Realistic plan for our own FreeCalypso phone

[Paul van der Vlis]

Hello Michaela and others,

Another idea is to produce a board what fits into an existing case, e.g.
by swapping the mainboard of a cheap dumpphone. In this way we could use
some parts of the phone I would think, like the battery, antenna or the
display.

Or we could use a board what fits into the case of some standard
hardware like a Raspberry pi or Arduino. I've tried it here with an
Olinuxio Lime2 case, and it fits into my pocket.

With regards,
Paul van der Vlis.


Op 29-10-16 om 23:14 schreef Mychaela Falconia:
> Hello FC community,
> 
> I am getting the impression that some members of our community are
> quite displeased with my de-emphasizing of targeting Mot C1xx or
> Pirelli DP-L10 hardware in favor of building our own FreeCalypso hw
> instead, and I feel a need to address these feelings and concerns.
> 
> My biggest and foremost question to the community is this one: WHY
> would you want to use a crippled C1xx or Pirelli phone when our own
> FreeCalypso phone hw can be So Much Better?  To put this discussion in
> the proper context, I have a concrete plan in mind, a plan which seems
> perfectly realistic and doable to me, for how we can produce our own
> libre dumbphone that may not look all that pretty in the initial
> prototype version, but would totally outperform both the C139 and the
> Pirelli in terms of libre-firmware-affecting electronic circuit
> functionality.
> 
> First, the practical aspects - how can we possibly produce any phone
> hw without an astronomical budget?  Here is my plan:
> 
> Step 1: Produce a bare board initially, without any kind of case, and
> 	design this board in such a way that it can be fully usable in
> 	its bare state with no plastics or other case around it.
> 
> If you were to disassemble virtually any "standard" commercially made
> phone (Mot C1xx, Pirelli, Neo Freerunner etc), extract its motherboard
> and try to use this board in its bare state, you will quickly run into
> problems: the way in which the battery connection, the antenna
> connection and sometimes other important connections are made in all
> "standard" phones relies on the plastic case to attach these components
> to the motherboard by pressure.  Working on a sans-plastics phone
> motherboard quickly becomes impractical.
> 
> My solution: forego this "standard" design and go for a non-traditional
> design instead.  Use connectors for *everything* that is not on the
> motherboard itself.  For the battery connection, instead of using the
> traditional kind of connector that requires the battery to be held in
> place by the plastic case, use a connector that takes in a plug, so
> that the battery can lie loosely next to the board, attached by wires.
> For the antenna, forego the connect-by-pressure gold pads used in the
> mainstream phones and put a female SMA connector on the board.  The
> actual antenna will then stick out of the top of the phone, like they
> used to stick out long long ago before the industry moved to internal
> antennas, and will be screwed onto the threaded SMA connector.  Yes,
> having the antenna stick out would make the phone look a lot more old-
> fashioned, but in return we gain the ability to put it all together
> without molded plastics - a worthy trade in my book.
> 
> This way we'll be able to build the first bare, sans-case prototype of
> our FreeCalypso phone *without* the cost of any plastics, and also
> without the cost of hiring a mechanical designer - instead of trying
> to make our board in the complex shape designed to fit into a plastic
> case like all mainstream commercial ones, make it plain rectangular
> instead, and do the whole design of our PCB *without* stressing over
> "how will it fit in the case?".  And once we get this bare board built,
> we'll be able to fully exercise all of its functionality and do all
> firmware development in this bare, sans-case state.
> 
> Step 2: Once we have our own FreeCalypso phone in the form of a bare
> 	board sans case, how do we transform it into something that
> 	those with the UTMOST devotion to the cause of a libre phone
> 	will be able to carry in their pockets and purses?
> 
> My idea is that I'll take the working bare board and made a very ad hoc
> case around it out of some material like plexiglas - I am talking about
> the kind of case that can be made in a hobby shop, *not* commercial
> quality.  This case will need to hold both the main board and all of
> the extras (battery, speakers, microphone etc) that are attached to it
> with wires and connectors, but it will be a loose ad hoc design, nothing
> like the tight everything-fits-perfectly design found in commercial
> phones.
> 
> Downsides: the hacked-up home-made phone will very, very obviously look
> home-made and not factory-made, the physical construction will very
> likely be quite delicate so the user will need to be *very* careful
> and gentle with this phone (*no* water exposure of any kind, or even
> excessive dust), but I hope that I can make it hold it together just
> strongly enough to where I'll be able to carry it in my purse as my
> primary phone - remember, dresses don't have pockets, so we ladies
> carry purses instead.
> 
> Male users may find this hack-phone to be a bit more difficult to carry
> in their pockets though - objects carried in a lady's purse (if that
> purse is large enough and loosely packed) tend to be subject to less
> mechanical stress than those carried in a guy's jeans pocket.  But hey,
> you can always try carrying a purse with World's First 100% Libre Phone
> in it, or maybe put it on a custom-made belt clip so it won't be
