Nokia E63 phone converted into LoRa messenger | Hacker News Reader

Nokia E63 phone converted into LoRa messenger

cnx-software.com

151 pointsRcrdBrt47 comments

Interesting, although using an already usability challenged platform like a cellphone to me isn't the best choice around. But I'm biased by having big fingers and some problems reading those small screens without my 2nd pair of glasses.

I'm still hoping the project below shows one day it's not a pile of vaporware.

https://pocket.popcorncomputer.com/

> The schematics and PCB layout have not been released, so the OTG messenger is not an open-source hardware project yet, but Trevor says it may become open source if there’s enough positive interest from the community.

My disappointment is immeasurable.

"enough positive interest from the community". I don't understand that. How much work is it to release? If I make software I can see that if I hacked a giant crap of code together that I would want to clean it up before releasing it to public and save my self the embarrassment knowing I could do it better. However with hardware, you generally need to get it somewhat right or it doesn't work at all and you can't fix it quick.

> If I make software I can see that if I hacked a giant crap of code together that I would want to clean it up before releasing it to public and save my self the embarrassment knowing I could do it better.

I think hardware is the same way. There's also protocols to fabrication that may be difficult to explain. You have support requests and emails wasting your time.

> "enough positive interest from the community". I don't understand that.

I read it as opposed to negative interest.

You should not be made to feel ashamed for giving something away for free. You should not even suggest that this should be acceptable. It isn't. People who offer comments on code beyond how to add material functionality (i.e. more inputs), make it faster, or decrease the code size are trash humans. Delete and ignore.

>People who offer comments on code beyond how to add material functionality (i.e. more inputs), make it faster, or decrease the code size are trash humans.

I strongly disagree. Making code more maintainable and easy to understand is very important. Enforcing style guides is important

Depends on if other people are gonna work on it too, right? By barging in and telling people their indentation is messy because it's a mix of tabs and spaces which isn't consistent on your IDE, you take away the time they might otherwise spend on doing what they want. It isn't there for you, it's a passion project not a job.

At least with the company I'm at, I'm supposed to talk to my boss before releasing code from side projects.

Sounds like slavery or indentured servitude. Why do you accept it?

Because it was otherwise significantly better than my previous situation? A better question is "why is this legal?"

You could, you know, ignore the demand and publish whatever you want.

I like being able to pay rent though.

The author doesn't owe you anything though.

True. However, one can still feel disappointed.

Did I ever claim the opposite?

It means they're still looking into productising it themselves, and they won't release the schematics until a) they've got a shipment to sell, or b) they give up on dealing with the chinese scammers they're currently negotiating with.

I don't know. Personally, I've hesitated releasing designs and code that was messy, even if useful. It takes some work to release something. Maybe not much, but when it's a hobby project it's easy to put it off.

True but this does look pretty ready

I agree that's what it looks like but I wonder what the point is of trying to make a business around some old hardware that's got questionable amounts of them still around

Great choice of outer hardware. My old E63 was the last phone I had where I could legitimately touch type, and I still miss it.

I had the e61. Also a lovely piece of hardware. Lasted a long time until the feature phones tarted dying.

I had a Singapore version of the E61, which included WiFi (unlike the US versions of the E61 where I live), and cosmetically was all-silver color (no odd-looking gray buttons).

It was such nice physical hardware, one could type messages very rapidly. It was also very durable. (I bounced it off pavement 2-3 times, and literally only got a few scratches.)

I would love a solid trustworthy opensource Linux handheld in pretty much that exact hardware physical keyboard design. I'm primarily interested in WiFi, but (isolated) cellular would also be nice, and maybe LoRa transceiver hardware would come in handy someday.

> literally only got a few scratches

The pavement, you mean?

> The pavement, you mean?

I think the pavement just disappeared on contact.

Mine was the Sony Ericsson M600i and then P1i: the rocker dual-letter QWERTY was the absolutely best input method I’ve used on a phone.

I had a Nokia E72. Fabulous 'phone that I finally replaced with the iPhone SE (2016), the last iPhone with a headphone jack, (and thus the last one worth buying).

I have an Astro Slide on order, so I shall be returning to a keyboard 'phone, but one that is rather larger:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/astro-slide-5g-transforme...

Wow, yeah I loved that phone. I'm surprised you kept it so long! I replaced mine with an HTC G1. I would love a phone like the E72 again.

On one of the example phone displays, you can see:

> Secure 4K encryption

I understand wanting to have some kind of peace-of-mind marketing statement, but encryption has everything to do with the chosen cipher suite and implementation, and while 4096-bit encryption can technically be called “4k” this furthers misconceptions around key size and strength [0]. This seems like another effort to borrow the marketing effect of 4K displays.

[0]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-are-some-keys-small/

This should link to https://github.com/TrevorAttema/OTGMessenger and not to https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/07/09/nokia-e63-phone-conv...

Or at very least, link to the original reporting on hackaday https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/lora-messenger-in-nokias-she...

(the hackaday link, at least, mentions another projects to convert cell phones into another thing: https://hackaday.com/2021/06/26/lora-messenger-in-nokias-she...)

