Secure Phones: WiPhone VoIP Customizable

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WiPhone, A Phone for Hackers and Makers
WiPhone is a VoIP mobile phone designed to be easily modified,
repurposed, and adapted.

Ben Wilson
1 Campaign | San Francisco, United States
$134,899 USD by 950 backers
$90,340 USD by 673 backers on Apr 16, 2019 with another platform
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UPDATES 26
COMMENTS 80
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What is the WiPhone?
WiPhone is a unique, minimal phone.

It's designed to enable hackers by making it easy to extend and modify
the electronics and software. Something typical phones are not good
for.

WiPhone is also a VoIP mobile phone. It uses WIFI to make HD voice
calls, for free. This means that there is no required service contract
- and it's yours for life.

For Hackers:
WiPhone: Business In The Front, Party In The Back


Yet So Stylish And Sophisticated!



WiPhone: Perfect for both hardware hacking AND trips to the business factory.



 WiPhone Pro with Clear Front Face:


Smartphones Are A Little Too Smart
What's the best platform you can imagine for electronics hacking?

It should probably be adaptable, powerful, and programmable. Small and
portable would be nice. Maybe with a durable case? What about a built
in user interface with things like an LCD screen and button panel? A
battery and built-in charging system? Wireless connectivity?

Hey... we just described a mobile phone!

But why aren't people building more projects based on their
smartphones? Well, there are a few issues:

no electrical connectors to directly connect to the outside world
no way to easily control the low level hardware, like processor output pins
opaque development environment and huge IDE
not designed for easy disassembly, repair, or modification
Enter WiPhone:


WiPhone solves these problems and gives hackers, makers, and engineers
the tool we all wish our phones could be. Nice package, direct access
to I/O, an easy to program ESP32 processor. All the basics are already
set up: user interface, power management and on/off circuit, working
code.

You can get straight to work building your project, not setting up the
boring parts like power management again and again. And once you're
done it's durable and looks great. No ratsnest of wires or ugly stack
of dev boards just to get the basic functionality.



Modern smartphones are more and more a tool we don't own, but instead
one we're only allowed to carry around. One that serves the interests
of various tracking networks, corporate boards, and government
organizations. You don't own it, it owns you. It tracks you, serves
you ads, and sucks away your time with mindless dopamine hits. We want
a phone that's back in our control, optimized for our convenience.



Free Calling! No Hacking Required!

WiPhone is different beast from most smartphones these days. WiPhone
uses the existing WiFi around you to make HD Voice calls. For free.
Buy it once and it's yours.

Works on most broadband WiFi networks (including most home WiFi
connections). No service contract required, and you can even upgrade
the firmware or expand the hardware to do things it wasn't originally
intended for.

What Is This Magical Free Calling You Speak of? Tell me more...
Free calling starts with a SIP account. SIP stands for Session
Initiation Protocol, and it's a standard way to make call over the
internet. VoIP is a related term that you may have heard of. There are
commercial services that provide SIP/VoIP accounts, and some of them
have free accounts. Most consumers use VoIP apps like Skype and
Whatsapp, but we can still use the underlying technology directly.
After the campaign we'll spend more time testing services to make our
software and instructions work as seamlessly as possible.

Step 1: Get a SIP account (many different ways to do this, but we
wrote up a simple how-to that might get you started).

Step 2: Log in on your WiPhone using the credentials from your SIP
account (user name, password, and server):



Step 3: Make a Call:

That's it!

Note: we're still working through compatibility with various SIP
providers since many of them implement the standard in various ways.
Once the WiPhones ship we'll update our getting started instructions
to use the servers we find to be most reliable.

What people are saying about WiPhone:
“This is a great cross over between what people know (phones) and what
people really want to do (hack)." -Nathan Seidle, Sparkfun Founder

“The WiPhone is a really rather neatly put together project.”
-Alasdair Allan, Hackster.io

“If you want a phone that respects your right to repair, this is the
project to look at.” -Brian Benchoff, Hackaday.com

“So excited by this project I tried to make one myself” -Random Guy On
Our YouTube Channel



First Class Expansion Capabilities


WiPhone is expandable through daughter boards. The whole back of the
phone is a replaceable panel that accepts a standard 1.6mm thickness
PCB, which you can use to add whatever functionality you like.



