• Re: Building my own cellphone

    From John Z@1:229/2 to All on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 20:29:36
    From: john@doe.com

    - bluetooth dongle

    Sorry, forgot to mention even if its probably obvious - I'd be using
    bluetooth dongle + one of those bluetooh in-ears.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From John Z@1:229/2 to All on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 20:27:50
    From: john@doe.com

    Hey guys (gals?),
    anyone here has experience with building their own cellphone or portable/wearable electronics, to share few tips with me?

    My basic idea (and hardware) is:
    - rPi
    - rPi touchscreen
    - sim900
    - power stabilizer
    - bluetooth dongle
    - some kind of rechargeable power supply

    All this mounted on a leather bracelet, in a way where bending the bracelet won't break the PCBs. I'm planning to remove the physical bulk and shred off some weight by soldering off all the unnecessary connectors (or at least,
    mod them to be attachable).

    I am unsure how to fit antenna into this. All GSM shields I've seen
    come with it, but no modern cellphones have it.

    Anyway - shout away! Criticism is welcome :-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From superkuh@1:229/2 to John Z on Wednesday, September 27, 2017 19:22:39
    From: superkuh@superkuh.com

    I haven't. My personal choice was to abandon the cell network entirely
    and operate under ham radio licensing with Ubiquiti 900 MHz
    transceivers, custom antenna + poles, and a 25w bidirectional amp at
    home. It works okay for around town but it's obviously much more spotty
    than a real cell network. The Ubiquiti Nanostation M900s act as a
    transparent ethernet bridge from my home LAN to my car. Then that link
    is shared to a $15 smart phone (w/cell antenna removed) with a tiny
    openwrt wifi router connected to the Nanostation in the car with
    ethernet. Everything in the car is solar panel + battery powered.

    That said you could check out the ZeroPhone project at, https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-smartphone
    because it seems super relevant to you.

    Also see the reddit sub,
    https://www.reddit.com/r/alternativephones/

    On 09/26/2017 03:27 PM, John Z wrote:
    Hey guys (gals?),
    anyone here has experience with building their own cellphone or portable/wearable electronics, to share few tips with me?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From John Z@1:229/2 to All on Thursday, September 28, 2017 22:03:32
    From: john@doe.com

    I haven't. My personal choice was to abandon the cell network entirely
    and operate under ham radio licensing with Ubiquiti 900 MHz
    transceivers, custom antenna + poles, and a 25w bidirectional amp at
    home. It works okay for around town but it's obviously much more spotty
    than a real cell network. The Ubiquiti Nanostation M900s act as a
    transparent ethernet bridge from my home LAN to my car. Then that link
    is shared to a $15 smart phone (w/cell antenna removed) with a tiny
    openwrt wifi router connected to the Nanostation in the car with
    ethernet. Everything in the car is solar panel + battery powered.

    That is absolutely *awesome*! I'm stunned! What is your max throughput
    and min ping? Is it good enough to, eg. run a video conference?
    The spottiness you were mentioning - does this refer to the places where
    you don't have a good signal? Mind you, I'm a total noob regarding ham
    radios, but this sounds like such a cool setup I'd be easily pressed
    into doing something similar.

    The reason I went for a custom cellphone was, I'll be honest, divided
    between the cool gadget factor and strictly controlled environment.
    Obviously, I'll start with some rPi-ready software (I'm thinking ARM
    Arch since I already got that running) and probably some glue code to
    hook dialing pad and onscreen keyboard with GSM module (works with AT
    commands, so this should be fairly simple), but given time (and motivation/discipline) - I'll probably end up with something much more customized and tuned.


    That said you could check out the ZeroPhone project at, https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-smartphone
    because it seems super relevant to you.

    Also see the reddit sub,
    https://www.reddit.com/r/alternativephones/

    Thanks for the links. I've done my research on rPi phones but extra
    (free) information is always appreciated.


    P.S. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one here who abandoned
    the cellphones (I'm counting 2 years and 2 months now) - its a sign
    I'm at the right place ;-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From Conceited Jerk@1:229/2 to All on Thursday, September 28, 2017 19:59:49
    From: cj.speakeasy@AAARGHgmail.com

    On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 19:22:39 -0500, superkuh belched forth:


    That said you could check out the ZeroPhone project at, https://hackaday.io/project/19035-zerophone-a-raspberry-pi-smartphone
    because it seems super relevant to you.

    Also see the reddit sub,
    https://www.reddit.com/r/alternativephones/

    Now *that* is cool! I think I know what I'm doing for my winter project...


    --
    Am I really conceited? No, but I have every right to be!

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From superkuh@1:229/2 to John Z on Thursday, September 28, 2017 19:50:50
    From: superkuh@superkuh.com

    On 09/28/2017 05:03 PM, John Z wrote:
    That is absolutely *awesome*! I'm stunned! What is your max throughput
    and min ping? Is it good enough to, eg. run a video conference?
    The spottiness you were mentioning - does this refer to the places where
    you don't have a good signal? Mind you, I'm a total noob regarding ham radios, but this sounds like such a cool setup I'd be easily pressed
    into doing something similar.

