Mengmeng Chen and his team at Seeed Studio are trying to change the way we see phones and communication.
They tell us that mobile phones used to be several different shapes and sizes, with different functions and layouts. Now, however, most phones are bulky blocks that look the same. The company is running a Kickstarter campaign for the RePhone, a modular and open source phone kit.
Seeed has been working in Shenzen, China for eight years on different ways to develop and manufacture electronics components for their products and development kits.
They’re now ready to offer a base phone kit with several add on modules to connect users to the Internet-of-Things phenomenon.
The phones start with a GSM module and then different modules are added. A 1.54” touch screen, speaker, gps, near field communication unit, camera, single eye display and motion detector are shown in the campaign example.
SDK, Lua and Javascript are currently available for developers and the team hopes that the community will grow and continue to push features forward.
Paper bodies are die cut and included with some of the RePhone options and the video also suggests using fabric, leather or bamboo as a case material or embedding the phone into existing objects. 3D printing, laser cutting, CNC machining or injection molding are also shown as possible methods to build the phone's housing.
Different connection ideas are also shown – flexible cables, soldering, conductive thread and breadboard insertion are all ways that your project can be constructed.
The novelty of the video is what the team calls giving inanimate objects the power of cellular communication. Some examples are a module that allows you to call your dog through a chip on his collar or talk to a plant to see if it’s getting enough water.
The campaign is professionally done and the product looks finished and ready for production. The MT2502A System on Chip boasts that it’s the world’s smallest computer and a line in the FAQ points to the microcontroller’s documentation.
There’s worth here just based on the modular construction and ability to connect through remote sensors but the cranky old man in me bristles at the idea of having to remember a new phone number and not lose or damage a second phone.
Very early bird units are sold out and are expected to ship Oct. 2015 with other units shipping between December and mid-2016. The campaign has almost tripled its $50,000 funding goal and will end on Oct. 29, 2015.