FreeCalypso plans and direction update

[Pičugins Arsenijs]

Hey! Sorry for the delayed response - I'm still here and still reading
the posts, and I want to give this a proper response.

> I also need to address some misconceptions I have found out there on
> the Internet regarding our work:

> https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroPhone/comments/9rsukp/how_can_the_zerophone_owners_take_advantage_of/

> specifically this paragraph:

>>  In the future, it's possible they will have an "embedded" modem offering -
>>  I did read that idea on their mailing list some time ago, though it seems
>>  to died down in the last half a year (IIRC there was an old chipset-
>>  compatible Benq modem that could've been a target, but it turned out to
>>  not be compatible enough).
> Here is the situation with those BenQ M32 modems: taking the existing
> historical hw that was made by BenQ over a decade ago and trying to
> run FreeCalypso on it would be a non-starter, as they use a non-TI
> (looks like Silabs maybe) RF section behind our familiar Calypso+Iota
> baseband chipset.  Instead my idea was different from the beginning:
> my idea is to produce our own newly-made modem modules in the same or
> similar form factor, but using our choice of chipset including memory
> and RF, i.e., take *our* modem as implemented on the FCDEV3B and
> repackage it into a form factor copied from that old BenQ modem.

Yep, that's what I remember from the ML, so I tried to condense it down
into a short answer - sorry if it misrepresents the project in any way,
let me know if you want me to make any edits to the message

> Right now we have an awesome libre GSM+GPRS modem solution in the form
> of our FCDEV3B running fully source-enabled firmware, but the problem
> is its size: a whopping 90x50 mm.  Meanwhile, our proprietary
> competitors very successfully seduce the public into accepting locked-
> down and backdoored proprietary solutions with their sleek small
> packages: for example, the popular SIM800 module is only 24x24 mm.

Even smaller - the SIM800L we use is 16x18mm.

> I don't think we can ever make our FreeCalypso solution as small as
> 24x24 mm: [...explanation...possible solutions...]

> As the situation stands presently, I believe that the
> shortest way to put a FreeCalypso phone into the hands of an end user
> would be to make a hacked-up version of the ZeroPhone with our current
> 90x50 mm modem board (FCDEV3B) hacked in.

That's what I think, too. the 30mm*30mm project you've described is
quite an undertaking, and 2G is running away at the speed of, well,
planned obsolescence.

> As I understand it, the main "sandwich" structure of the ZP has 4x10 cm
> overall dimensions and is very tightly packed.  Trying to squeeze our
> FCDEV3B somewhere in there would involve two problems: our board is a
> centimeter wider than the main ZP sandwich, and there is no designated
> place in that structure to fit an "alien" board like ours.

> But here
> is what I am thinking: if you are going to use your ZeroPhone as an
> actual carry-around phone, you will need to make some custom case for
> it, right?  You are not going to try to carry a complete bare board
> stack of the ZP in your pocket, are you?

Yes and yes.

> If a custom case is required,
> perhaps someone who desires a Libre Phone badly enough would be willing
> to build a custom case that accommodates both the regular ZP sandwich
> and an FCDEV3B underneath?

That's what I was thinking, too. For example, it's not unimaginable
that someone could start with this: http://meetthebrick.com/eu/

> In order to increase the chance of someone stepping up to do what I
> just suggested above, I plan on doing the following: if the first
> batch of 8 FCDEV3B V2 boards which is supposed to be done in January
> turns out good, with all 8 boards (or least most of them) working, I
> am going to offer one fully subsidized board completely free of cost
> to the recipient (with the actual production cost of about $500
> covered by me) to anyone who steps forth to couple it with a ZeroPhone,
> and who would be willing to commit to aggressively promoting the
> resulting solution in various "free my phone" communities, spreading
> awareness of the existence, availability and viability of this
> solution.

>From my side, I offer a fully-assembled ZeroPhone, with any hardware
addons that could aid in the development of such a project.

> Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
> Mychaela aka The Mother

Cheers,
Arsenijs

10.12.2018, 02:05, "Mychaela Falconia" <mychaela.falconia at gmail.com>:
> Hello FreeCalypso community,
>
> This is a periodic update to keep everyone in the loop as to what I am
> doing with regard to our family of projects and what my planned
> upcoming steps are.
>
> 1) The first development which is expected to happen before all others
> is that about a month from now, in early to mid-January, we should be
> getting our first assembled FCDEV3B V2 boards from Technotronix, and
> it will be a moment of truth: will they work as expected? If the
> boards work as expected, I am going to make a few minor improvements
> to the firmware regarding sleep mode handling (hw with working sleep
> is a prerequisite for these minor fw changes), and I will start
> sending out subsidized boards to those FreeCalypso supporters who
> deserve them. The boards will also become available to commercial
> customers at the same time.
>
> 2) Assuming that the previous milestone happens without problems, my
> next step will be my long-planned experiment of connecting Calypso MCSI
> from our board to an off-the-shelf OMAP board (BeagleBoard-xM) by way
> of a small custom adapter which I still need to make. There are two
> fundamental ways in which a GSM modem can bring out the voice audio
> interface, analog or digital, some applications use or desire modems
> with analog voice interfaces (example: ZeroPhone), others use or
> desire modems with digital voice interfaces (examples: Neo900, other
> "modern" smartphone designs like Librem 5, and various GSM gateway
> applications), hence we need to offer both options. The GSM solution
> we've inherited from TI supports analog voice audio as its native way,
> whereas adding a digital voice interface option is a job they left for
> us to do. There are two entirely different ways in which one could
> bring out digital voice from a Calypso+Iota modem: one way is via MCSI,
> the other way is by tapping into VSP. MCSI is already brought out on
> our current FCDEV3B hardware, whereas playing with VSP would require
> taking the cost hit and adding the time delay of yet another board
> spin (quantitatively speaking, many thousands of dollars plus many
> months of time delay), hence I am going to make an all-out effort to
> get digital voice over MCSI working. But in order to test MCSI, I
> need to connect it to something, the McBSP on OMAP on the BeageBoard
> is the most practical thing I could find to which I can connect our
> MCSI for testing, but there is still that hurdle of having to make a
> little custom adapter.
>
> I also need to address some misconceptions I have found out there on
> the Internet regarding our work:
>
> https://www.reddit.com/r/ZeroPhone/comments/9rsukp/how_can_the_zerophone_owners_take_advantage_of/
>
> specifically this paragraph:
>
>>  In the future, it's possible they will have an "embedded" modem offering -
>>  I did read that idea on their mailing list some time ago, though it seems
>>  to died down in the last half a year (IIRC there was an old chipset-
>>  compatible Benq modem that could've been a target, but it turned out to
>>  not be compatible enough).
>
> Here is the situation with those BenQ M32 modems: taking the existing
> historical hw that was made by BenQ over a decade ago and trying to
> run FreeCalypso on it would be a non-starter, as they use a non-TI
> (looks like Silabs maybe) RF section behind our familiar Calypso+Iota
> baseband chipset. Instead my idea was different from the beginning:
> my idea is to produce our own newly-made modem modules in the same or
> similar form factor, but using our choice of chipset including memory
> and RF, i.e., take *our* modem as implemented on the FCDEV3B and
> repackage it into a form factor copied from that old BenQ modem.
>
> Why do it, what is the rationale? The answer is that in electronics,
> size matters, it matters a lot, but in the opposite way from how
> humans tend to think of it: the general dictum in the electronics
> industry is the smaller, the better. The imperative is to make all of
> our electronic components as small as possible; components of large
> bulky size are obstacles.
>
> Right now we have an awesome libre GSM+GPRS modem solution in the form
> of our FCDEV3B running fully source-enabled firmware, but the problem
> is its size: a whopping 90x50 mm. Meanwhile, our proprietary
> competitors very successfully seduce the public into accepting locked-
> down and backdoored proprietary solutions with their sleek small
> packages: for example, the popular SIM800 module is only 24x24 mm.
>
> I don't think we can ever make our FreeCalypso solution as small as
> 24x24 mm: SimCom were able to do it because they use much newer chips
> from MTK which are much more integrated (fewer discrete components),
> but the available documentation for these newer MTK chips is hopelessly
> inferior compared to what we got for our TI chipset, and in the case
> of MTK's reference fw for their chips, almost all of the interesting
> bits are binary-only, nothing like the quality of source leaks we got
> from TI. If anyone is thinking about taking our FreeCalypso fw and
