I would be interested to try to build a phone from uConsole and experiment in using it daily, however I’m not very experienced in electronics.
Absolute necessity for this is a microphone and speaker. Any ideas how those could be added, looking at board renders? Probably mini size of mic and speaker could be simply added to 3.5 jack.
Nice to have would be a camera. AFAIS expansion port is already taken by 4G module, so the only port left is GPIO on top, but looks like it’s designed for screen, right?
One of the first things I thought of when I saw the uConsole had a 4G LTE module was: can I make/receive phone calls with this?
A more concrete question: is something like creating a Voice over LTE (VoLTE) program possible using the available hardware? I’m inclined to think that it is possible but I am not familiar with this hardware/software ecosystem.
I thought 3G, 4G, EDGE, GPRS etc are only relating to data? As long and you have an active SIM with a telco, and the towers are the frequency the uConsole supports, you’ll be right for voice only? Maybe that info is a bit old now, maybe all voice to n mobile is now basically voIP? Feeling old. CDMA is dead now right?
That’s my hunch yeah, so I feel that creating a program that can communicate with cell towers in a way that emulates making/receiving voice calls should be workable.
“GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900MHz”
Btw, GSM is in the list of bands, so voice should work probably.
During a GSM call, speech is converted from analogue sound waves to digital data by the phone itself, and transmitted through the mobile phone network by digital means.
@guu if I understand correctly, it might be possible to use a special 3.5mm male-to-male cable (or flywires, internally) to connect main audio and GSM audio, and reroute the bluetooth audio to/from main, so that it reaches GSM?
is it possible to replace the phone modem board with a project board? no information on the schematic on gethub… I would love to install SenseHat type board in it’s place with a lightning detector… best alternative is to package these features in an external build and connect via wifi…
I have my modem working using the guide on the clockwork uconsole github wiki.
As folks have mentioned, the audio call functionality is limited to the headset jack on the modem. All modem specific voice connections, like VoLTE would go through the modem audio jack. Looking at other linux-phone projects like the Pine Phone, and what it uses to manage calls and messages would be a good place to start.
My sim is a data-only sim, so I can’t leverage that feature, or sending/receiving text messages. I can make VoIP calls over data though.
the uconsole comes with a script that enables/disables the modem, but you also need to run some additional commands to connect to it (or set it up using Network Manager).
I’m putting together some utility scripts to handle it nicer soon™️
