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Ask HN: Why No Smart Phone Esque IoT Device?
I've been playing around with hardware, IOT, and microcontrollers for the past year, and always wondered why there isn't the equivalent of a smart phone IOT device or microcontroller in the space. Even the cheapest phone has a host of sensors already integrated which would make getting up and started with projects so much easier. (I still haven't managed to get a consistent working GSM connection.)
What am I missing?
- sjnu 6y agoBuying a phone and replacing the software will be cheaper unless you're making truckloads of these? (There are a dozen brands of point-of-sale systems that are an iPod Touch or similar with a magnet attached to the headphone jack)
- raizinho 6y agoWill look into it. Thanks.
- detaro 6y agoNot quite sure what you mean by "Smartphone-esque". There is a bunch of devkits with multiple sensors integrated, systems with standard connectors and a range of matching sensors and outputs, ..., which make prototypes and one-offs quicker to make. Of course more expensive than starting with individual parts. And sometimes using a phone, possibly with a small custom board, can indeed work.
- raizinho 6y agoHere's an elaboration of what I was going for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoPhybox... it's basically just a programming workspace to use your phone as a sensor.
- _Microft 6y agoI assume you meant to type Phyphox?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y agoYou are correct.... Phyphox
- raizinho 6y agoSaw this the other day and looked cool. Not exactly what I was going for though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566
- weinzierl 6y agoNot sure what you mean exactly but coming from the IoT end there are plenty of options to connect existing platforms to mobile networks (ArduinoGSMShield for example). Coming from the smartphone end there are several hackable projects too that enable you to build a smartphone like IoT device. Look at pine64.org for example they basically have all the parts to build a smartphone like device with sensors.
- raizinho 6y agoHere's an elaboration of what I was going for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566
- tym0 6y agoThere are dev devices like the M5StickC & M5Stack Fire that comes with a bunch of sensor bundled.
- raizinho 6y agoOrdered a couple recently, so I'll play around with them once they arrive.
- m463 6y agoAre you asking about a small tablet or ipod-like device, or a phone with cellular? I haven't closely followed tablet/ipod type devices, but pinephone and purism librem 5 are (not-quite-out-yet) linux-based phones.
- mhh__ 6y agoThey're called development boards Unfortunately, even if the BOM costs them maybe £100 at volume for a chunky FPGA and some sensors and signal parts - much more for something specialized like an rfsoc board (like easily enough to buy a house), they're intended to be bought with people's bosses money so they're not really within budget for a hobbyist. That's also partly why the documentation can be quite poor - the bargain chips (think Chinese companies with funny names on LCSC and taobao) kind of assume you'll either reverse engineer it as a team, someone speaks chinese, or you'll ring them up and ask for support. The more mainstream parts in higher margin products have much better documentation, i.e. the big American silicon companies will usually document how their chips are programmed in depth rather than some obscure-ish Chinese parts I've seen where you either work it out yourself or use their slightly wonky freertos fork. What kind of sensors do you have in mind? Phones do have sensors but the software isn't really optimized for high speed data acquisition (I think using camera interfaces is a hack used in industry for getting data into high level embedded systems)
- raizinho 6y agoHere's an elaboration of what I was going for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566. Honestly, I'm really looking for a board with all the bells and whistles. Just a simpler interface and some stuff that just works out of the box. Especially communication protocols like GSM, Bluetooth, WiFi etc.
- mhh__ 6y agoI'm not sure about GSM but try making your own board combining a PSoC and ESP32, or even just a board with the sensors and maybe and i2c interface over a header? PSoC is basically a microcontroller with a small field programmable analog array bolted to it so you can get a but more bang for your buck on the board. If you want high speed signal acquisition try the nxp lpc4370.
- dimatura 6y agoI'm guessing the economy of scale isn't quite there, as there's much less demand for DIY IOT devices than phones. But there's some products out there that approach this idea. E.g., https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix-Cube-p-4553.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/Sipeed-Maix-Cube-p-4553.html (incredible value), or https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio-Terminal-p-4509.html https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio-Terminal-p-4509.html.