> porting it to an MTK chip, what are you going to do with L1? Our L1
> talks to TI's Calypso DSP, and you would need to replace it with a
> very different L1 that talks to MTK's very different DSP. But there
> is absolutely zero documentation for that DSP or the interface to it;
> in the case of TI chipsets we don't have any real documentation for
> this part either, but we got TI's L1 code in full source form, whereas
> MTK's counterpart is a solid binary blob.
>
> But there is one possible compromise: we *can* make a FreeCalypso
> modem module that isn't as small as the MTK-based SIM800, but still a
> lot smaller than our current 90x50 mm: if we repackage our FreeCalypso
> Modem Solution into a form factor copied from BenQ's old M32 module,
> we will measure 33.8x36.8 mm. However, before we seriously pursue
> this idea, two prerequisites have to happen first:
>
> 1) We need to get our FCDEV3B V2 boards working and thereby prove that
> my approach for satisfying the reset timing requirements of Spansion
> flash chips actually works. If this approach turns out to not work,
> we have plenty of other alternatives, the simplest being to use one of
> the smaller flash+RAM chips which work fine with TI's classic approach
> - the huge flash and RAM capacity on our FCDEV3B is only needed for
> development and can easily be downsized in a production modem - but it
> would be much more comfortable to know for sure if our FCDEV3B V2
> approach works or not before jumping to any decisions. Just one more
> month of waiting left.
>
> 2) We need to come to a resolution on the digital voice issue before
> we start seriously thinking about the embedded modem module idea.
> Such a module would absolutely need to provide both analog and digital
> voice interface options - omitting either of them would be completely
> unacceptable. Fortunately no extra components will need to be added
> inside the module for either interface, it is only a matter of bringing
> out the right pins from the existing chips of our core modem chipset.
> For the analog voice interface we need to bring out EARN&EARP and
> MICIN&MICIP from the Iota ABB (and optionally the other less important
> analog signals from the same Iota ABB that were brought out on BenQ's
> module, if we are going to be copying their pinout with only minor
> changes), whereas for the digital voice interface we will need to
> decide between MCSI vs. VSP tap. MCSI is 4 signals, whereas my idea
> of tapping VSP would involve 5 signals. The decision will be pinned
> on the outcome of my MCSI-to-BeagleBoard experiment: if we can get
> MCSI to work reliably, it would make the most sense in terms of cost
> reduction to go into the embedded module phase with this MCSI approach,
> otherwise we would have to do another very slow and expensive
> development board spin with the VSP tap before we can come back to the
> embedded module idea - which is why I am pursuing the MCSI approach so
> vigorously.
>
> And then, after we resolve the two points above (hopefully in 2019Q1),
> comes the most unpleasant part of all: cost. Arsenijs wrote in that
> Reddit comment:
>
>>  Maybe if someone throws enough money at Mychaela, we'll have something
>>  small enough to fit inside the ZP =)
>
> As far as fitting inside the ZeroPhone, I remember you saying somewhere
> that it would have to fit within 24x24 mm or something similar to that
> - if your space constraints are that tight, then even my proposed
> 33.6x36.8 mm module wouldn't be good enough for you. However, for
> those who do like my 33.8x36.8 mm module idea, let me give you the
> cost figures: my estimate for the total project cost from the start to
> the point of having the first batch of modules produced and brought up
> to fully working state is about 30 kUSD. The following major cost
> steps will be involved:
>
> * Sending a sacrificial BenQ M32 module to a professional PCB reverser
> to slice it and image its inner layers - I will need to have a good
> idea of BenQ's layout before starting our own module layout using a
> similar (but not identical) chipset in the same form factor following
> the same floorplan or with only minor changes.
>
> * Finding and hiring a GSM cellphone RF design expert to provide some
> vital advice and guidance for some parts in our new RF section.
> Copying the RF section verbatim from BenQ won't work because we need
> to use TI's Rita transceiver (the one for which we have documentation
> and firmware driver code), and copying it verbatim from our current
> FCDEV3B (originally from Openmoko) won't work either because we would
> need a very different floorplan (one like BenQ's) to fit into that
> module form factor - hence we would have to bite the bullet and do our
> own RF layout. There is a little bit of silver lining though: because
> BenQ's floorplan matches TI's Leonardo, we should be able to make our
> new modem module quadband - in contrast, both our FCDEV3B and BenQ's
> original are triband. But there is no way to bypass the requirement
> of finding and hiring a GSM cellphone RF design expert.
>
> * After we get the key bits of advice and specific RF layout
> instructions from the to-be-hired GSM RF expert, we would need to hire
