After a raft of late night bill paying, which for various and sundry trains is still a thing I do manually, I:
Ordered a SIM card from Ting. Done.
Downloaded the Eclipse IDE Linux RePhone project thing. It seems to be a more actively maintained and documented project, which should help me get going. Of course, this means I need to get used to using Eclipse.
Funny enough, the only IDE I really ever use is Arduino. Someday I should get used to how to manually program microcontrollers. You know, close my supply chain and all.
Linux compatibility
Last night I started looking at programming the RePhone modulea bit more in depth. Seeed’s documentation says Windows, and if in doubt I could use the Wif’s laptop, but I hath no doubt. I found a couple projects that are for doing what what I need, and an now poking at them. The first one (link when I remember) is for adding the RePhone to the Arduino IDE, but I’m not positive on what it’s actually doing. Rather than a board ladder like Sparkfun has for the Thing, it looks to be a complete fork of the Arduino IDE. This would be cool, but it started throwing hissies about a library when I tried uploading the barebones code. Now I’m wondering if I just need to add all the files to my existing Arduino installation?
Either way, someone else has done this, which means I’m doing it. Yeah, I’ll look at how they’re aging in the boards and poke from there.
Cooking and cleaning
I worked on non-building shit this weekend. Mainly, while the Wif studied, I cooked and cleaned. As a plus note, I now have easy access to our stand mixer. As a minus note, we’re probably dying of malnutrition.
I had parts show up last night, so it’s time to get phone building. Step one, build a pass thru for the RePhone. Well, really step I’ve should be offering a SIM card. Right. Step one, order a SIM card. Step two, pass thru information about signal strength and stuff. Step three send a text…
Really, there’s a lot of steps.
Get a SIM card.
Stand mixer
Ours has been janky forever. Sometime after we got it, the speed selector took a dump, and for whatever reason (purported abuse?) we decided to never look into the warranty. So today I went to mane the pizza dough from Wednesday, and I see that a stand mixer is the way to do it. Fifteen minutes with a dough hook, versus real work? Dough hook wins. Now I’ve poked at it before, but me being the kind and gentle soul that I am, I didn’t want to break the mixer any worse than it already is, so I pop it open, see nothing obvious, close it back up again.
Today, well I want speeds. Not zero to omg, but multiple speeds. To that extent, I kept taking it apart , I visually inspect parts, I analyze what it’s doing. I also washed down any debris south running alcohol. After putting out back together, I have speeds again.
I also have pictures, and a dream. So the motor:
Is driven by a motor controller (botto
m l
eft
):
Someday, this little switch is being replaced with an Arduino and a property asked controller.
Huh
So other people’s projects, that I’ve looked at so far, aren’t being a huge help. I think I’m going to have to dive a little deeper. This is fine, just unexpected.
I just need to be able to:
Transfer data
Dial an arbitrary number
Text an arbitrary number
Hang up
Receive a text
Two and four above ate the keys. Everything else is bonus.
This weekend I should get a dim card, so I can get a barebones phone going, and then worry about detaching the Xadow modules, and replacing them with my gear. That’ll work.
Weekend
So I wasn’t paying attention. I’ll have parts next Monday, not this week. That’s chill. Last night I started looking up documentation on the RePhone parts. The challenge is that the documentation is iffy at times.
I do have a breakout board though, so now I just need to lookup other people’s projects and see how they integrated out into their projects. This sounds like some good research to do while the Wif is studying.
On the domestic front, I’ve volunteer myself to start making pizza once (or more) a week, so tomorrow, while the Wif is in clinical, I’ll make my dough so it can ferment in the fridge for a few days.
Progress
Cut and glued the astroturf to the shelves. I’ll probably tack down a bit where the glue didn’t go all the way to the edge. Probably use superglue. I’m also pet much decided now that I’m going to cut wedges to act as shelf brackets. Unfortunately that means a lot more cutting. That and I’ll have to build a jig for them.
After way to much decisioning, I have a LiPo, battery management circuit, headers, Pi Zero, and TFT enroute. Next steps will be:
Get connection between the Pi and RePhone.
Get sound through the RePhone, or route the RePhone’s sound through the Pi and build an audio circuit for the Pi (because it turns out the Pi Zero doesn’t have audio broken out.
Physically map where everything will be.
Fab the case. Probably start with a paper cut out, and then depending on how I feel about it, start fabbing out of wood. Whether I feel good about it will drive how many mockups I do before I go with the good stuff.
Ideally make a plaster cast of the case. Repeatability is a good thing.
Wire everything up. I’m using Adafruits PiGrrl Zero as a base, minus all the stuff that makes a game system, using a bigger screen, stuff like that.
Add SIM card to the RePhone, and do a month of testing on a new phone number, if that works, change my phone number and do my old one.
Laptop.
Phone
Just saw an audible on the PRUs the Beaglebone. Question answered. Going Beaglebone, gonna order the display and stuff tonight. Or when home and sober. Might be the morning because it’s Friday bitches.
Telephone
So I’m at 37 hours I’d work this week, and it’s only Thursday morning (before work obviously), so I’m not making a lot of progress. As a plus note, Comcast dropping network save my Myrmidon in Eve. Yay! But yeah, no progress.
Looking at the displays available for the Raspberry Pi’s funky interface versus the Beaglebone Black, it’s looking to be a wash as the Beaglebone has sine that plugin as a shield (which means a slightly higher price), while the Pi is just using the HDMI usually (which the Beaglebone can as well). I saw instructions for building aPiGrrl (or however the downing goes) on Adafruit, and I’ll be using that as a base for a lot of the setup. Still need to decide on the board though. I have the Beaglebone lying around, but the Pi Zero could help reduce the firm factor. I’m thinking Pi Zero because of the size. Also, I think the Beaglebone’s Ethernet port would be wasted on a phone, but could be great in the next project.
Phones
The Wif tested me kat night while I was blocks away from the house. Unfortunately this caused me to twitch which caused my phone to fall out of my hand which caused the screen to break even more. Now I’m looking at what appears to be a PCB’s ground plane, and that’s probably not good.
Luckily, I’ve been sitting on a stilton to this for a while now. I have a RePhone kit, opened bit not assembled, at home. So today, order a SIM card for it. Assemble, and get base functionality going. Then look at interfacing across between the Beaglebone Black and it. I’ll need to look a touchscreen, battery circuit (charging, monitoring, stepping up), and a camera. I have a USB webcam I can use, that I believe pays nice with Linux. Wi-Fi would be good. Bluetooth? Maybe I should just made sure to leave room in the case, or be prepared to make more cases as needed. Probably leave room. I could call it an Americano hahaha.
So tonight order the SIM card, assemble, prep.