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I made a cell phone [video]

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Re: I made a cell phone [video]

#52
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a wireless design services company. There is a large divide between using a Cellular module (e.g. Telit LE910) versus doing a chip-down Cellular design (e.g. Qualcomm/Infineon). This design has a module at its core. Modules are based around the chipsets but they do the most expensive certification (both FCC and Carrier) work for you. As a purchaser of the module, you pay for this on each module. Certifying…

> Certifying a cellular end device is usually Suppose the author wants to (completely legally) use the phone he just built. Does he have to go through this "end device" certification? Or does "end device" mean something else here? what if he wanted to sell the phone? I was wondering what the regulatory landscape looks like during the last portion of the talk -- it'd be a real shame if he put all this time into design…

Sparkfun has a reasonable run down of FCC rules.

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutorials/398

In this guys case there is an FCC allowance that you can build up to five devices for personal use that this cellphone project might fall under. Building a bunch to sell is a different matter though, especially since this is an intentional radiator vs. a unintentional one.

I get the sense that it's a bit of a taboo topic to talk about publicly in the opensource / hobbyist world. Adafruit and Sparkfun, the two major outlets for hobby electronics in the USA, for example generally won't discuss publicly what the companies stance on their FCC rules compliance obligation is.

My feeling based on reading a bit about it is that until you reach a certain scale the cost of FCC testing is prohibitive. So when companies like Sparkfun and Adafruit were starting out they simply followed best design practices and fudged a little on the FCC side of things by saying that their products fell under one of the exceptions or that they use a pre-certified module. Now that they are bigger it seems a small number of their products actually do get certified. It's a mess for sure.

Re: I made a cell phone [video]

#53
post #44
post #42

Ok, you made a working cell phone. But are you sure you know how to do it? What if, next time, something goes wrong, do you have the proper diagnostic skills to figure out the problem?

That's discouraging. He pretty much admits during the whole talk that he doesn't really know what he's doing. But he's doing it nevertheless. He's learning. And he's encouraging others to try and do stuff they don't know much about. And to celebrate small victories. Also, I never ever have proper diagnostic skills to figure out the problem when I'm doing something I've never done before.

I didn't want to be discouraging. I was just phrasing what I would think if I just did something like he did.

Re: I made a cell phone [video]

#57
post #23

I gave this talk. Slides are here: https://keminglabs.com/talks/#bangbangcon2015 I'll post some photos of the current version and more details on my twitter (@lynaghk) tomorrow (in 10 hours). Software is all on an 8-bit Atmel microcontroller, written in C in the style of Harel Statecharts ( http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/reso... ).

Very nice! :-)

Could you list the name of the various CAD packages you used? (For the PCB layout and modelling the box)?

Re: I made a cell phone [video]

#58
post #23

I gave this talk. Slides are here: https://keminglabs.com/talks/#bangbangcon2015 I'll post some photos of the current version and more details on my twitter (@lynaghk) tomorrow (in 10 hours). Software is all on an 8-bit Atmel microcontroller, written in C in the style of Harel Statecharts ( http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/reso... ).

Photos of two current phone designs and PCBs are here: https://twitter.com/lynaghk/status/632937349458956288

Re: I made a cell phone [video]

#59
post #58
post #23

I gave this talk. Slides are here: https://keminglabs.com/talks/#bangbangcon2015 I'll post some photos of the current version and more details on my twitter (@lynaghk) tomorrow (in 10 hours). Software is all on an 8-bit Atmel microcontroller, written in C in the style of Harel Statecharts ( http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/seoc/2005_2006/reso... ).

Photos of two current phone designs and PCBs are here: https://twitter.com/lynaghk/status/632937349458956288

This is fantastic, good job! Any chance on making the source and design files available, maybe even through a libre license?
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