Here’s more about the DIY cell phone project – ” Surj Patel is building his own cell phone, bit by soldered bit. It’s not easy. It starts with parts that cost around $400. Then Patel and his partner, Deva Seetharam, have to write code to run on the tiny Linux-based computer that he’s hoping will serve as the brains of his new phone. So why bother? After all, it’s not like cell phones are hard to find or terribly expensive.” [via] Link.
I saw the start of Fabienne Serriere’s awesome project at the Maker fair – here’s the how-to! She writes “This How-To is the first in a series of construction instructions for a project titled The Magic Phone. I was inspired by the Port-O-Rotary from Spark Fun but wanted to take the project to the next level and with hardware I already had on hand. You may be able to extrapolate these instructions to different models of telephones, different telephony protocols, and even different projects.” Link.
Chris sent this how-to in from Grynx contributor Dan “This box will house my proprietary Wi-Lan HP45-24 radio unit and set as a client, a 2.4ghz 500mw HyperLink Amplifier connected to a Linksys WRT54G with a third party firmware and set as an access point, the Wi-Lan HP45-24 radio will be the main link back to my base radio. The whole idea of this enclosure is to be as “modular” as possible, i.e. if the PSU blows-up I can simply remove the PSU and replace it, OR if I need to relocate the whole box, I can simply unscrew all the antenna and take it away with me.” Link.
Excellent project – “This is the first in a series of articles that will provide step-by-step instructions for implementing Bluetooth Proximity Detection. We’re going to focus on using it with Asterisk@Home. But your imagination is really the only limitation. At the very least, when we’re finished, you’ll be able to walk out of your home or office carrying your bluetooth phone or headset and have your Asterisk server automatically transfer your incoming calls to your cellphone.” Link.
Bruce writes “There’s been some hype about Nokia offering music downloads over Bluetooth to phones. This article shows you how to make your own MP3 file server, called the Bluetooth Music Store, that pushes MP3 to any Bluetooth device that supports OBEX.” Link.
Judah writes “We run free community events around the NY/NJ metro area, and have a great opportunity to have our events broadcast nationwide, via a cable modem to sattelite uplink. The challenge: some of these events take place in buildings with SLOW internet connections. After some research, I have found in every location a cable modem within about 1,000 feet (either in an office or someone’s house) that we can use, but these cable connections can be across a busy street and/or a few buildings away. Attaching antenas to these buildings is not really an option. We need a free standing ethernet port (i.e. not a card in a computer – needs to be a port on a router, access point, etc.) to connect the polycom camera to so it can talk directly via IP to the sattelite uplink. My first guess was the Belkin pre-n routers, but it turns out you can NOT bridge them. Any ideas for a low budget solution?” Post up in the comments!
Brian writes “T-Mobile recently lit up EDGE on most of their network, including my neck of the woods. I picked up a $50 Sony Ericsson EDGE card on eBay, popped my SIM into it, and it works great. I’m getting unlimited EDGE for $20 a month (compare to Cingular’s $80). Here’s my HOWTO in pictures.” Link.