Github link: https://github.com/TrevorAttema/OTGMessenger

As kid who grew up in countryside I would love to have one of these to talk to my cousin as we didn't have computer or internet, the year was 2004 and we used to send tons of SMS but were always short on credit

Discussion from 2 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27659105

It would be great if you could do voice via LoRa too but that would probably quickly exceed the duty cycle restriction.

it could be done with codec2, but duty cycle of 1% would limit it to push to talk brief sentences every minute or so, it might be better to stick to text. Perhaps handy when someone had a mountain accident and can only push and talk. Use a speech to text decoder and limit expressions to 140 characters, should be enough for every piece of conversation including this comment (with vowels stripped out). o wait, that's to little - make it 300 characters.

You can channel hop LoRa to massively increase the practicable duty cycle. I think voice could be in the realm of possibility.

It would be interesting to see if you could incorporate a radio module like a DRA818U/V [1] and provide short-distance voice over MURS (VHF), FRS/GMRS (UHF), or similar bands.

[1] http://dorji.com/products.php?CateId=14

What is the licensing issue with this? It is like Ham radio license ? Something else? India has started banning drones outright and walkie talkies are banned unless you have prior police verification. I think they demand that radio exam, Morse and all but im not sure. Where does this fit? Is it like cellular connection?

There is no licensing issue, you can use LoRa without a licence (like Wi-Fi) in a few bands depending on the country / zone you're in (915MHz, 868MHz, 433MHz…). You have to respect duty cycles restrictions (not emit more than 1% of the time, for example) though if you're not listening to avoid collisions.

isn't also that all communication is required to be unencrypted?

Depends on local laws. For where I am, LoRa radios fall into similar requirements to Wi-Fi, where devices must be certified but encryption require no license.

Outside ham bands such rules are rare.

There's different types of regulation to consider.. There's spectrum licensing, radio user licensing, and product certification.

2.4 GHz is considered an ISM band meaning it's license free meaning you do not have to purchase a license from the government to use that physical chunk of spectrum. There are certain chunks of spectrum (frequencies) that are auctioned off by the government. This gets you exclusive usage to that band, across a country or in certain parts. The government will (is supposed to) enforce the spectrum so unlicensed users aren't clogging things up. You may not need a spectrum license for ISM band usage, but you still need to be using certified products.

Next you have user licensing like HAM radio operators. Amateurs are legally required to have licenses to operate the radios. I'm not sure whether a HAM radio license also includes a fee for spectrum.

Last (but I'm sure there's probably more regs), you have the certifications for the product itself. If you're in the US, this means doing FCC testing and getting an ID for your product. Each country typically has their own regulatory body. A certified product means your OK on duty cycle, TX power, etc. There's other tests as well especially if you're dealing with wearables but that's a different story.

> 2.4 GHz is considered an ISM band meaning it's license free meaning you do not have to purchase a license from the government to use that physical chunk of spectrum.

This is not necessarily true: some governments demand that ISM frequencies be used for Industrial, Scientific and Medical purposes only, so it is not license-free for personal use in all jurisdictions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRa

It uses a LoRa module, which is approved by the radio regulators as an ISM-band device in some jurisdictions, for example in the US:

https://fccid.io/2ASEORFM95C

No idea how the regulators in India work but yes, this is more similar to a cellular connection than an analog VHF/UHF walkie talkie.

I'll be releasing the schematics when the codebase has been cleaned up and is stable. I also found a critical hardware bug in the LiPo charging circuit which could be dangerous so once the issue is fixed, I'll release the PCB.

There's no plan to commercialize the device. However, I hope that the hacker community will eventually help take the device to the next level through hardware and software enhancements.

Regarding voice... The board has a MEMS microphone linked to PWM and the STM32H7 has sufficient bandwidth to compress voice in real-time and package it ready for transmission. I plan to add short message voice transmission soon.

Regarding LoRa and LoRaWan... there have been suggestions to greatly improve range by piggybacking the things network. I'm investigating this. Currently, the network implementation is a simple self-healing mesh network. It features route discovery and low power performance. Standard Semtech LoRa drivers have been implemented with some important modifications to queue interrupts (better for low power management)

RF... the PCB features a tuned 915 mhz antenna + a microcoaxial RF connector for an external antenna. 50Ohm impedance tracing. http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1867459.pdf

PCB traces... 50 ohm impedance traces have been match length tuned for high speed NAND memory interfaces. Featuring a QuadSPI interface, the bus can operate at 160 mhz. While not super fast by todays standards, it's a nice feature.

4K encryption... It's not marketing hype or a play on 4K screens. I added incredibly strong encryption, just because it could be done. Fun to do and probably not needed... #overengineered

Nokia e71/72... the PCB can be EASILY adapted to suit those cases. I'm thinking about doing it. Anyone like to assist?

Operating system... I'm using FreeRTOS as the kernel with custom device drivers for scattered throughout the codebase to handle the keypad, RTC, LoRa radio, LCD screen tearing, USB port, MicroSD card etc.

Debugging and development enhancements... I plan to 3D print a chassis to hold the phone when debugging. For this to work, the PCB needs to have pads placed strategically around the battery area so that when it's docked, the SWD debug header, trace pins and power sources are exposed to the debug chassis pins. Next PCB version.

If you have any questions.... shoot. I'm happy to discuss the device here on the forum. If you have collaboration ideas, I'm open to hearing them.

https://github.com/TrevorAttema/OTGMessenger

LoRa = Long Range

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