> someone to do the main bulk of the PCB layout job. Such PCB layout
> labor does not come cheap, and I would not feel comfortable entrusting
> this job to anyone other than my established PCB layout contractor
> with whom I have a good working relationship.
>
> * Once we have the PCB layout done for our new module, simply getting
> those module PCBs made and populated won't be enough - we will also
> need to design and build a special test fixture (a test board with a
> special custom-made spring socket for the modem modules to go into)
> for bring-up and RF calibration.
>
> Summing up all of the above is how I arrive at my rough order-of-
> magnitude estimate of about 30 kUSD for the whole venture. Needless
> to say, I am not in any position to cover such a cost myself, thus
> unless we get some sponsor or investor for it, this whole idea will
> forever remain nothing but a pipe dream.
>
> In the absence of a sponsor or investor giving us 30 kUSD to produce a
> modem module in this proposed 33.8x36.8 mm form factor, what can we do
> on our own? As the situation stands presently, I believe that the
> shortest way to put a FreeCalypso phone into the hands of an end user
> would be to make a hacked-up version of the ZeroPhone with our current
> 90x50 mm modem board (FCDEV3B) hacked in.
>
> As I understand it, the main "sandwich" structure of the ZP has 4x10 cm
> overall dimensions and is very tightly packed. Trying to squeeze our
> FCDEV3B somewhere in there would involve two problems: our board is a
> centimeter wider than the main ZP sandwich, and there is no designated
> place in that structure to fit an "alien" board like ours. But here
> is what I am thinking: if you are going to use your ZeroPhone as an
> actual carry-around phone, you will need to make some custom case for
> it, right? You are not going to try to carry a complete bare board
> stack of the ZP in your pocket, are you? If a custom case is required,
> perhaps someone who desires a Libre Phone badly enough would be willing
> to build a custom case that accommodates both the regular ZP sandwich
> and an FCDEV3B underneath?
>
> In order to increase the chance of someone stepping up to do what I
> just suggested above, I plan on doing the following: if the first
> batch of 8 FCDEV3B V2 boards which is supposed to be done in January
> turns out good, with all 8 boards (or least most of them) working, I
> am going to offer one fully subsidized board completely free of cost
> to the recipient (with the actual production cost of about $500
> covered by me) to anyone who steps forth to couple it with a ZeroPhone,
> and who would be willing to commit to aggressively promoting the
> resulting solution in various "free my phone" communities, spreading
> awareness of the existence, availability and viability of this
> solution.
>
> Finally, it would be rightful to ask why do we need a ZeroPhone or
> similar component in the first place, why can't we produce a complete
> FreeCalypso end user phone (a libre dumbphone) entirely on our own,
> without putting ourselves at the mercy of other people and their
> capriciousness? The answer is that we very much *can* produce our own
> complete FreeCalypso phone handset, and that idea is still very much
> in the plans, but it will be a very very slow journey, which is why I
> believe that the ZeroPhone approach would be much faster *if* we can
> get someone to do it. For those who are interested in the Calypso-only
> handset idea (no pies or other application processors), my current
> estimate of the timeline looks like this:
>
> * Absolutely nothing at all will happen between now and the big day in
> January when I get our first FCDEV3B V2 boards;
>
> * I will probably spend January fully testing these boards and getting
> our firmware and documentation updated for the new state of the project;
>
> * The rest of 2019Q1 and possibly going into 2019Q2 will be spent
> experimenting with MCSI and getting digital voice to work, using a
> BeagleBoard-xM for the other end of the interface.
>
> * Once I get MCSI fully working, I will need to spend more time and
> effort on documentation updates and aggressive marketing, spreading
> awareness of our fully complete modem solution and trying to find a
> sponsor or investor for my 33.8x36.8 mm modem module idea. This work
> will probably go till the end of 2019Q2.
>
> * Unless a miracle happens and I find someone to fund my modem module
> idea, in 2019Q3 I will finally switch my attention to the FreeCalypso
> handset project. I will then start working on some preliminaries for
> that project, but don't expect anything fast - it will probably be
> another year or two from that point before we will have our first
> prototype of my desired handset motherboard.
>
> Needless to say, all of these timelines can be sped up by at least an
> order of magnitude if someone were to throw a lot of money at me, as
> Arsenijs put it in his Reddit comment. But in order to *really* speed
> up the timelines, it would need to be a *frigging lot* of money, even
> more than the ~30 kUSD cost of the modem module idea, hence I am not
> holding my breath.
>
> Hasta la Victoria, Siempre,
> Mychaela aka The Mother
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