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Welcome to the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club Wiki...

The Next Meeting

The Silicon Valley Homebrew Mobile Phone Club has monthly meetings, usually at the TechShop in Menlo Park. See the calendar for meeting dates. Next meeting would normally be scheduled on Wednesday Feb 14th, but has been rescheduled to Monday Feb 12th to allow non-geeky activities to take precendence. For info on previous meetings, check out the Previous Meetings Page.

News and Events

The "official" calendar of the Homebrew Mobile Phone club is hosted by Google at The Homebrew Mobile Phone Club Calendar Page.

Other events of interest include the 2007 O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference taking place near the San Francisco Airport on the 28th of February and 1st of March.

Projects

Homebrew Club members are encouraged to post information about their projects (or other people projects) here.

One project that's been relatively sucessful is the TuxPhone Project. TuxPhone was started by Surj Patel and Deva Seetharam and quickly attracted Matt Hamrick, Colin Cross and Leonardo Bonanni. The goal of the TuxPhone project is to produce a design that can lead to a "do it yourself" mobile phone; not just for the project members, but for anyone who wants to use the design.

Another project we're tracking is the SqueakyMoPho Project. SqueakyMoPho was Matt Hamrick's original concept for building a Linux-based mobile phone where application and UI code was written in Smalltalk. The project is no on semi-hiatus while Matt works on TuxPhone and Albion. But the "Franken-Phone" GSM Peripheral used to test the SqueakyMoPho software is still in active development. Matt has a "How to Build Your Own USB-Based GSM Peripheral" at the bottom of the SqueakyMoPho Project page.

The Albion Project is a hardware project to build a phone that uses a fully digital audio path. The idea being that the digital audio path will allow you to add features like "Data over GSM Voice" for vCard bursting.

Resources

Geographically distant persons are also encouraged to participate in discussions on the mailing list or (if you're adventureous) you can form your own local chapter. There is currently no formal national or international membership organization, so starting a local chapter is as simple as finding a few interested people, deciding on a time and location for the meeting and showing up. A Homebrew Mobile Phone Club Frappr Group has been created to make it easier to find people with similar interests in your area.

Suppliers

GSM Modules

SparkFun

SparkFun supports several different electronic hobbyist communities. They provide eval boards and accessories for a number of different hardware architectures. We like them because they will sell Telit GSM modules in single quantities and with USB to Serial eval boards.

Embedded Controllers

GumStix, Inc.

GumStix manufactures and sells small ARM based embedded systems for experimenters, hobbyists and companies building small-run systems. Several price-performance points are supported (meaning they have cheaper, slower modules and faster, more expensive modules.) Support for sound, networking, etc. is provided by daughter-boards. GumStix are used by a number of projects and are part of the initial TuxPhone hardware reference design.

Developers should note, however, that typical GumStix systems do not ship with LCDs. GumStix CTO Chris Hughes explains that the company received radically different LCD requirements from their customers, and they could never find a "one size fits all" solution. However, all the control lines for supporting modern LCDs are provided by the system's standard Hirose connector and the LCD page on GumStix.Org lists the steps to connect typical LCDs to the device.

Also note that GumStix has publicly announced they're working on a GSM gumstix peripheral based on the Seimens MC75 module. So fairly soon you should be able to build your own mobile wireless communication device with EDGE support. w00t!

Displays

EarthLCD

When you need to connect an LCD display to your design, the folks at EarthLCD can help out. They stock a wide range of LCDs and controllers.

Keypads

Nelson Nameplate

Nelson Nameplate is another company that makes custom "membrane" keypads.

Pannam Imaging

Pannam manufactures custom "membrane" switch type keypads. These keypads may be slightly expensive for some hobbyist designs, but if you need a custom keypad, it's a good alternative.

Ryan Screen Printing, Inc.

These guys do custom membrane and rubber keyboard manufacture. They also have a design guide that helps illuminate the entire keypad design process.

Discrete Components

DigiKey.Com

With a catalog the size of a phone-book, DigiKey is well known in the hobbyist and entrepreneureal communities as being a highly reliable source for everything from resistors to project enclosures.

Mouser Electronics

With a catalog the size of a small phone-book, Mouser is also well known amongst hobbyists, hackers and prototypers.

Jameco Electronics

Jameco is yet another supplier of small components for people working on electronics projects.

Anchor Electroncs

Persons in Silicon Valley looking for that last minute part may want to visit Anchor Electronics. Their store-front is at 2040 Walsh Avenue Santa Clara, CA. 95050. Their catalog indicates they have a reasonably wide selection of surface mount and through-hole components, ICs, boards, etc. They can also be reached via telephone at +1.408.727.3693.

Surface Mount Center

If surface mount components are what you're looking for, consider the Surface Mount Center. Their store-front is at 1580 Oakland Rd # C114, San Jose, CA 95131 and their phone number is+1.408.453.2023.