As many of you know, Hackaday is hosting their annual Hackaday Prize contest with the grand prize of a trip to space! They have already received some amazing entries including this DIY smartphone from Tyler Spadgenske called the tyfone (built with the Adafruit FONA)!
Introducing the tyfone: A DIY smartphone anyone can make. The tyfone uses the Raspberry Pi for processing and has a 3.5in touchscreen. An Adafruit Fona is used to give the tyfone the capability to make calls, send sms messages, and get the time using the built in RTC. It also has a 5mp camera module giving it the power to take HD photos and send them to Dropbox over WiFi. Speaking of Wifi, the tyfone has a USB wifi adapter so it can communicate with the internet along with cellular networks. All this technology is enclosed in a 3D printed case.
Note that in the video TYOS 0.1.0 is used. Many new features have been added since then.
Hardware
The tyfone is made up of a few basic components:
- The Raspberry Pi
- The cellular module (FONA)
- The 3.5in TFT
- 3D Printed case.
The Raspberry Pi handles all the processing, and connects everything together. The TFT talks to the Raspberry Pi over SPI, and the FONA talks to it over UART. Everything is powered with a 1200mah battery connected to the FONA. The FONA has a charging circuit perfect for use with the phone. Since the battery is only 3.7v, a boost converter is used to boost the voltage to 5v for the Raspberry Pi and TFT. A metal speaker and microphone is connected to the FONA for audio, along with an antenna. The FONA also has a real time clock built in, so the Raspberry Pi can keep time even when off wifi connection. The Raspberry Pi also has a USB Wifi Adapter connected to it giving it internet access. Right now all that it is used for is to upload camera photos to dropbox, but more features will be implemented in the future. The Raspberry Pi camera module is used for pictures and video. Below are some fritzing diagrams on how everything is connected.
Featured Adafruit Products!
Adafruit FONA – Mini Cellular GSM Breakout uFL Version – v1: Ring, Ring! Who’s that callin’? It’s your breadboard! Introducing Adafruit FONA MiniGSM, an adorable all-in-one cellular phone module that lets you add voice, text, SMS and data to your project in an adorable little package. Read more.
PiTFT – Assembled 480×320 3.5″ TFT+Touchscreen for Raspberry Pi: Is this not the cutest, little display for the Raspberry Pi? It features a 3.5″ display with 480×320 16-bit color pixels and a resistive touch overlay so is slightly larger than our popular original. The plate uses the high speed SPI interface on the Pi and can use the mini display as a console, X window port, displaying images or video etc. Best of all it plugs right in on top! Read more.
Each Friday is PiDay here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts, tutorials and new Raspberry Pi related products. Adafruit has the largest and best selection of Raspberry Pi accessories and all the code & tutorials to get you up and running in no time!
