N900 hacked to replace the innards of a Speak & Spell, can never bring back your childhood
Nokia has been handing out the N900 for selective "artsy" uses lately through its "Push" program, and the folks at Tinker it now! sure seem to have put their model to good use. They've paired the device with all matter of nostalgia, including a Rolodex, FM radio and a 3D Viewmaster. Our favorite by far, however, is the Speak & Spell hack, which puts the gargantuan Speak & Spell keyboard to good use in penning text messages for the N900 -- which displays them in the classic font and even articulates your words with a speech synthesis engine. It's all a testament to the flexibility of Linux, hacker ingenuity and of course liberal application of Arduino, but it's also a little advertorial-ey, so you might want to leave your gag reflex at home for this one.
[Via Nokia Conversations]
[Via Nokia Conversations]























"Get up. I wanna spell RIGHT NOW!"
ABCDEFG I will kill your family
I got this phone coming and I can't wait! This is going to be awesome! =)
Too bad ET didn't have this to phone home.
I have been holding on to my old phone for over 2 years waiting for this beast (not the N900 specifically just a phone worthy of my money) and Nokia is taunting me by releasing photos of the device being tortured and mutated.
Oh the humanity!
That setup reminds me of the South Park episode "Trapper Keeper", where Cartman's trapper keeper kept merging with other peripherals, like his calculator and even Cartman himself.
Bad pie... BAD PIE!
Yep, I've been checking out some of the vids on the N900 and they have me drooling. Definitely want to get my hands on one of these.
I think this falls under the category of "just because you can doesn't mean you should".
If you mean your post, I agree wholeheartedly.
i preordered it on amazon
cant wait to get my hands on it
@Break
I think it's just Deutsche Telekom's weight in Europe that's getting these triband HSPA phones to do 1700Mhz. In fact, the Samsung Galaxy might not even come out over here and has T-moUSAs AWS.
I really hope they put out an ATT friendly version of this phone, since in NJ, Tmobiles coverage is like swiss cheese it has so many holes.
Don't believe me, check out their coverage chart.
With ATT i can pretty much drive anywhere and never lose coverage.
Isn't roaming free with T-mobile plans? Shouldn't the handsets switch to AT&T towers, when T-mobile is not available, if you are using an unlocked phone like any of the Nokias?
Hary536
if you notice the tech specs on the N900 only allow it to use T-mobile's 3g bands.... t-mobile was smart and stuck with whatever Europe is using for their 3g and HSPA... so any phone that gets sold in Europe can just work with whatever T-mobile has going
ATT on the other hand decided to use their own
Europe uses 2100 mhz,where north america (ATT) uses 850/1900
@Break
Lol what are you smoking? T-Mobile's 3G combination isn't used by anyone else *anywhere,* much less Europe. If it was, don't you think more people would be importing the Hero? The only phones that will do 3G with T-Mo are the phones they sell themselves. It uses both the 1700 and 2100 bands, won't work with just one or the other.
@Break,
Even if it does not have AT&T 3g bands, it is quad-band gsm, so atleast you can use it as a phone anywhere in US, plus
you can fall back to 2g when 3g is not available, whether that is enough or not, depends on how much you travel in a normal day.
But yes, if you are tied to contract to another carrier, you may not prefer to break it and go to Tmobile, unless Nokia followed
Apple's footsteps in marketing to lure people to AT&T.
awesome hack... i feel an iphone would have been even better, considering its notoriety for not having a physical keyboard
This shows that how "Open" and flexible Nokia wants to make their mobile OSes.
It's a big bugger. Perhaps too big.
And yet I can't control my feelings of lust for this device.
It's okay, it comes with a built-in carry handle!
And it's tough enough to resist all those bumps life brings!
I hope the poster is smart enough to realize this is nothing more than a publicity shot for this PUSH thing...
1) There is no reason for the arduino in the picture
You have a linux distro running on an ARM, why do you need an atmega168?
2) There is no reason for the bluetooth module in the picture
You have integrated bluetooth, why would you possibly need to hook a separate bluetooth module to a device that already has one?
Granted, I went and RTFA to find out this is actually how they modded the old device...
I cannot for the life of me figure out why they chose such a convoluted path..
This maybe a publicity stunt... but your points regarding the interface is not correct.
1. Arduino is needed to interface the physical keyboard already on the toy.
2. The bluetooth module is used to communicate with the Arduino and N900 (easier to implement using a bluetooth-to-serial than a direct USB interface)
The whole point of the project is to show the ease of interface/hacking capability of the N900 and to code without any restrictions on what you can do with UR phone ;)
Cheers
If it was an iPhone - Apple would've immediately remote-detonate it or something... They can't really stand the possibility that someone would actually want to do whatever he wants with something he bought...
Blog spam.
Link to the source: http://tinker.it/now/2009/09/15/rewind-rethinking-old-school-devices-using-the-nokia-n900
ET phone home
Now let's type some words.