Daughterboard PCB Design, Keepout Areas

Some Examples

We made a WiPhone into an RC car:



And we also made the coolest way to ever to answer a phone:



The daughterboard headers have power, digital I/O, and all the common
embedded busses like SPI, I2C, and UART.

Easy Development


Develop in Arduino/C++ or Python. We'll also provide basic tutorials
covering how to write to the screen, connect to the hardware, save
data to memory, etc.  We'll let you give us feedback on what's most
important to you.

No-Mess Prototyping

Build Your Prototype Right On The Back Of The Phone




Daughterboards are what make the WiPhone so unique. Pre-made designs
allow you to swap in functionality as you need it, or you can make
your own to easily and quickly prototype new ideas or customize your
phone to do the things you need.

LoRa


LoRa is a radio technology that enables sending short packets of data
over a long range (generally kilometers). The LoRa daughter board is
designed around the HopeRF RFM95W LoRa-enabled radio module. An
onboard 915 MHz PCB antenna makes the board handy and easy to carry
anywhere. For users who want more range, add an external antenna using
the U.fl connector.


Build Status and Prototypes
We've made a lot of progress already. VoIP calling works and we've
gone through over 5 generations of prototypes. The current phone
prototypes look and feel almost like production units.



WiPhone Prototyping Progression

Mechanical:

The units we have now are durable and look good. Can be carried around
in public without any bomb searches :).
Still need to do some reliability testing to make sure we have the
right material for the front screen cover (needs to be scratch
resistant), plating for the frame, etc.
Need to go through and set manufacturing tolerances for everything
Choose the final keypad material.
Electrical:

Most major bugs have been dealt with... the power system works and
doesn't use excessive power when it shouldn't, the mic and speaker do
what they need to without a lot of noise, and the connection to the
daughterboards has been used with a variety of daughterboards.
Need to do more extensive power testing since this is a common area
that devices can have problems with.
Need to build an automated programmer and tester.
Software:

We can make and receive calls.
Some SIP providers implement different methods for session initiation,
calling, etc, and we are currently testing various accounts and
working through bugs and adding abilities to use more providers.
Python apps and OTA firmware updates are yet to be implemented.







Build log also available here: Hackaday.io page

Song Credits

On My Way & Club Seamus by Kevin MacLeod

Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Press Kit

Risks and challenges

WiPhone is a hardware project, which means many, many things have to
happen correctly before it's finished. In general, you can expect any
new hardware project to have delays.

That said, we design, manufacture, and ship products all the time, so
we are confident we can solve any problems that come up.



Looking for more information? Check the project FAQ
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Select an option
WiPhone
$89 USD
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
72 claimed
Ships to many locations.
WiPhone + LoRa
$119 USD
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
53 claimed
Ships to many locations.
WiPhone Pro
$139 USD
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
30 claimed
Ships to many locations.
WiPhone Pro + LoRa
$169 USD
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
77 claimed
Ships to many locations.
2 Standard WiPhones
$169 USD
$178 USD (5% OFF)
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
11 claimed
Ships to many locations.
2 Standard WiPhones + 2 LoRa
$229 USD
$238 USD (3% OFF)
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
13 claimed
Ships to many locations.
2 Pro WiPhones
$265 USD
$278 USD (4% OFF)
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
1 claimed
Ships to many locations.
2 Pro WiPhones + 2 LoRa
$325 USD
$338 USD (3% OFF)
Estimated Shipping
Original: August 2019
Current: February 2023
20 claimed
Ships to many locations.
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TECH & INNOVATIONPHONES & ACCESSORIESARDUINODESIGNSMART PHONESIOTSMART HOME
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