Fona
Overview
I am tired of the distraction represented by my smartphone. I am tired of feeling like it watches me all the time.
I'm building my own phone.
The turning point was a deal on a free additional line from Ting. This means I can keep my current phone operational while I develop the new one without incurring an additional monthly line charge. Talk minutes won't change since I never talk. :-) It won't be a smart phone so we will probably stop using WhatsApp messaging. BT keyboard maybe? Don't want to go back to SMS. We'll see. First it has to function as a phone. It could take a year to get it that far.
Adafruit sells breakout boards called FONA
- FONA 3G has a GPS receiver, about $80 -- I got this one.
- FONA 808 2G + GPS, $50
- FONA 808, shield format $50
- FONA MINI $45 2G only, FM radio
2G is going away next year so that pretty much leaves the only first one.
These are all accessory boards, meaning you probably want to hook it up to a controller like an Arduino for instance.
Adafruit also sells the Particle Electron 3G board too, in fact I have one of those, but it's NOT an accessory board and I am not excited to learn how to program it right now. Maybe later.
How do I get it hooked up?
Follow this guide; here are my own notes.
More docs here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-fona-3g-cellular-gps-breakout/downloads
Step 1, power it up and activate the card.
I can connect a UART cable, the phone antenna, and pop in the SIM card, and zingo! Off we go. More or less.
I need to collect together
- Fona 3G
- Headers for the Fona, perhaps I dont want to solder them on just yet
- Ting SIM card
- Micro USB cable
- Li-Ion battery
- Ear buds
- GSM antenna
- A breadboard
Optional
- 8 ohm speaker
- electret microphone
- GPS antenna
- A UART - USB adapter
I did get enough of these parts together on a breadboard to activate my Ting SIM card and confirm the board works.
There is support for a keypad on the chip, unfortunately AdaFruit did not bring them out to the breakout board. Probably you could build a flipphone using this chip if you did your own board.
