5 ms·

Show HN: JanOS – A new OS that turns your smartphone into an IoT board

123 points by janjongboom 12y ago

breckinloggins 12y ago
I feel like this is something that needs to happen. The observation about $80 GSM shields is spot on. Amazing things would happen if we could have a $30 IoT board with built-in LTE and a country-by-country easy-to-follow guide to how to buy a SIMM and get online. My one critique of the project is that I think the most important part (from a marketing perspective) is the "make your own connected IoT board for cheap!". The OS part is a huge enabling factor but not what gets me pumped about it. I almost skipped clicking on this link because I was imagining strapping a full heavy smartphone (plastic case and all) onto a drone with zip ties.
- colechristensen 12y ago
  RadioShack is closing a lot of stores, many of which sell Arduino things. I got two ~$60 MSRP GSM shields for $24 a piece. Pair that with the minimal T-Mobile $3/month sim ... that's a pretty good deal.
51Cards 12y ago
Fascinating. My ZTE Open has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust... wonderful opportunity for reuse.
ecma 12y ago
For anyone interested, the $30 smartphone seems to be from a special Christmas time deal from CherryMobile [1] (a Filipino phone retailer) and may only have been valid at brick and mortar stores. It'd be much more reasonable to compare something available online with worldwide shipping even if it is out of active production. A Geeksphone Keon is comparable in price to an Arduino with equivalent shields and a heck of a lot easier to work with if you're not a hardware person. [1] https://www.facebook.com/cherrymobile/photos/a.299251607442.152915.269510017442/10152443834567443/?type=1 https://www.facebook.com/cherrymobile/photos/a.299251607442....
- janjongboom 12y ago
  The 30$ phones are based on the Spreadtrum SC6821 chipset and are sold around Asia. There are four different ones in India alone (Intex Cloud Fx f.e.) that go for this price. Probably can get some SC6820 phones as well and make a port. Don't know if those are readily available in western countries. Its though to get your hands on the super cheap handsets in US / Europe. But if there's sufficient interest we can go to an odm and just order 20,000 for <25$. Edit: the cherry mobile phone went for 23$(!!) During their intro offering
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    I went to the trouble of getting an Intex phone. Even for its price it's not worth it - even if I can build the JanOS/FFOS sources I don't think I have the driver to flash the phone.
    - janjongboom 12y ago
      Driver: http://janjongboom.com/7710_driver.rar http://janjongboom.com/7710_driver.rar
mwcampbell 12y ago
Interesting approach. I notice, though, that all three of the officially supported devices (the Keon, the Peak, and the Flame) are discontinued.
- janjongboom 12y ago
  Yeah, true, but the building blocks are available to port it to any cheap Android 4.x phone. I just don't have them available. I also chose this particular list because all of them ship rooted and have downloadable images available in case someone f*ks up, so I don't brick anyone's device :-) An open source kernel also helps when you do GPIO support etc.
  - saschlac 12y ago
    Would device donations be of any use to you? I love the idea behind this project. It would be great to see "out of the box" support on some more accessible devices.
  - aceperry 12y ago
    This is what I've been looking for. I didn't want to have to create something like this myself, but wanted to be able to reuse older smartphones lying around. I don't know if I want to use JS though.
  - gbraad 12y ago
    I have been able to use the modified System application on my own firefoxos-based boards. However, for GPIO I have used a background process based on NodeJS (which exposes the ports using a REST-api). Getting GPIO working on some phoneboards would still prove a challenge as mostly they do not have these easily exposed.
    - janjongboom 12y ago
      No, not super easy, but not impossible either. http://ee.telenor.io/gonzo/hardware/2015/02/10/gpio.html http://ee.telenor.io/gonzo/hardware/2015/02/10/gpio.html
turshija 12y ago
I'll have to try this on my Keon, its been collecting dust since Telenor Firefox competition in Belgrade last year. When I played your video from JSConf, I was like "hmm, I saw this guy somewhere, but I don't remember where" :)
qznc 12y ago
Isn't JanOS just a fork of Firefox OS?
- gbraad 12y ago
  Calling it a fork would be too much; it is actually just a modified main System application for FirefoxOS to allow it to run 'headless'. The rest of the infrastructure is nearly unmodified B2G.
- janjongboom 12y ago
  Firefox OS is (basically): AOSP kernel, Boot to Gecko, Gaia frontend JanOS is: AOSP kernel, Boot to Gecko, JanOS frontend Made some changes to both AOSP and B2G, but not so much. See http://janos.io/about.html http://janos.io/about.html
borgel 12y ago
If anyone is interested in US cell plans for this type of application, I've used US Mobile [1] in the past. For a single day or two of heavy use, a T-Mobile daily plan is probably best. But for a long period of light activity, these guys have worked very well for me, especially for SMS. https://gousmobile.com/plans https://gousmobile.com/plans
- beardicus 12y ago
  I've been casually looking around for data-only plans with no (or really low, at least) monthly fees and pay-as-you-go per MB data... I'm not coming up with much, but roamline [ https://www.roamline.com/roamline-sim https://www.roamline.com/roamline-sim ] might do the trick. No monthly feed, twenty eurocents per MB. Truphone [ http://www.truphone.com/us/consumer/sim/ http://www.truphone.com/us/consumer/sim/ ] is another one I've seen pop up. No monthly fee, $0.09 per MB in the US. Does anybody know of anything else? This seems like a market that typically buys access for thousands of devices at a time, pushing just a few MB per month. There's not much out there for the hobbyist looking for just a SIM or two.
  - borgel 12y ago
    Interestingly, it looks like Truphone is free for incoming voice and SMS. So if you wanted to control something remotely... that could be extremely inexpensive! A quick scan of their website suggests there is no monthly fee to hold the number either. Am I missing something?
Eric_WVGG 12y ago
This reminds me of projects from 10 years ago where people made small robots out of Palmpilots. http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/News_of_the_Ultranet-Summer-2001_Robotics.html http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/News_of_the_Ultranet-Summe... I’ve been stockpiling old iPhones in hopes that something like this would come along.

