Am I missing something or is there really no vibrate alert on the N800? Really stinks when I'm in a meeting or somesuch...or am I too dumb to figure out how to make it work? Could be....if you check my previous post...

Holly

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Vibrate requires a motor or similar actuator. You can't enable on the N800 what doesn't exist.

I miss that feature too.. not only for meetings, it's impossible to hear the start-chat sound from google or skype when the N800 is in the jacket pocket.

I think most phones use a motor which spins an unbalanced weight in a circle to produce the vibration effect. I don't believe the N800 even has one of these. It would be nice to have in a future device, but I wouldn't want it to push out almost any other functionality as a result or be forced to make the device bigger.

Those motors throw out tremendous EMF, especially small ones since they require very powerful magnets to be effective. That requires shielding. Not saying it *couldn't* be done at all, but if it was a decision based on space, and including it meant something else had to go, then like Rocket I'm ok with it missing.

The LED could conceivably fit the bill for a silent alert, although it would require the device being in line-of-sight (not a showstopper, is it?).

Isn't there a led already under the dpad. Perhaps it could be used for notifications.

Yes, that's the one I was referring to, sorry.

Well, the EMF must not be so bad, as they have been in cell phones forever and those tend to have even more extreme space & weight restrictions.

I found a video of a motor in action. They really are quite small. You can see the video here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykpa5r1bWeE

I also found a good page on tiny electric motors (including cell phone vibrating motors) care of David Cook, whom I have bumped into at a couple robotics related events in the Seattle area.

http://robotroom.com/TinyMotor.html

Oh, come on boys, be creative: A USB host mode, a USB spark plug, a little semtex...

It's not that difficult.

Well, yeah, I know they're in phones but perhaps the potential interference wasn't an issue for whatever reason. And I wasn't focusing on that as much as I was the space issue... which I took that you shared.

But I'm wondering now... would a piezo membrane do the job?