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Resuming work - boards, coding and Taobao

A project log for ZeroPhone - a Raspberry Pi smartphone

Pi Zero-based open-source mobile phone (that you can assemble for 50$ in parts)

aryaArya 04/11/2017 at 21:375 Comments

After quite a delay, I'm resuming writing worklogs. Even with lots of donations, I still wouldn't have enough money to order all the parts and boards, and pay for all the shipping I'd need. So, I accepted a freelance project offer a couple of weeks ago, and completed it successfully - right now I have enough money to not worry about money, and to not be pressed to cut corners on things. I still need to go the TaoBao route, but with the funds that I have, I can build 20 to 24 phones instead of 10 to 12 (depends on how many boards DirtyPCBs will send me). So, I'm returning to full-time ZeroPhone work.

With that out of the way, roadmap for this month is simple:

  1. Writing logs and answering emails - through this week
  2. Ordering parts - starting from tomorrow
  3. Writing software - starting this week, till the parts arrive.
  4. Preparing crowdfunding - main worry is financials, along with writing good PoC software for demo units
  5. As soon as parts arrive, assembling phones and sending them out

I'd elaborate more, but it seems that my habit to write logs only when things are more defined and complete is getting into the way of how much I should write =)



I hadn't posted any photos in a while - let's fix that:

Beta ZeroPhone, with a 7-pin OLED, no speaker and very small battery, so always connected to charger ;-)

Back board view - ugly, but most of the ugliness is fixed in the new release

Side view - you can see the modem, the SIM slot and audio jack, as well as the small battery I initially connected to it.


I'd post more up-to-date photos - now I added a bigger battery, USB port is turned 180 degrees and it has a 6-pin screen which looks more symmetric. However, I can't take new photos now, and I don't want this log to be blocked by this, so here we go =)

Now I'll go get some sleep - and continue writing when I wake up =)

Discussions

jackie wrote 04/17/2017 at 09:43 point

Yay, updates! Can't wait to build this thing.

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Sophi Kravitz wrote 04/15/2017 at 17:09 point

+1 

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Gerard wrote 04/15/2017 at 16:25 point

The phone you created is amazing! Following your project for every update!

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cedar.knoll wrote 04/14/2017 at 00:56 point

Thanks for the update, looking good!  Excited about this project, can't wait to build one!

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oshpark wrote 04/13/2017 at 02:18 point

Thanks for the update!  The board looks great.  If you want to get larger quantities, please email me and we can see what we can do for better pricing: drew@oshpark.com.  Thanks!  -Drew

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