this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2025
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Thanks! :) Currently it consist of multiple development boards soldered together.
Waveshare 13892 1.8inch LCD Module 12,90€ Waveshare SIM7600X 4G Module $59.99 Arduino Nano ESP32 19,20€
Which is maybe around 95€ with wires, prototype board and too much hot glue :)
Maybe it gets cheaper if I solder the components directly on the board as you should do in the final product. However I still have to learn how i do that.
I also should eventually switch to an actual ESP32 and take off the Arduino training wheels. But I will try to tackle one thing at a time.
Here you can see the OS more or less in its current form: https://social.bvoigtlaender.de/@bjarne/statuses/01K9CNYCG9Q34C3KF3FQWED9G2
It is written from scratch using CPP (The Arduino version of that).
Interesting! Crazy cool too IMO!
Is the nano esp just a beefy esp32?
Thanks! The "nano" belongs to the the Arduino side of the name actually. They have a family of boards called nano (which refers more to its small form factor rather than its performance I believe) and this is the ESP32 version of that.
I actually don't see through all the different ESP32 versions and their benefits, which is probably why i have sticked with the Arduino one so far. :)
Thanks!
Have been playing around with some of those boards (arduino & esp) but never seen that association :-)
Ha! One look at this and was certain an esp32 was involved! Just left a message yesterday about how I love that little chip so much!
Praise the chip!
Praise the chip! Fucking love looking at that little chip while it computes without breaking a sweat.
Do you know by any chance what the differences are between the different versions? Im a bit overwhelmed when it comes to that... Like what is your go to version when developing. ESP32-WROVER, ESP32-WROOM, ESP32-MINI, ESP32-PICO and all its sub-forms and devKit versions. I could probably just go with anyone of these but maybe there are some pitfalls.
I was trying to look up a very cool video I watched a few times that actually de-epoxied it down to the silicon itself, but it seems YouTube took it down. The actual chip set itself is usually only a few mms^2 like you see in the mini. The only difference, so far as I can tell, is the amount of gpio pins you have access to. And you spent wayyy too much with an Arduino flavored one(other than getting access to the full gpio pin out). But I bought them for a few $s(<$2) for a dozen of the og classics with the rf shield.
I also have fallen hard out of development after working itsec for a few years. My last academic encounter was with the attack with the fan ocilation frequency for an air gapped machine. So that's how out of date I am.
In my experience the hard part is to make it have low enough consumption to be ableable to run on batteries without draining them too quickly.
You'll probably have to ditch the one or more of the boards and replace them with the just the components (in the case of the GSM one, the module) which can be a bit complex to begin with if the board is generating its own voltage for the components and you don't know how to do it yet (look into voltage boost converters - probably needed for the GSM module - and buck converters - the most efficient way to get 3.3V from a LiPo battery - as you can find plenty of chips that do most of the work for you)
That said the ESP32 is very easy to run on its own once you have the 3.3V it needs - if I remember it correctly you need all of a single 10k Ohm external resistor to make sure RESET is pulled up - and you can still program it with the Arduino framework.
Once you're ready try designing your own circuit board with something like Kicad and have it done in one of the cheap Chinese retail circuit board makers like JLCPCB.
Yea, you are probably right. I did run it from a LiPo battery once as a testdrive, but the soldering was so sketchy I am too scared of leaving it like that :)... so I am not sure how long it would last with the dev boards in use + I have it connect to my computer most of the time anyways.
I will definitely have to learn how to design my own PCBs. I am sketching one with the dev boards on KiCAD just to get a feel for that. But want to try to completely transfer one of those dev boards as they are open source and see if I can swap them out without a problem.
I did look for PCBs makers in Europe to cut down on shipping costs, but its crazy how expensive they are, especially for prototyping. I really don't get that, as I would assume that the process without QA and packaging is completely automatic these days...
I've compared a few of the ones I've caught mention of in videos. Have you checked jlcpcb?
Yep, i have now. They are crazy cheap. Even including shipping. I will probably go with something like that, at least in the prototyping phase. Kinda wish the EU would invest more into chip and PCB manufacturing, not like the demand is going away any time soon...
So the main cost of all of it is the cellular data connection chip, right?
Yes, as of right now this is the case. I'm not sure how this would change if I directly use the chip instead of getting the one with training wheels incl. which are always way to expensive for what they really are.
Im also not really using it to its full potential. As the phone won't get any features that would explain 4G functionality for a long time, I could have probably gone away with a much cheaper one.