123 points by janjongboom 12y ago

I feel like this is something that needs to happen. The observation about $80 GSM shields is spot on. Amazing things would happen if we could have a $30 IoT board with built-in LTE and a country-by-country easy-to-follow guide to how to buy a SIMM and get online. My one critique of the project is that I think the most important part (from a marketing perspective) is the "make your own connected IoT board for cheap!". The OS part is a huge enabling factor but not what gets me pumped about it. I almost skipped clicking on this link because I was imagining strapping a full heavy smartphone (plastic case and all) onto a drone with zip ties.

colechristensen 12y ago
RadioShack is closing a lot of stores, many of which sell Arduino things. I got two ~$60 MSRP GSM shields for $24 a piece. Pair that with the minimal T-Mobile $3/month sim ... that's a pretty good deal.

51Cards 12y ago

Fascinating. My ZTE Open has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust... wonderful opportunity for reuse.

ecma 12y ago

For anyone interested, the $30 smartphone seems to be from a special Christmas time deal from CherryMobile [1] (a Filipino phone retailer) and may only have been valid at brick and mortar stores. It'd be much more reasonable to compare something available online with worldwide shipping even if it is out of active production. A Geeksphone Keon is comparable in price to an Arduino with equivalent shields and a heck of a lot easier to work with if you're not a hardware person. [1] https://www.facebook.com/cherrymobile/photos/a.299251607442.152915.269510017442/10152443834567443/?type=1 https://www.facebook.com/cherrymobile/photos/a.299251607442....