> subjected to the mechanical stress of a tightly packed jeans pocket.
> 
> OK, so you would have to sacrifice the solid mechanical construction
> of a standard commercially made phone for a quite fragile and very
> hacky-looking home-made one; what do you get in return?  Here is what
> you'll get:
> 
> * A guaranteed-working loudspeaker for hands-free calls - contrast
>   with the Pirelli DP-L10 and Mot C155/156 where the loudspeaker is
>   physically present, but it is very uncertain if we'll ever figure
>   out how to make it work.  On our own phone, I will NOT connect the
>   loudspeaker in the Pirelli/C155/C156 way; instead I will connect it
>   to the Iota ABB's AUX output through a "dumb" loudspeaker amplifier
>   - a way which we know will work for hands-free calls.  And of course
>   the C139 has no loudspeaker at all.
> 
> * A guaranteed ability to make the phone ring - contrast with the
>   Pirelli and Mot C155/156 where our ability to make the phone ring is
>   quite uncertain.  In order to ensure that we'll be able to make the
>   phone ring one way or another, I will equip the hardware with an
>   old-fashioned piezo buzzer driving circuit (like on the C139)
>   *in addition* to the loudspeaker: this way if we never get TI's
>   Melody E1/E2 to work, we'll still have the piezo buzzer as the
>   fallback for making the phone ring.
> 
>   To my knowledge no commercial phone manuf has ever made a phone with
>   both a loudspeaker and a piezo buzzer (those that have loudspeakers
>   for hands-free calls also use them to make ringtones), but we are
>   not a mainstream commercial phone manuf, and our circumstances and
>   needs are different from theirs.
> 
> * A 176x220 pixel (probably 2" diagonal) color LCD - larger than any
>   pre-existing Calypso phone I know of.  For comparison, Mot C1xx LCDs
>   are 96x64 pix, whereas Pirelli's is 128x128 pix.
> 
> * A USB port that combines charging with serial access just like on
>   the Pirelli, with just one difference: I'll connect the CP2102 to
>   the MODEM UART on the Calypso rather than IrDA, so we'll have the
>   choice of presenting either RVTMUX or a classic AT command interface
>   with CSD and GPRS functions on this USB-serial port.  (Pirelli's use
>   of the IrDA UART precludes the latter option.)
> 
> * An FPC/FFC (flexible printed circuit / flat flexible cable) interface
>   with an add-on debug board just like Openmoko's debug board setup
>   for the 2nd Calypso UART (now IrDA) and for JTAG.  This debug board
>   hook-up will be required for heavy fw development, but not for casual
>   end users: for the latter class the main USB-serial port will be
>   sufficient for loading new fw builds, saving and restoring flash
>   backups, reading your SMS and contacts out of the phone or composing
>   outgoing SMS on your GNU/Linux PC, etc.
> 
> All of the hardware features which I have just listed - hardware as in
> functionality rather than mechanical construction - are things which I
> really, really, really miss on the existing C1xx and Pirelli hw, things
> which I miss both as a developer *and* as an end user.  These missing
> hw features are important enough to me to make the plan of building
> our own phone MUCH more attractive than the alternative of limping
> along forever on crippled Mot C1xx or Pirelli hw, attractive enough to
> justify both the extra cost and the inconvenience of having a phone of
> less-than-factory-quality mechanical construction.
> 
> There is also a certain promotional benefit to having a phone of our
> own physical make, as "ugly" as it may be, instead of a reprogrammed
> Motorola or Pirelli.  Considering how much of my life I have devoted
> to the FreeCalypso project, the topic of this project comes up in
> virtually every social interaction in my day-to-day life.  But most
> people are totally non-technical, and trying to explain the concept of
> "firmware" to such non-technical people tends to be rather futile.
> Even if we had our own aftermarket fw for the Pirelli or for some Mot
> C1xx variant in a practically usable shape, people still probably won't
> "get" it - all they would see is some random old phone.  But if I were
> to pull our own FreeCalypso phone out of my purse, a phone that very
> obviously looks home-made, that might impress even non-technical people
> differently.  Something to consider.
> 
> So - how do other members of our community feel?  Would you *still*
> want to use a Mot C1xx or Pirelli phone with aftermarket fw with all
> of its limitations (the inherent hw limitations of each given model
> PLUS the limitations of our fw stemming from incomplete understanding
> of the alien hw) when you have the option of getting a FreeCalypso
> phone instead?  Or would you see reason and join the forward path of
> building and using our own FreeCalypso hardware?
> 
> In terms of firmware work, the bare-board prototype of our own FC phone
> will be the perfect platform for me to do the main bulk of the work on
> the UI and other handset functionality layers, including the model-
> independent parts which will easily port over to the C139 or to the
> Pirelli if that desire is still there.  Thus if some members of our
> community still desire usable FreeCalypso fw for the C139 or for the
> Pirelli (no loudspeaker, no ring, vibrate only as discussed before),
> it will be much easier for us to produce such firmware *after* our own
> FC phone, rather than before.
> 
> So - comments, opinions, flames?
> 
> Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
> Mychaela
> 




-- 
Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer Groningen
https://www.vandervlis.nl/