This is why I am on the internet.
New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
41–50 of 67 posts
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#42This is really cool. Is there any information on what kind of (standard) hardware/software this is using to communicate with the mobile phone network?
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#43It's a really nice toy, but where I live I sadly can't afford it.
Yeah $390 + shipping + 25% VAT is a lot for this. It can't be more than $50 in parts.
But I guess this is the problem when you turn a hobby project into a niche business. You suddenly have to amortize the development costs over a small number of sales. Otherwise there's no point making it your sole means of income.
And from the initial 3D printed model to a custom made production run takes many times the amount of time it will have taken to build the prototype.
In this case there's the pick & place machine to consider too. I'm surprised she didn't outsource this. These things are expensive and I doubt she has enough parts to run it 24/7 to get her money's worth.
But no way I'll consider buying one at this price. Great project though!!
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#44Am I the only one who is blown away by what looks like a PCB chip assembly machine in a personal residence near the end of the video?
That was the only part of the video I didn’t understand. Was that really at home?!? How much are those machines, because it can’t be cheap. I can’t imagine that there would be enough demand for these phones to really require a purchase of that level of production equipment.
For me, my question would be how much of the production is outsourced? Hopefully there will be more videos about the production/business side.
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#45I'm a developer, did small Arduino project but always found it too overwhelming to create a custom board. What do you recommend to get started? I'm impressed by the custom board of this phone!
Make a shield for an Arduino, kicad has a template for the dimensions and positioning of the headers. A fun one is to make your own Arduino board, take the design for the uno and layout your own version and see if it works, there's plenty of guides on how to position stuff and it should get you introduced to the more complicated concepts in PCB design. Order the board from jlcpcb, can't beat them in price for 2 and 4 later PCBs.
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#46I love it when people say "Oh, I'm not a programmer" and then continue showing the stuff they've built (and fully programmed) that is a way beyond in complexity than what most of us professional programmers get to work on, like ever... :)
Me too. I laughed at "Oh, I'm not a programmer. I had to write all the code to drive the OLED screen . . ."
Inspiring. Love when people do this. Makers gonna make . . .
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#47It's a really nice toy, but where I live I sadly can't afford it.
Yeah $390 + shipping + 25% VAT is a lot for this. It can't be more than $50 in parts. But I guess this is the problem when you turn a hobby project into a niche business. You suddenly have to amortize the development costs over a small number of sales. Otherwise there's no point making it your sole means of income. And from the initial 3D printed model to a custom made production run takes many times the amount of ti…
Also to add to that parts are usually only part of a project. Labor is usually a decent amount of the cost. Plus some profit (usually 2x whatever your parts cost are is a good rule of thumb, until it isnt). You also have to value your own time at this. You will sell at cost if you value your time as 0 or being nice to someone. A 3d print of something is also not something you can necessarily just take to someone and say 'make me 300 of these'. You usually have to work with them a bit and the machinery to make that can cost a bit. There is a weird spot in making things where making a dozen does not cost much other than time and parts. But you want to make 1000 and suddenly the cost goes pear shaped and does not calm down until MR=MC. And you may end up with one custom part you had to make to make the other thing that costs a bunch. Linus tech tips recently had a good summary of what they had to do just to make a screwdriver. You in essence have to build a machine to build your thing. That machine can cost a decent amount.
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked a lot with quants. Most of them are 'not programmers'. The very complexity of the stuff they build is part of the problem. They are typically very smart, but often build Rube-Goldberg machines instead of looking for a simplification.
yeah, agreed : the difference between a non-programmer who programs and a programmer is the methods by which they achieve the results. an easy way to find work to help with on github is to go to hackaday or some other such 'hackaton/diyer' community and follow the project links -- you can spend the entire evening fixing foot-guns and lazy/naive implementations of fairly well understood early CS concepts -- that's not…
> amateurs who are just trying to get something to work rarely hit the codebase again after the thing does what they want.
Are you saying that programmers do? I mean, they should, but…
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#49Cool. Consider embedding speech recognition features too!
That is a really complex feature. XKCD 1425
Re: New (LTE) Rotary Cell Phone [video]
#50Recommend checking out the rest of Justine’s YouTube channel. I’ll die on a hill for ex-spearmint though. That’s ok. She can’t be right about everything.
> I’ll die on a hill Meanwhile in multi-lingual laboritories all around the world where 'international English' is the language everyone uses, or attempts to, and 'experiment' is a word used multiple times a day, I keep hearing both. Which gives me the impression there might not actually a single right way anymore, or perhaps there never was (as in: could be British vs American or older brritish vs newer), and I stop…
For me it’s like the debate about which way to set the hang on your toilet paper roll. There is no right answer and the fun is asserting that yours is correct.