10-18-2021, 06:46 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-18-2021, 06:55 PM by 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?
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?