Imagine being able to make your own mobile phone from a set of interconnected blocks. Meet the Seeed RePhone Create kit. Based around Seeed's Xadow modules, which can be wired together using flat flexible cables (FFC), the kit contains the modules you need to make a phone. Seeed have chosen to have the kit use the 2G network which is ideal for machine to machine (M2M) communications and the Internet of Things (IoT) applications too. It also uses Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) which is far easier to write software for than Bluetooth Classic.
The core module is the Xadow GSM and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) board which takes your 2G nano-SIM card and is packed with technology. It has an Arduino IDE compatible processor with 4Mbytes of RAM, 16Mbytes of Flash (programme) memory running at 260MHz. In addition to the nano-SIM slot the board has a micro-USB port for power, programming and data exchange with a PC. There's a battery socket which will also charge the battery when the board is running off USB power (520mAh battery included). The 11-pin FFC Xadow connector allows the board to control other modules such as the Xadow GPS or Sensor boards (not included). It has a large 35-pin FFC connector which can be attached to the Xadow touch screen or the breakout board. All this is crammed into a 25 by 20mm board together with a GSM antenna socket, a power switch, an RGB LED, 6 x breakout signals and four mounting holes.
The Xadow 1.54in. capacitive touch screen is a little marvel with a 240 x 240 resolution, 256,000 colours and an almost 30mm square touch area. It has 2 x 35-pin Xadow connectors, one for the main board described above and one for the audio board. Adjustable backlighting is provided by 3 x white LEDs and the whole board draws 100mA with the backlight dialled up to its maximum. The Xadow Audio board has an on board microphone and a flat 0.7W speaker plus 2 x 35-pin FFC connectors for other Xadow modules. Which brings us to the Xadow Breakout board which exposes 30 x of the 35 Xadow connector pins as 5 x rows of 0.1in. pitch holes suitable for wires or pin headers. These signals include 16 x general purpose input/outputs (GPIOs), interfaces including I2C, SSPI, UART etc. and signals from the touch screen and display.
The kit also contains 2 x pre-cut Kraft paper foldable phone cases. This neat idea allows you to turn your collection of joined up modules into a real hand held device. These cases aren't for making phone calls in the rain but they will allow you to test and evaluate your phone design in a much more realistic way than when they're lying on a workbench.
Seeed provide a wiki page to help get you started plus links to the supported programming environments and languages. RePhone is programmable in the Arduino IDE, the Eclipse IDE, in Lua and JavaScript.
The kit includes 1 x Xadow GSM and BLE main board, 1 x Xadow audio, 1 x Xadow 1.54in. capacitive touch screen, 1 x Xadow GSM breakout board, 5 x FFC 35-pin cables, 1 x 520mAh battery, 2 x Kraft paper cases, rivets for Kraft paper cases, 1 x user guide.
- Build your own mobile phone
- Ideal for machine to machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications
- 1.54in. capacitive touch screen
- Speaker and microphone module
- Programmable from the Arduino IDE
- On-board battery charger, 540mAh battery supplied