    Yes. My problems are entirely line of sight and Fresnel zone issues. My
    house is below a hill in one direction and the town in general is fairly
    hilly and town itself in a valley on all but one side. So I get 5 Mb/s
    at 2km in one direction (up to the top of a large hill) but then have it
    cut out entirely only a couple blocks from my house in another. I see
    ping times of around 10ms. For now it's more of a toy than anything
    reliable but maybe someday I can rent out space on a tower.

    Because I use a 25w amp (>1w) that means I have to operate under ham
    regs (I'm licensed for 'General') and that means *no* encryption. I
    think even visiting https websites would technically be illegal.
    Complying is most easily accomplished by using the broadband hamnet
    firmware and config guides (setting null cypher only in browser, etc), http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/

    If you really want a cell phone functionality then don't do what I did
    unless you have tower access.

    The reason I went for a custom cellphone was, I'll be honest, divided between the cool gadget factor and strictly controlled environment. Obviously, I'll start with some rPi-ready software (I'm thinking ARM
    Arch since I already got that running) and probably some glue code to
    hook dialing pad and onscreen keyboard with GSM module (works with AT commands, so this should be fairly simple), but given time (and motivation/discipline) - I'll probably end up with something much more customized and tuned.

    The reason I'd want to build my own phone rather than using a mass
    manufactured product would be entirely about separating the radio
    baseband CPU from whatever hardware I'm using to run userland software.
    GSM modules like the pi phones definitely do that. But the age of GSM
    (and especially the form implemented in most easy/cheap modules) is
    coming to and end soon. I saw (through radio monitoring) when verizon
    shut off 1 of the 3 remaining GSM 2 channels in my area just last year.
    Most telcos are signaling they'd like to turn GSM 2 off completely in a
    couple years.

    P.S. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one here who abandoned
    the cellphones (I'm counting 2 years and 2 months now) - its a sign
    I'm at the right place ;-)

    Unfortunately I haven't completely abandoned cell phones. I still have a
    dumb nokia that I take with me on long trips, etc, with the battery out.
    But yeah, it's a desirable goal.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)
  • From pataphor@1:229/2 to superkuh on Friday, September 29, 2017 13:12:29
    From: pataphor@gmail.com

    On Thu, 28 Sep 2017 19:50:50 -0500
    superkuh <superkuh@superkuh.com> wrote:

    [...]

    If you really want a cell phone functionality then don't do what I
    did unless you have tower access.

    Your project is very cool!

    I have been thinking about how to avoid being tracked by cell towers.
    What I came up with is some drones that would point lasers at each
    other, creating a data connection to my home computer that would not be
    easily traceable because laser beams are very narrow.

    I don't know about 25W home emitters helping with privacy when ham
    licensing also prevents encryption, but recently I bought a cheap FM
    radio emitter that was meant to be used in a car so that one could plug
    an mp3 player or something into it via a jack plug and the signal would
    then be received by the on board car FM radio.

    I built a portable 12v power supply out of 8 AA batteries for it using
    a cheap standard holder, the same place also sold a car
    cigarette lighter adapter (is what the device would normally be plugged
    into). The device also had an usbport to plug usb sticks into to play
    music directly, and it had another port, probably some microsd thing.

    Reception was terrible if I only moved a few centimeters away from it
    until I noticed I could plug in an usb extension cable into that usb
    port, with some cable working better and others not so much, in effect
    that usb cable was an antenna. Now I could walk around the house and
    probably even farther and receive pretty good stereo on an old philips
    ariaz FM receiver. I had inherited that receiver because the owner
    could not establish a connection with a computer to it, it seems to
    need a special usb cable, and could not upload songs, but I can
    record songs with it now, using the FM radio!

    I'm now thinking about using two of these devices (they're very cheap
    around 15 euro) and a few rtlsdr equipped laptops to create a data
    connection. I have no idea how to encode the data onto stereo audio
    though, and maybe I could also encrypt stuff? Maybe the signal is just
    too weak to be considered harmful, I mean they sell this stuff for car
    audio right? Though maybe that idea of using a short usb cable as an
    antenna is too smart to get away with, especially since it broadcasts in
    the FM radio spectrum, though I can choose frequencies with .1
    megahertz steps and noticed that some frequencies are free, especially
    the lowest and highest.

    How I would then mount that stuff on a drone would be step 2.

    I read about drones that are in development now that can fly for
    28 minutes, avoid trees and obstacles and follow and film moving
    objects, like a bicyclist or a jogger, but as far as I know they haven't
    been equipped with lasers yet.

    P.S. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one here who abandoned
    the cellphones (I'm counting 2 years and 2 months now) - its a sign
    I'm at the right place ;-)

    Unfortunately I haven't completely abandoned cell phones. I still
    have a dumb nokia that I take with me on long trips, etc, with the
    battery out. But yeah, it's a desirable goal.

    It seems with just a cellphone number your privacy is already
    essentially void. I stopped using them entirely, even though many
    organizations just assume one can call them. Some time ago my
    health care provider sent me an email telling me they would switch all communication to their webpage (I don't use webforms or webmail, just
    a native mail client) and they would start sending me no-reply
    emails to tell me to go there when something new arrived. I could opt
    out, no problem, just give them a call :(

    P.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: www.darkrealms.ca (1:229/2)