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Comment by Sean-Der | Hacker News Reader

I would buy a dev board + build it yourself, you will get a much better experience then trying to reuse the existing thing.

I have written implementations target at specific boards. So go and buy one of these and boom stick it in anything you want. I have done this for my kids and have a bunch of different characters. My favorite is my daughter has a toy that pretends to be 'the ocean' it is so funny and existential.

* https://github.com/Sean-Der/realtimeai-embedded-respeaker-li...

* https://github.com/Sean-Der/realtimeai-embedded-esp32-s3-box...

I really loved the Sonatino[0], but can't get it anymore :(

If you start building something shoot me an email and would love to help! I want to unblock/enable this space so bad, I think these kinds of projects are just so delightful :)

[0] https://sonatino.com

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Thank you for your response! Appreciate making it open source.

I think there would be a market for a pre-built phone that can be adapted to behave differently - think e.g. as a phone in art installation or escape rooms.

I would love to do that.

What I really wanted to build was a 'tour guide'. I could walk up to a piece of art in the museum and get more info on it. It would also be multilingual. At my local museum all the art descriptions are English only.

Might be too disruptive for a museum though. I want to discourage screen use/let people continue to use their eyes when learning.

You could have just answered "no".

The answer isn't no.

You can open up the phone and modify the ESP32. I do that pretty often with IoT devices. It's not as easy as setting a URL, but totally possible if you are determined enough.

Why don't you just answer that in the parent comment? Isn't that a simpler, clearer and better answer?

Or you mean "in theory yes, but actually no"? Maybe this thing has an ifixit score of 0 so that you'd better not bother?

> I would buy a dev board + build it yourself, you will get a much better experience then trying to reuse the existing thing.

Sounds like it. Dude you can be honest here.

Which is almost saying nobody on HN should buy this if they want to get anything more than 60 minutes out of this thing.

This wasn’t built to be a general purpose phone. It’s a single purpose tool, if it had full SIP support it would need more expensive hardware. When I worked on this I knew I wasn’t building some interoperable general tool.

I am being honest with you. For me the ‘hacker spirit’ means cracking things open and learning how they work. So I totally encourage others to do it.

I would be perfectly fine with taking "in theory yes but actually no" (which is basically what you are saying) as the answer instead of this roundabout way of phrasing it. I appreciate what you did, but this discussion is kind of unnecessary.

> Sounds like it. Dude you can be honest here.

I'm going to politely weigh in here and say things Sean won't say about himself.

You're talking to someone who has spent the last ten years building open source WebRTC software that many, many, many people use and that he's never tried to commercialize. He works tirelessly to make the Pion community welcoming to everyone, from engineers with a ton of networking/video experience to brand new contributors. He wrote the guide that should be everyone's first read about WebRTC.[] All of it as a labor of love.

He's being honest.

https://webrtcforthecurious.com/

Thanks for the context but I don't see how it's related to what I was asking. You could be Thomas Edison and I'd still ask the same question.

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