Hello FreeCalypso community, I got a little bit of news on FC hardware: our Caramel2 boards have cleared the first assembly stage and are ready to enter the second and final assembly stage in which they will be outfitted with Tango modules and the necessary RF plumbing. At the present moment it is very uncertain if there is even one person on the planet who might be interested in buying one of these boards when they become available, but at least they *will* become available soon.
Aside from finishing these C2 boards and checking off the "yes, Tango modules and C2 dev boards for them are available" checkbox, the only other remaining part of FreeCalypso in which I still have interest is producing a FreeCalypso phone handset for my own personal use, and *maybe* for other users *if* there is another person on the planet who would want to use a FreeCalypso phone even if it were to be given free of cost - and it is very uncertain if any such other person exists. My personal preferences as to what kind of phone I desire are highly subjective and probably not shared by anyone else on the planet. My ideal dream phone would be just like Pirelli DP-L10, but with certain misfeatures removed: in terms of hardware I want the camera and the WLAN subsystem removed, and in terms of firmware functionality I want MMS and WAP capabilities removed. Camera, WLAN and WAP subsystems don't bother or offend me per se, but because I have no use for them and no desire to expend effort replicating them, I am removing them from my desired semi-clone of the Pirelli - these are simple points. MMS is a different story though - having MMS capability present in Pirelli's fw with no ability to completely disable it is actively causing me enormous amounts of grief, and producing a replacement with MMS disabled is my most acute motivator for wanting a FreeCalypso phone. In terms of what it would take to produce my desired dream phone as described above, the firmware currently appears to be a more difficult task than the hardware. Every phone consists of both hw and fw, and both are vital: hw without fw is a very expensive paperweight, whereas fw without hw can be considered a form of vaporware. However, in the specific case of my desired dream phone most of the fw can be developed ahead of custom hw, using FC Luna and Mot C139 hw to run prototype versions of the fw. Thus the most logical order of steps is as follows: 1) Develop a first-order approximation to what I desire my dream phone fw to be like, and get this first-order fw running on FC Luna and Mot C139 hw. There is a strong likelihood that we can get it to run on Pirelli DP-L10 hw as well, with vibrate-only alerting (no ringing ability and no working loudspeaker), but practical usefulness is highly uncertain given the current draw issue on this hw. 2) Develop FreeCalypso handset hardware. 3) Make final polishes to the fw that can only be done on the ultimate target hw. I am currently working on Phase 1 out of the above order, and I am doing this work in FC Tourmaline source repository. But the work is absolutely massive, and right now I have no certainty that I will be able to complete it. There are many things that can happen that would prematurely end my work before completion: I could lose my life in a gunfire exchange with police resulting from an altercation which in turn stems from my refusal to muzzle my face, or T-Mobile USA could deliver on their long-standing threat to kill their 2G services, instantly sending all of my life's work to the dustbin - lots of bad things can happen in these troubled times. *IF* there is at least one other person on the planet who desires a FreeCalypso phone, and who lives in a country where GSM/2G services are better protected against shutdown threats than in USA, then it would make good sense for me to teach that person how to work on our code base so that he or she could complete the work after my death - but right now it is very uncertain whether or not any such person exists. Hasta la Victoria, Siempre, Mychaela aka The Mother _______________________________________________ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community