Lets create the PineCom

[bcnaz]

@Luke 
Did this project get scrapped ?

[swiley]

It does seem the LoRaWAN ideas are taking off Big Time.!

But, 1) it looks like this new system has packet size limits on data transfer.
and
  2) The Big Players in the game are already mapping and claiming the areas where they will be "$elling you $ervice"

I was hoping that these would be more of a modern day high tech "Walkie Talkies"
  Buy a pair or more,  and be able to have conversations between these units.

As long as it's legal I certainly plan on running a free base station out of my apartment near DC. I doubt I'd even notice the bandwidth usage on my connection.

[zer0sig]

@Luke 
Did this project get scrapped ?

Looks like the PineNote got to the front of the queue, after all this talk I'd imagine some ideas are being tested and in the monthly update there have been numerous references to LoRa dev/test so unless those are just going to possible future pinephones with adapters, guessing it's still in the works.

[ideograph]

I encourage people to look up the Precursor device by Bunnie et all (betrusted.io), as it is almost exactly the pinecom, but even more comprehensively designed from scratch for security purposes. The first iteration is scheduled to ship at the end of 2021.

GPS should be included, it is not a large security issue as it is a one way communication.
One camera, enough to scan QR codes for 2fa.

Like the Precursor, I think that the pinecom does not need a large screen, and similarly should also pursue a black and white low power screen, either a memory-lcd like the Precursor, or an epaper display, both of which come in small form factors. 

Ideally the device should be compatible with a hardware keyboard. The new pinenote keyboard seems perfect, though I have not used it yet. If, due to differences in dimensions, it would not be designed to work with the pinenote peripherals, something simple like the precursor or a blackberry would be nice, like this tiny tactile mechanical switch keyboard the size of a credit card: https://www.40percent.club/2020/11/feegle-xs.html                                

With a low-power screen and a good touch typing keyboard, a device like this could be an awesome private note taking device, and an ereader.

The perfect pine64 device for me would be an epaper pinephone with pinephone keyboard.

[krisradio]

Hello everybody,
This is my first post on PINE's forums. I'm in my EECE degree's senior year, and am working on a project proposal for, essentially, the PineCom in backpack form.

I am going through this thread and using a lot of the ideas and suggestions by you fine folks. As others have pointed out, there is a really wide spectrum of ideas about what this device should do. I have to narrow the field significantly, which is something I can do on my own - but I am really excited to engage with the Pine community. I plan on making my project files entirely open source (obviously this won't apply to some vender-supplied chips, e.g. the LoRa module itself, much as with the PinePhone).

The thing about a good senior project is, it can't be only for its own sake. It has to meet the needs of a target audience. The audience I want to target is both professional and recreational outdoors users who need long-distance off grid communications. It's not intended to be a playground for hardware, but a rugged and practical upgrade to your PinePhone.

The core of the project will be the LoRa chip, an external antenna, and an R Pi Pico microprocessor to control the chip. The best additional features to include are still under consideration. I've identified a high-end GPS, a solar panel+battery combo, or other sensors (barometric pressure, temp, humidity, etc.) as the most useful potential additions for that target audience of outdoor first responders and recreational campers, hikers, adventurers, etc.

I have only read six pages of this thread so far, but I really appreciate everyone's input. I hope this project can guide the development of the PineCom proper (I have another name picked out for my project...). I will read the rest of the thread this weekend.

[tllim]

Hello everybody,
This is my first post on PINE's forums. I'm in my EECE degree's senior year, and am working on a project proposal for, essentially, the PineCom in backpack form.

I am going through this thread and using a lot of the ideas and suggestions by you fine folks. As others have pointed out, there is a really wide spectrum of ideas about what this device should do. I have to narrow the field significantly, which is something I can do on my own - but I am really excited to engage with the Pine community. I plan on making my project files entirely open source (obviously this won't apply to some vender-supplied chips, e.g. the LoRa module itself, much as with the PinePhone).

The thing about a good senior project is, it can't be only for its own sake. It has to meet the needs of a target audience. The audience I want to target is both professional and recreational outdoors users who need long-distance off grid communications. It's not intended to be a playground for hardware, but a rugged and practical upgrade to your PinePhone.

The core of the project will be the LoRa chip, an external antenna, and an R Pi Pico microprocessor to control the chip. The best additional features to include are still under consideration. I've identified a high-end GPS, a solar panel+battery combo, or other sensors (barometric pressure, temp, humidity, etc.) as the most useful potential additions for that target audience of outdoor first responders and recreational campers, hikers, adventurers, etc.