- pjc50 6y agoWhat's your actual requirements? Platforms are a fraught industry; Apple has done amazingly at making a closed platform that nonetheless manages to take a cut of third party apps. Generally either a platform is totally closed to extract all the value or totally commoditized so nobody makes much profit from it. I would say that ESP32 is the "smartphone" for Wifi platforms; the SimCom and Sierra Wireless devices are the equivalent for GSM. > I still haven't managed to get a consistent working GSM connection. Pay very close attention to the power supply specs and antenna routing.
- raizinho 6y agoWill do re GSM. I guess my requirements is a microcontroller that just works. Let me elaborate. I have a Galaxy S8. It has a: * Accelerometer * Barometer * Gyroscope * Hall sensor * Proximity sensor * Fingerprint scanner, Iris scanner, Magnetometer Ignore the last bullet. It also has WiFi, Bluetooth, and GSM. I don't have access to any of this data without putting in some work, eg. I can't get pressure readings from the barometer, or my location from the GSM. I'm expected to just use them as is. Now take the ESP-32 which comes from the other end of the spectrum. I can cobble together a setup with all the sensors and communication protocols (recognizing that the ESP-32 comes with a few built in), but I have to write/copy a mountain of code to get them all working and integrated. The same goes for something like a RPi. What I would like is a board that has these capabilities built-in with an API on top of it. So I could say something like: ``` import easy_api as ea my_location = ea.get_location() if my_location == (1,2): wifi_con = ea.connect_to_wifi("SSID", "PASSWORD") message = ea.get_new_sms() if sender(message) == "000-000-0000" and content(message) == 1: ea.buzz_piezo(duration = 5) ``` It's ease of use for prototyping that I'm looking for.
- throwaway9d0291 6y agoI mentioned it in my other comment but I think what you're after is TinkerForge [0]. It's expensive but you can for example toggle mains electricity on and off with some super basic electronics skills and about 5 lines of Python [1] (or many other languages). You can add GSM functionality with a regular USB modem, though the API isn't quite as nice [2]. WiFi is much nicer [3]. [0]: https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/ https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/ [1]: https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Kits/HardwareHacking/RemoteSwitch_Python.html#starter-kit-hardware-hacking-remote-switch-python https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Kits/HardwareHacking/Remo... [2]: https://github.com/Tinkerforge/red-brick/blob/master/programs/sms_location/sms_location.py https://github.com/Tinkerforge/red-brick/blob/master/program... [3]: https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Hardware/Master_Extensions/WIFI_V2_Extension.html https://www.tinkerforge.com/en/doc/Hardware/Master_Extension...
- 2rsf 6y agoCellular modules, they come in a lot of flavors.
- omnifischer 6y agoideally something like this http://janos.io/ http://janos.io/ but failed! Hope https://postmarketos.org/ https://postmarketos.org/ will be more successful.
- throwaway9d0291 6y agoI think you're missing that most IoT products are designed to be put into products sold at scale. There are exceptions like devkits and hobbyist products but generally, the expectation is that everyone interested in IoT hardware is developing a hardware product and needs little more than a convenient interface to prototype and evaluate with before buying millions of chips to send to a PCB fab. In cases like this, you want to pay only for what you need, monetarily but also thermally and in PCB real estate. You can't afford to have a bunch of random unnecessary sensors on board. That's why you don't see some smartphone-esque everything-included devkit. If you want a nice composable ecosystem to built things with, I'd look at Arduino and Raspberry Pi. They have a variety of "hats", which are extensions that you can use to interface with things, like a GSM modem or a sensor suite. I'd also look at the TinkerForge ecosystem, which has a dizzying array of high-quality, well-integrated, pluggable blocks that you can use to construct various things. It is expensive however.
- raizinho 6y agoI get that and I suppose there's isn't much incentive to build something like that purely for the hobbyist market. I should have included this in the original post but here's an elaboration of what I was thinking of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114566
- thatcat 6y agoYou could check out the pine phone with ubuntu port or postmarket os. It has all the standard sensors, gsm, and runs mainline linux kernel. It's basically a phone for developers. https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/