New tutorial in the Adafruit Learning System: PiPhone – A Raspberry Pi based Cellphone

Ever wanted to build you own cellphone? Well now you can with this guide that uses a Raspberry Pi, PiTFT, and a FONA to make a functional cellphone that you can call your friends with!

Things You’ll Need:

In some situations a USB to TTL Serial Cable may be the preferred way to log in and configure the Raspberry Pi, if a spare keyboard and monitor are unavailable.

Some additional parts, tools and skills are also required: soldering iron and solder for putting the connectors on the PiTFT display, and connecting the DC-DC converter to the Pi; some means of holding all the pieces together — could be as simple as a few rubber bands, to a drilled-out plastic electronics enclosure, to an elaborate custom 3D-printed case. This all depends on your available resources. Read through to see what’s involved in the project and come up with ideas along the way.

For connectors an wiring, the 26-way pin header is supplied with the PiTFT, but for ease of wiring I’d suggest soldering the needed wires directly rather than using the pin header, as you’ll need to source a connector to go on to it. But if you do have the relevant connector and crimpt tool, thats all good too.

Check out David Hunt’s blog for more about this project and other great projects!

If you want to see the original PiPhone in action, check out Dave’s video. It uses an older GSM card, but you’ll get the idea.

See the full tutorial here!