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Low-key project state: Hackaday Prize video, cases!

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 10/21/2017 at 12:485 Comments

Just made a video for the Hackaday Prize. Right now I'm too sleepy to talk about it, especially given that I accidentally the whole script, so I had to rewrite it 10 hours before, and some photos came to me at the last moment possible =(

Recently, I made a "How I use my ZeroPhone" worklog. It was really easy to write for me, I shared it on Reddit, got a lot of positive responses and some really good questions. Those questions prompted me to write two more worklogs - "Why ZeroPhone ships with 18650 batteries" and "Making ZeroPhone work as an actual phone". The first one was easy to write - the second one was noticeably harder =) Anyway, stay tuned for the next part of "How I use my ZeroPhone" - I hope it's going to be as easy to write as the first part!

Now, about project's contributors. @Ninjalicious has the first design of a ZeroPhone case!


 It needs more work and testing, and we need to clean up files before we can publish them, but it already works as a case! Now, it does underline the ZeroPhone problem - it's really thick =D So, even though, as I mentioned, I can't use pouch cells as a default option, I will have to do more research on this and make sure it's an option that's reasonably accessible for people that don't have huge pockets.

Discussions

Rob Couto wrote 04/17/2018 at 00:14 point

I had a Nokia 6030 with a pair of ancient 17670 cells superglued at the sides and soldered in parallel to the original LiPo contacts (along with a bodge resistor for the missing thermistor so that it would even turn on). They nearly matched the thickness (18mm according to the big wiki). Of course it wasn't really a candy bar any more, being 75% wider, but it still went easilly into a jeans pocket by itself. The relatively huge radius of curvature at the new 'sides' probably helped. I didn't test the talk time but the standby time was pretty sweet-- week between charges, doing mostly SMS.

Have you considered anything like that? There are single-cell 18650 holders around, though you might want some kind of protective shell... I didn't bother, just wrapped enough black tape to cover the ends :D

Thanks for doing & documenting all this.

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Dillon Nichols wrote 11/08/2017 at 18:47 point

Looks like I was beat to designing a case... I was having 3D printer issues and just recently got it running again. I like this design - looks much better than what I had in mind. Where can I find the files to print or modify this myself?

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Arya wrote 11/10/2017 at 20:18 point

Hey, the more cases we have, the better - this phone is unusual in a way of how it all fits together, so with more independent designs, we have more room for new decisions!

As for the file availability - that's a question to @Ninjalicious ( https://hackaday.io/ninjalicious ) . AFAIK the files were designed in Solidworks (I might be wrong, but the screenshots looked like it), and last time I asked, he wanted to make some modifications to it before releasing a version.

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Ninjalicious wrote 11/16/2017 at 20:07 point

I can release STEP files right now.

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Dillon Nichols wrote 11/16/2017 at 21:13 point

Excellent, I'd love to see them.

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