflow quality, wheras random
factory churns out boards, probably even not doing any sort of testing apart
of "hmm, looks connected".

That being said, most of the stuff still works fine despite shobby soldering
and cheapest parts they could get at the market that week.

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zz1
Off topic, but I think it is a good opportunity to spread the world about it:
PiPhone is also an open source tool build by La Quadrature du Net in order to
allow citizens to call their representatives (in France and the European
Parliament).

[https://github.com/LaQuadratureDuNet/piphone](https://github.com/LaQuadratureDuNet/piphone)

[http://piphone.lqdn.fr/](http://piphone.lqdn.fr/)

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octagonal
He should really consider smoothing it out a bit and selling it as a
beginners' kit somewhere.

I would love to give my little nephew something like this where he would have
to assemble all the separate parts and do some basic Linux configuration.
Perhaps Adafruit could help him out with that?

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dec0dedab0de
_Perhaps Adafruit could help him out with that?_

That is very likely. Adafruit just previewed a cellphone platform called Fona,
but its still in development.

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esrauch
Any source on that? Searching for Adafruit Fona only gives this thread and
some junk results.

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ladyada
still finishing the final board layout (it's not out yet!)
[https://plus.google.com/112526208786662512291/posts/2qmVHpkn...](https://plus.google.com/112526208786662512291/posts/2qmVHpknFZW)
:)

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frik
will there be one with a 3G modem? GPRS is so slow.

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aw3c2
Direct link: [http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-
smartph...](http://www.davidhunt.ie/piphone-a-raspberry-pi-based-smartphone/)

~~~
dang
Thanks! We changed it.

HN strongly prefers original sources. The original url [1] was just a summary
of this one, with a video.

Edit: The traffic seems to have killed the server within seconds of the URL
change, so I'll change it back for now. If davidhunt.ie comes back, would
someone please let us know?

Edit 2: Trying again. Edit 3: Down again. Probably best to give up.

1\. [http://www.raspberrypi.org/piphone-home-made-raspberry-pi-
sm...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/piphone-home-made-raspberry-pi-smartphone/)

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leoc
PhoneBlox-style fancy modular smartphones are an interesting prospect, but I
really wish there was a simple replaceable-parts phone design based on
ordinary development-board-style PCBs. Make it about 25mm thick and then it
would be somewhat viable to carry around as a nerdy but genuinely usable
phone, while still having enough internal space to be based on replaceable
PCBs without too much pressure to miniaturise. Such a standard would have lots
of utility: as a testbed for commercial phone development, as a place to
experiment with new hardware or software for phones, as a phone (or just a
gadget) incorporating niche (or "niche-of-one") hardware or software you can't
get in a commercial device, as the equivalent of a self-build PC for
enthusiasts.

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thaumaturgy
I'd love to put my own little cell phone together, but in my area the only
reliable provider is Verizon, and I haven't been able to find a CDMA module
for Pi or Arduino or otherwise.

Anybody got a tip on this?

~~~
octagonal
You might want to try posting this question on specialist electronics
subreddits and forums like r/electronics, r/rfelectronics,
r/electronic_circuits/, r/hwstartups and r/hardware. So I guess my advice
would be to treat it like a numbers' game :). There's bound to be _someone_
out there who can help you.

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sspiff
This is the first I hear of these Sim900 boards. Are there any other boards
like it? Possibly 3G compatible models or slimmer versions with just soldering
leads instead of jacks? I guess you could easily remove the jacks anyway if
you needed to.

Combined with some of the slimmer boards out there (like one of the many old
Allwinner sticks or Gumstix), this could actually be used to build a real open
source DIY phone platform.

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coffeecheque
I've used the SIM900 boards a few times for a few moments with Arduino
project. They are good and simple, but as you say not 3G (only GSM).

I assume the 3G modules are different or not as in demand by Chinese
manufacturers, which is why I haven't seen any on eBay when I go looking.

I'd love a simple, cheap 3G module. It'd make the coverage better for a start.

~~~
userbinator
3G module with bonus GPS:
[http://www.ebay.com/itm/261346638302](http://www.ebay.com/itm/261346638302)

Appears to be a Qualcomm QSC6270-based module.

~~~
frik
Could one solder this 3G module on the board from the article?

[http://www.micro4you.com/store/sim900-gprs/gsm-
module.html](http://www.micro4you.com/store/sim900-gprs/gsm-module.html) (just
removing the GPRS module and soldering the 3G?)

~~~
userbinator
Not possible, SIM900 has 68 pins and SIM5320 has 80.

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wingerlang
There is no way that phone is smaller than the ones he has had before. Unless
you count the mammoths from the 90s and down.

Cool projects though.

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kevinchen
Yeah, the point is to do it as a learning exercise. Nobody is going to carry
this around in their pocket.

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userbinator
It'd also be a very very bad idea to try going aboard a plane with it.

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dman
Heres to me hoping that I can have a tablet which I can use to documents and
use rsync to keep the documents synchronized with my workstation. Have been
waiting for the kde vivaldi tablet. Also unclear if the latest bay trail
tablets will run linux without issue.

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reustle
How hard would it be to get Android installed and talking to the hardware
properly?

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zhemao
The status of Android support on the Raspberry Pi doesn't seem very promising
so far.

[http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=71658...](http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=71658&sid=7709e1adc29e25d4bcae7728dabcb718)

[http://androidpi.wikia.com/wiki/Android_Pi_Wiki](http://androidpi.wikia.com/wiki/Android_Pi_Wiki)

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mmphosis
I know that there are relatively cheap USB line inputs available, but I didn't
see what the PiPhone was using.

What components are used for the PiPhone's microphone?

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zhemao
Oh yeah, that's a good question. I've helped people with RPi audio projects
before and getting external microphones to work consistently has been one of
the biggest pains.

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mmphosis
Now there is a video. In the video, he plugs a head set and a microphone into
the SIM900. The audio out, 2 usb ports, and ethernet port are unused on the
Pi.

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mike-cardwell
Those touch screen TFTs look awesome, and incredibly cheap considering how
much more you can do with a PI with one of them attached.

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suyash
You can also run Java Embedded and ME also on Raspberry PI!

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nnnnni
So... what's the battery life like?

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damian2000
He mentions he thinks a couple of hours on his blog post comments section.

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tempodox
Wonderful. I want a πPhone!

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olegkikin
PiBrick.

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HPLovecraft
PiDick