janjongboom 12y ago
The 30$ phones are based on the Spreadtrum SC6821 chipset and are sold around Asia. There are four different ones in India alone (Intex Cloud Fx f.e.) that go for this price. Probably can get some SC6820 phones as well and make a port. Don't know if those are readily available in western countries. Its though to get your hands on the super cheap handsets in US / Europe. But if there's sufficient interest we can go to an odm and just order 20,000 for <25$. Edit: the cherry mobile phone went for 23$(!!) During their intro offering
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  I went to the trouble of getting an Intex phone. Even for its price it's not worth it - even if I can build the JanOS/FFOS sources I don't think I have the driver to flash the phone.
  - janjongboom 12y ago
    Driver: http://janjongboom.com/7710_driver.rar http://janjongboom.com/7710_driver.rar

mwcampbell 12y ago

Interesting approach. I notice, though, that all three of the officially supported devices (the Keon, the Peak, and the Flame) are discontinued.

janjongboom 12y ago
Yeah, true, but the building blocks are available to port it to any cheap Android 4.x phone. I just don't have them available. I also chose this particular list because all of them ship rooted and have downloadable images available in case someone f*ks up, so I don't brick anyone's device :-) An open source kernel also helps when you do GPIO support etc.
- saschlac 12y ago
  Would device donations be of any use to you? I love the idea behind this project. It would be great to see "out of the box" support on some more accessible devices.
- aceperry 12y ago
  This is what I've been looking for. I didn't want to have to create something like this myself, but wanted to be able to reuse older smartphones lying around. I don't know if I want to use JS though.
- gbraad 12y ago
  I have been able to use the modified System application on my own firefoxos-based boards. However, for GPIO I have used a background process based on NodeJS (which exposes the ports using a REST-api). Getting GPIO working on some phoneboards would still prove a challenge as mostly they do not have these easily exposed.
  - janjongboom 12y ago
    No, not super easy, but not impossible either. http://ee.telenor.io/gonzo/hardware/2015/02/10/gpio.html http://ee.telenor.io/gonzo/hardware/2015/02/10/gpio.html

turshija 12y ago

I'll have to try this on my Keon, its been collecting dust since Telenor Firefox competition in Belgrade last year. When I played your video from JSConf, I was like "hmm, I saw this guy somewhere, but I don't remember where" :)

qznc 12y ago

Isn't JanOS just a fork of Firefox OS?

gbraad 12y ago
Calling it a fork would be too much; it is actually just a modified main System application for FirefoxOS to allow it to run 'headless'. The rest of the infrastructure is nearly unmodified B2G.
janjongboom 12y ago
Firefox OS is (basically): AOSP kernel, Boot to Gecko, Gaia frontend JanOS is: AOSP kernel, Boot to Gecko, JanOS frontend Made some changes to both AOSP and B2G, but not so much. See http://janos.io/about.html http://janos.io/about.html

borgel 12y ago

If anyone is interested in US cell plans for this type of application, I've used US Mobile [1] in the past. For a single day or two of heavy use, a T-Mobile daily plan is probably best. But for a long period of light activity, these guys have worked very well for me, especially for SMS. https://gousmobile.com/plans https://gousmobile.com/plans

beardicus 12y ago
I've been casually looking around for data-only plans with no (or really low, at least) monthly fees and pay-as-you-go per MB data... I'm not coming up with much, but roamline [ https://www.roamline.com/roamline-sim https://www.roamline.com/roamline-sim ] might do the trick. No monthly feed, twenty eurocents per MB. Truphone [ http://www.truphone.com/us/consumer/sim/ http://www.truphone.com/us/consumer/sim/ ] is another one I've seen pop up. No monthly fee, $0.09 per MB in the US. Does anybody know of anything else? This seems like a market that typically buys access for thousands of devices at a time, pushing just a few MB per month. There's not much out there for the hobbyist looking for just a SIM or two.
- borgel 12y ago
  Interestingly, it looks like Truphone is free for incoming voice and SMS. So if you wanted to control something remotely... that could be extremely inexpensive! A quick scan of their website suggests there is no monthly fee to hold the number either. Am I missing something?

Eric_WVGG 12y ago

This reminds me of projects from 10 years ago where people made small robots out of Palmpilots. http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/News_of_the_Ultranet-Summer-2001_Robotics.html http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/News_of_the_Ultranet-Summe... I’ve been stockpiling old iPhones in hopes that something like this would come along.