ladyada's comments

You may be able to use one of these

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/bud-industries/USB-...

it looks rather cute! see: https://blog.adafruit.com/2011/03/04/part-finder-friday-clea...

board respin required...either position the button so you squeeze the enclosure to press the button (it flexes a bit), or drill a small hole (use a jig to get the drill bit in the right location

enclosure co's will also customize/drill holes for you but its probably easier for you to just diy!

http://imgur.com/a/Z1hyd has a few parts labeled

theres a main processor which is way overpowered (the big TQFP part) which is covered by a plug-in 2G GSM/GPRS modem. You can 'sniff' the modem control pins, its almost certainly the standard plain 'AT' command set used for these modems, at 9600 or 57600 baud, 3.3V logic

The plug in module looks a lot like a SIM300 or Spreadtrum 5100b. It probably had an IMEI sticker that was pulled off. Theres probably a dozen makers of nearly identical modems during that time period. This one looks fairly old since its a plug-in type. I'd guess the GSM module is at least 5 yrs old

On the other side is a standard 32-pin NAND flash, you could desolder and then use a NAND-reader kit (google etc) to suck the data off. its probably just the GPS coordinates stored between modem data uploads.

SIM holder, some crystals, power circuitry, and a (95% sure) uBlox GPS - the uBlox have that funny shape and pinout. uBlox have high sensitivity so a good choice! unclear which generation this us, they're up to Neo-8. You could decap it to find out.

probably the most fun could be had by first figuring out the RX/TX pins from the microcontroller to the GSM/GPRS module, then soldering thin wires to that and listening with a UART TTL cable. Put in a new SIM, wait a few seconds for the GSM module to get onto the cell network, then quickly faraday it up and see what website, IP address or phone number the micro is trying to connect to. ymmv tho, might just be a random drop point.

(theres a bunch of chips with no clear markings, could be motion/accel/gyro or other sensors - @ioerror if you post up the #s on each chip it'll be easier to tell! :)

edit: i thought about the huge coin cell battery backup. its a bit odd, quite large sized! if its well designed, the microcontroller will detect that the battery has been disconnected, and while on backup coin cell power quickly erase the NAND flash and microcontroller memory :(

still finishing the final board layout (it's not out yet!) https://plus.google.com/112526208786662512291/posts/2qmVHpkn... :)

eInk is very slow refresh, about a second...not fun for a laptop. Pixel Qi displays work better: have TFT-speed refresh with sun-light readability. Indoors its a color display. Outdoors you can turn off the backlight to conserve power.

If your computer/laptop has VGA/HDMI or composite out you can use our Pixel Qi+Controller kit http://www.adafruit.com/products/1303 for modern laptops with a 40 pin LVDS cable you can just do a swap out as long as the screen's the same dimensions.

liked this? want more? you might want to also read my kinect reverse-engineering how-to article at http://learn.adafruit.com/hacking-the-kinect

I assure you that just because two adapters look the same do not have any relation to the insides. (After all, counterfeit Apple adapters look the same as genuine ones, but you wouldn't think they are the same on the inside after reading this article.) The black plug casing is a common molding style used by many factories - but its the electronics inside that count :) The best way to know if they are identical is to look for the UL certificate number, those are unique to each design.

We have a photo of our label here http://www.adafruit.com/images/large/ID501label_LRG.jpg

Hi Rhizome, adafruit does not distribute the specific USB charger we carry at Frys - sorry to hear you had a bad experience with them but it was certainly not the same one from the adafruit shop the parent poster was referring to!

Good question! I test all the products in the adafruit shop for quality and functionality :)

I tried out half a dozen 5v/1a adapters and this one was the winner - best performance and a very good price for UL listed. The most important points: It has the 'iDevice' resistors and has very good voltage regulation - extremely clean, no big voltage spikes. When loaded down 1A it stays around 5.2V, I actually pulled 1.5A and it was still above 5V. I opened a few up to look at the construction and found it well designed with good soldering, strain relief etc. In the product description I explain why its a 5.25V not 5V adapter - its perfect for high-current devices like the Raspberry Pi and we have thousands of customers who have happily used it for the Pi.

for what my word is worth, please let me put in a vote for LiFe - i know they're not as energy dense but you may not need as much armoring on the pack. you can say its good for 2ce as many charges and uses a safer battery - which can increase perceived value.

let the ultra-modders swap in LiCo's on their own - they'll do it anyways.

there's a techcrunch-story-future that i'd really like to see you avoid! :(

Hi! Did you choose to go with LiFe or LiCo's?

ah, you are conflating two things. the hacker scene is full of assholes, but they are not the batshit crazy people. so all the fucked up people you're thinking of? no, i'm saying there are other people, and they are /much much/ worse because they dont even have a 'scene' with basic social pressures and 'outing' them has no effect

""I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and female. They are all extremely touchy about this subject. They are touchy because crazy shit like this happens to them all the time.""

This is very true. unbelievable crazy batshit stuff happens to me -all the time-. Like "Police report filed" crazy. Like "I no longer open up any letters or packages unless I am positive I know who sent it" crazy. Like "I have to make sure that wherever I live, there is a camera at the doorbell and multiple doors before they can get in" crazy.

Its not a majority of guys, and some even 'mean well' but you only need to have it happen to you once to decide that the stress of knowing something crappy will happen to you if you attend X event, is not worth the benefit of attending X.

2) the open kinect libraries do not in any way modify the kinect hardware, firmware or otherwise. there is no 'jailbreaking' involved here. its a -usb driver-!

good god, i wrote this nearly -five- years ago

please do not take it seriously at this point, its completely outdated

hiring processes depend a lot on luck, way more than maybe we'd like to think, mostly based on who you know and whether the person across the table 'likes' you or not, and what positions are available. but she succeeded in the real world internship position she held and did good enough work that other people vouched for her to become an employee. that probably wasn't a 'lucky break' at all.

see also: pachube.com

then you will be thrilled to learn that the "spoon fed development environment" is C/C++ with avr-glibc!

1. the BS was also revolutionary, and obviously the arduino references it, but the BS did not evolve in the last 10 years.

2. you could say the same thing about computers, crystal radios and solar panels, this is a really weak argument. we are talking about a specific product area and a group, Arduino is a great improvement, hell even having cross-platform capability (one of many details) much less a simple IDE was a pipe-dream.

3. "in the grand scheme of things", nothing except photosynthesis has been very effective. if you have a scheme in mind, you should specify it. yes Microchip gives away a lot of PICs, but they give away PICs to EEs and companies. the 150K people here are -not- all EEs, they are mostly -other- kinds of people. they are not people making products. people who make products never ever use dev boards in the final design, but at least with Arduino its bare AVR so you can reuse the code on raw chips whereas with BS you are screwed.

4. the 555 did win and its here to stay; it is a mainstay of electrical engineering and is used in products all the time. the LM101, ironically, did not.

why are you disagreeing when the middle of the article is all about the great community. its easy to say 'community!' the point of the article is that community isnt something that just -happens- magically because you have a forum, there are concrete (and sometimes technical!) things were taken care of first in order to allow a critical mass community to form.

things don't have to last 20 years to be revolutionary. arduino has set the bar very high. basic stamp was good for a few years but it was closed, weak, proprietary and expensive. people should be happy/impressed/annoyed that in this case, open source is much better than the proprietary product and its still very young.