The arrival of LoRa a few years ago gave us at last an accessible licence-free UHF communication protocol with significant range. It’s closed-source, but there are plenty of modules available so it’s found its way into a variety of projects in our community over the years. Among them we’ve seen a few messaging devices, but none quite so slick as [Trevor Attema]’s converted Nokia E63 BlackBerry-like smartphone. The original motherboard with its cellphone radio and Symbian-running processor have been tossed aside, and in its place is a new motherboard that hooks into the Nokia LCD, keypad, backlighting and speaker. To all intents and purposes from the outside it’s a Nokia phone, but one that has been expertly repurposed as a messenger.
On the PCB alongside a LoRa module is an STM32H7 microcontroller and an ATECC608 secure authentication chip for encrypted messages. It’s designed to form a mesh network, further extending the range across which a group can operate.
We like this project for the quality of the work, but we especially like it for the way it uses the Nokia’s components. We’ve asked in the past why people aren’t hacking smartphones, but maybe we’re asking the wrong question. If the smartphone as a unit isn’t useful, then how about its case, components, and form factor? Perhaps a black-brick Android phone will yield little, but the previous generation such as this Nokia use parts that are easy to interface with and well understood. Let’s hope it encourages more experimentation.
So a modern 2 way pager?
well, there is always codec2 for voice?
There’s a MEMs microphone on the board for voice messages. Not coded yet.
Awesome project ! H7 good choice. May be MP1 (irony).
This is awesome … I am thinking about putting something like this together for my sailboat … will let me go to land and still talk to the people on the boat (or as a relay) distance should be nice with an antenna on the mast (fingers cross) … but love the form factor
Nice work! Great looking pcb, take a video of it working!
+1 on that PCB. Really nice work Trevor!
nice, but I am surprised that there isn’t an open alternative to LoRa yet….
try sigfox
How is Sigfox open?
Radio specification is open: https://build.sigfox.com/sigfox-device-radio-specifications
But it is not possible to set up your own Sigfox network.
LoRaWAN is the other way around: radio specification is secret and proprietary, but anyone can build their own LoRaWAN network, provided they buy Semtech’s radio chips.
There was an attempt to decode Lora with an RTL-SDR:
https://revspace.nl/DecodingLora
Now for the Transmit part, I don’t know if you could use a HackRF board to do so.
Meshtastic
not perfect but works,
I really like this physicals device approach I’d build one for everyone I know for emergency use. Meshtastic is paring your smart device with another device to use lora for messaging, works, but in practice it’s still two devices. Single emergency device is great idea.
I’ve been waiting for a good lora messenger platform, something cheap, simple and effective, ideally with basic gps functionality. And with deployable repeaters.
That runs off of aa batteries.
I’ve bought and built this. Open source. Still early on but looks promising.
https://meshtastic.org/
This is awesome! I am wondering which software did he used for PCB design.
I think ARMACHAT is much more simple http://armachat.com/ARMACHAT
Simpler for who? The person designing/building it, sure. But it’s tough to improve on the usability of a commercially released phone.
A most excellent hack. Add a big solar panel on the back so that you can just charge it by leaving it face down in the sun and you have got a product that a lot of people may be interested it.
that is very clean work. nice job! I would be interested in pcbs, if you have them made.
+1 For the PCBs and general interest in the project. I’ve been meaning to have a go at something using LoRA and already know FreeRTOS relatively well so this project is a nice way to something that’s packaged will on the hardware front already.
Ugh, so we’ve moved on from dumb “not a hack” complaints to dumb “not *enough* of a hack” ones? Gotta keep those goalposts moving!
How is sigfox more open?
So this is a modern Cybiko? 😏
Finally a worthy opponent! :)
Here’s some messing around with a 3310: https://hackaday.io/project/3472-1337-3310-tool
and a later version with ESP32 and LORA: https://www.mastrogippo.it/2018/07/1337-3310-wifi-hardware-design/
Nce work MG, very neat implementation.
+1 on pcb and build. I’ve been playing with meshtastic, but would prefer single device usage as having to pair to a smart phone introduces more failure points. Having devices that are nodes and capable of messaging is legit a good way to go. Could easily become a emergency prepared product people would love.
So is there any chance to build a lorawan texting device using the helium network? That would be sick as helium is growing really fast.
May be the future of cheap communication.
Sending messages through Helium would be easy. But Helium does not support class C devices, so receiving would not work very well.