I have only read six pages of this thread so far, but I really appreciate everyone's input. I hope this project can guide the development of the PineCom proper (I have another name picked out for my project...). I will read the rest of the thread this weekend.

Check on the PineDio STACK project which will be release soon. You can know more about PineDio LoRa STACK from Lup Yuen's tweet.

[krisradio]

Thanks for sharing that!
I was looking at article Lup Yen's Pine Dio page at: https://lupyuen.github.io/articles/pinedio, but didn't notice that LoRa had been tested until you pointed it out.

RISC-V is a really intriguing instruction set to me, but I'm more familiar with the Cortex family (M4 specifically, but M0 fits inside that body of knowledge, so it should be easy to adapt). I am really attached to the idea of building a backpack for the PinePhone to allow off-grid communications. It's not another IoT sensor project, more of a text-based walkie-talkie. Of course, Lup Yen's work on the Pine Dio is really inspirational (wow! so many pictures! hand drawn waveforms! that's awesome!!), but I don't want to switch to the Pine Dio platform.

Would you imagine it's possible to communicate directly to the LoRa module through the 6 PoGo pins on the back of the PinePhone? It seems, to me, like a processor on the backpack would be required to manage the LoRa, but if it can be directly connected via PoGo and controlled on PinePhone software, that saves a lot of trouble.

Thanks for checking out my idea and pointing me towards those great resources!

[krisradio]

Check on the PineDio STACK project which will be release soon. You can know more about PineDio LoRa STACK from Lup Yuen's tweet.

I read through more of the information Lup shared and linked to about the Pine Backplate, particularly his experimental progress and the existing schematic in the Wikipedia article. I see now the developers of this backplate are much further along that simply reading this forum thread would imply. The news sites have not caught up, either! Anyways, love the schematics and the simple ATtiny84 microcontroller with only 5 I/O pins to interface between the LoRa SPI and the Pogo I2C buses. Definitely an elegant solution and cool to see so much progress and open source schematics coming out!

I may have to reconsider my senior project at this point..! But I'll be following the updates regardless.

[tllim]

Check on the PineDio STACK project which will be release soon. You can know more about PineDio LoRa STACK from Lup Yuen's tweet.

I read through more of the information Lup shared and linked to about the Pine Backplate, particularly his experimental progress and the existing schematic in the Wikipedia article. I see now the developers of this backplate are much further along that simply reading this forum thread would imply. The news sites have not caught up, either! Anyways, love the schematics and the simple ATtiny84 microcontroller with only 5 I/O pins to interface between the LoRa SPI and the Pogo I2C buses. Definitely an elegant solution and cool to see so much progress and open source schematics coming out!

I may have to reconsider my senior project at this point..! But I'll be following the updates regardless.

Glad that you have check out the PinePjone LoRa back panel schematic :-)

[JuniperFury]

I don't know how I missed this project, and will take some time catching up reading all the posts. But the one of the first replies I saw was "maybe this isn't needed". And I totally disagree. There is a huge and diverse market need in entertainment such as theatre, and movie production sets, stores, restaurants, even law enforcement, government, military, etc, that need devices that both don't cost much, transmit shorter distances and in some cases stay within regulation of not transmitting signals 10s of kilometers away for security reasons. Also this would be great for coordinating in emergencies not just for first responders but also families and small community relief efforts during times where electricity and cell phone towers are down especially in disasters.

Of the top of my head, it would be great to be able to control antenna power to reduce or increase range and external antenna connection support to increase range. And also if it supported an open suite of encryption standards, not proprietary this may be able to compete against closed source p25 radios if you plan on supporting those frequencies as well. I think p25 is the closed sourced one. If not, then it's some other standard that I know has bugs that lead to data leaks because it's closed source.

I also see some posts about just adding on to the pinephone. That would be a mistake as there are many industries and secure locations where GSM and cell phone is not allowed at all. So having a 4G modem you cannot remove from PinePhone forces people in those regulated area to buy wifi only tablets, android mp3 players, and ipod touches just to have a smart device available to them. However these devices are usually quite limited in speed and usability. Especially those older android mp3 players because they usually use very old versions of android and are slow for anything other then playing music.

Also if this included dip-switches as well this would be such a sellable feature in areas where bluetooth and wifi aren't allowed but more secure methods such as direct network cable connections and approved encryption standards where wifi is too easily spoofed and cracked. Bluetooth is not secure at all.

Before I spend hours going through the whole thread, can someone tell me if this is still an active project and what's the progress now?