Have you ever dreamed of independence from smartphone bloatware? If you have a Raspberry Pi and an Adafruit TFT, you’re halfway to making your own version of [Dave]’s PiPhone.
This tasty proof-of-concept cellular sandwich is made by adding a Sim900 GSM/GPRS module, which communicates via UART, to the Pi/TFT hardware while using a piece of foam core board in the middle to prevent shorts. You won’t get free service or anything, but you can pop a pre-paid SIM card into it. He’s powering it with a LiPo battery and using a DC-to-DC converter to set up the 3.7V to 5V. You could do a lot worse than the $158 BOM, and we’re betting you have a Pi lying around already. We wish more phones had baby rocker switches.
There’s a slight problem with the PiPhone: it gets pretty warm and there isn’t a lot of room for air circulation. For best results, let it cool on a well-attended windowsill or operate it near a fan like [Dave] did. He doesn’t have the code up on GitHub as of this writing, but he will capitulate to high demand. Make the jump to see [Dave]’s tour of the PiPhone and watch him make a call with it.
