New lease of life for old N900?
 

What can we do to give our old N900 new lease of life? Any ideas/proposals to use old N900 devices?

Games - new phone (Android) games are better
Camera - new phone camera is better
GPS - can't get voice navigation

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

if you search hard, Sygic Mobile Maps 10 can be installed, but, maps are very old as they stopped in ... well, years ago.

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

yes, we all hope more updated today apps and "clients" , just like yappari

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Nope, maps for Malaysia (where I am) is not and has not been available long, long time ago. :mad:

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Waze (from repos) and Navit (from bokomoko repos http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=38800&page=52) have voice navigation

http://wiki.maemo.org/Navigation_Tools

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Marble can do voice nav, though it doesn't override mediaplayer so if you're using the FM transmitter to play podcasts or suchlike on the car radio you won't hear it.

I'm trying to get extkbd set up so I can use an old n900 with knackered SIM connector as a computer n my big screen via tv-out and SCART adapter.

If you have a UK proxy you can use a combination of get_iplayer and alarmed to download all the BBC content you want for later perusal. I also use alarmed with the command line of gpodder to get all the podcasts I'm subscriber to overnight when my wifi is unlinited.

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

For about $10 and a USB host cable you can make a N900 into a pretty insanely capable radio scanner, better than any of the scanners at Radio Shack selling for $200-300 or more.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=91182

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

You must have thought about the universal IR remote control thanks to the software called Pierogi?

My old JVC amplifier has no more remote and volume knob is behaving erratically, potentially damaging the speakers but N900 came to the rescue.

The quick document scanner application "Frontview" is still one of the most user friendly softwares. Thanks to the resistive screen - stylus operation. A guilded paperweight N900 still makes sense ;)

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

I was thinking about a case mod...
I think that if neo900 will continue and give a new life to n900 it could be cool if someone(maybe someone with 3d printer) could make a new design or redesign the old n900 and give him a new more modern look!

I mean many people get a phone only because of the look and the design! Even if we want a phone capable to do many things, like n900 does, what stops us from making it look better too?

I think that the look of the n900 is a little outdated(it looks more like a -powerful- brick :P)! It could be awesome if we, as community, we could start making a new design for the n900 hardware and making a new, more attractive case, without changing anything else(like the screen etc...)

What do you think? :D

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

What about the BP-4L of the n900? :D
It is a little thinner than the BL-5J but a lot bigger, but I am sure that with some modifications it could fit and it has 1500mAh ;)

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Use my old E7 as a media player these days thanks to the HDMI out :)

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Done. I now effectively have a little (easy)Debian box hooked up to my TV, controlled via a BT keyboard with trackpad, which can act (in maemo) as a BBC PVR. This is being posted via chromium in easydebian on said telly...

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Tell me just one modern phone standing off the crowd like N900 did 4 years ago.

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

I can't find one(maybe someone has one who knows), but this is not a reason for not making it look better! In this way it will stay with us for even more time ;)
Giving the n900 a new breath with a new design(like the neo900 project does for hardware upgrade) it will be really awesome and let us keep our n900's for even more time! :rolleyes:

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Yep if n900 looks are changed it would be refreshing.

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

I've got to try the universal IR remote control. Thanks.

The remotecontrol app is boss! Great for having fun in a public place (eg. snackbar or döner toko or those 'normal' tv's at the trainstation), one of the best for the N900. :)

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Ah Ah! I never thought of this!

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

As an aside, using the SDR allows sideband reception, the only way the current free to use amateur communication satellites operate as they have a transponder receiving a slice of UHF bandwith which they send back down on the VHF band.
I do not know of a sub $1k scanner which can do sideband or even AM.

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Here's a thought; is it possible to get skype or googletalk to work on the main camera, either natively or via Easy Debian? If so, an N900 could give any TV with a composite or SCART input smart-TV like video calling capability.

EDIT: It also gives the opportunity to play media off other UPNP devices on a not-so-smart TV.

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Well, a bit off-topic, but still. About 4 years ago, when tablets were just entering the market, I got various chinese ones just to resell. Among those, there was one of particular interest for me back then. It was 7" resistive screen (800x480) Android tablet with the following hardware:
TI OMAP 3530 Cortex A8 clocked at 600MHz
RAM of 256 MB
WiFi 802.11b/g
MicroSD slot
USB OTG port
GPS
3000 mAh removable battery
Stereo speakers
Stylus, kickstand
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yeah, I wondered back then of the posibility to port Maemo to such a similar hardware. That would be the groundbreaker, had it actually become reality. Eventually, I sold it very quickly, so I had not had much time to play with that thing. I'll try to find some more info, maybe photos. That could be the first of Maemo-powered tablets, had Steven Flop not killed the Meego-Maemo lineage.

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

Another thought, gleaned from other threads and blogs: a permanently plugged in N900 as a security camera, either permanently recording (starting a new file each hour, for example, and deleting the oldest one after a predefined period) or on some sort of trigger, either when a sound threshold is reached (a la Babyphone) and/or when the camera's input changes (eg a significant difference between 2 frames; I have no idea how difficult that would be to code.)

This last is where it gets more fun. The device's wi-fi is of course on - what, you thoght storing security footage on the device only, which an intruder could nick, was a good plan? That's what the cloud's for. On trigger, the device could send a message via any one of a plethora of protocols, alerting you. Could we stream the video across the net to see what's happening? Of course, the low-light video mode's not much cop, so why not have the trigger also have the device tell wi-fi controlled lights to come on, both to give a better view and to startle any intruder?

Re: New lease of life for old N900?
 

It appears someone has not only thought of that, but already written the software: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=86285