Hat Ideas

Wow thanks so much, it’s officially on my list of things to get. The day I get my hands on it my smartphone flies out of the window, not joking :slight_smile:

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I was thinking of getting the MakerPhone or the RePhone by seeedstudio but they only have 2g modems. So for me, in the US, that would mean a lifespan of under 2 years since that’s supposedly when my carrier is going to drop it…

I’m invested in the purism Librem5 as a free open privacy security option. But that’s about as expensive as a mid tier smart phone.

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I know Librem, but as you say it’s expensive and just another bloated phone. I just want something that makes calls and sends messages and saves battery. Such retro phones are around, but none with free SW :expressionless: Pokitto phone FTW.

Hmmm good point. If they try to make me force to use their newest bloat phones and buy a new one each year, I swear I’m gonna just start using snail mail… you can probably tell my patience is getting near a breaking point regarding cell phones :smile:

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This would be limited by how fast SPI can go.
It’s plausible, but someone would have to crunch the numbers to make sure it’s going to work.

https://wiki.zerophone.org/index.php/Main_Page

How soon can I expect your limbs to arrive? :P

You’d need a microphone and a speaker as well…
At which point you’ve effectively got an actual walkie talkie attached to the top of your Pokitto, thus you don’t actually need the Pokitto to operate it.

Could be interesting if you want the Pokitto to be like a portable map system, but otherwise the only use I can see for it is trying to make a game like Pokemon Go, and I’m not exactly a fan of Pokemon Go.

I have the exact same phone I had over a decade ago and it still sends texts and makes phone calls.
The only downside is that it doesn’t have much memory, but beyond that it does what I want and I have no need for anything else.
Most of the time I use it more like an alarm clock than a means of communication.

If I got an open source phone I don’t think I’d particularly want to be editing the software, but I’d be glad of the ability to check that I’m not being spied on (to a degree).
(And I’d certainly be glad of the ability to remove the GPS chip.)

Niiice one as well, thank you! But it says smartphone so… maybe only one limb? :sweat_smile:

Yeah, not exactly like walkie talkie, that wouldn’t make sense as you say. Maybe sending text messages or something? I admit I didn’t think about this too much :smile:

I didn’t say it would be bloated. The point of running true free gnu linux means even if it had apps you don’t want you can just remove them. So bloat isn’t an issue for librem5.

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Hmmm you’re probably right… My reasoning was that I simply don’t need a full featured OS on my phone, with all kinds of processes and daemons and scheduling running in the background and eating my battery… but maybe OS so flexible and hackable as this one might not be such problem in this sense, if configured properly. I’ll have to see some reviews.

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Being open source, it’s as smart as you want it to be - you can always rip features out.

My point exactly.

That said, one of the problems with Linux is that it sometimes makes assumptions about certain facilities being present, so sometimes removing things can cause other things to break because of dependency hell.

You can always kill them off.
I used to sometimes disable superfetch and the spooling service on my old laptop when I needed to save some processing power.

Could just use bluetooth for that.

Radio would only be an advantage if it used less power or if you could pick up radio stations (but that depends on the quality of the Pokitto’s sound).

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I’d love to share my experience once it comes :slight_smile: won’t be until April 2019 but better late than never.

If all you want is a phone though then this is overkill. Very true.

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Flash hat a small hat with a sd port and all it does is a rescue flash when you don’t have a computer handy or the launcher breaks and you cannot change games it just loads a safe mode game that will let you access the loader again.

Also on the radio one, how about a mr microphone like hat

here is a Hat for you,

a Hat that lets you control multiple tv’s kinda like that turn all the tvs off in the bar thing they have at think geek, but more options like turn them all on, turn them all off, random channel changes, ect

here you go, though i would not really call this a hat, its just one IR led that should do the trick for most tv’s

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I was digging through my gear to see if I had an IR led to make a remote controlling app. Turns out I only have the receiver part. So I’ll be getting the ir led to make it happen!

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ir communication (pokitto to pokitto) would be interesting though not very effective.

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This would be a super delight to me to see!

yea i guess it cant be helped, its the simplest hat to make anyway
only issue is what type of protocol to send back and forth

A breadboard hat would be pretty handy,
like how Arduino boards have breadboard ‘shields’.

Instead of having loads of wires hanging out of the Pokitto, you could have breadboard channels designated to the input/output of certain extension ports.

Very handy for education and projects.

I like the idea. How big a breadboard?

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Depends whether it would plug directly into the PEX or whether it would be connected via some cabling.

If it’s connected directly to the Pokitto, probably about the size of the Pokitto’s screen.
(Big enough to be useful, not big enough to topple over.)

If it’s connected via some flexible cabling, then at least as big as the Pokitto itself.
(Since you can lay it flat on a surface and still hold the Pokitto if there’s a bit of flex available.)

Or it could be as big as the Pokitto and it could connect to the back of the Pokitto.
(Using the hands and feet for support.)
Might be too fiddly to use though?
(And it would need a way to access the flash button on the back,
and perhaps a way to avoid disturbing the speaker…)

If it’s a grid of 0.1" holes that cover most of the board, edge to edge, then it’s usually pretty easy to break or cut a large board into a smaller one. For this reason, I’d tend to make it fairly large.