JanOS

Hardware

iot board os

SHOW HN2015

JanOS

A new OS that turns your smartphone into an IoT board

janos.io

#iot#firefox os#smartphone#gpio#embedded

123points
23comments
#190of 2,565 in 2015
Top 8%of 2015 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

4 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 4 critical, out of 14 comments about the project. Thread score -0.03.

Idea: 3 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 3 againstPricing: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Good idea for reusing old smartphones as IoT boards

    From 3 comments
    • This is what I've been looking for. I didn't want to have to create something like this myself, but wanted to be able to reuse older smartphones lying around. I don't know if I…
      aceperry on HN
    • Would device donations be of any use to you? I love the idea behind this project. It would be great to see "out of the box" support on some more accessible devices.
      saschlac on HN
    • This reminds me of projects from 10 years ago where people made small robots out of Palmpilots. http://hiqnews.megafoundation.org/News_of_the_Ultranet-Summer-2001_Robotics.html…
      Eric_WVGG on HN

Objections

  • Supported devices are discontinued

    From 1 comment
    • Interesting approach. I notice, though, that all three of the officially supported devices (the Keon, the Peak, and the Flame) are discontinued.
      mwcampbell on HN
  • Cheap $30 phones hard to get outside Asia and not worth buying

    From 2 comments
    • For anyone interested, the $30 smartphone seems to be from a special Christmas time deal from CherryMobile [1] (a Filipino phone retailer) and may only have been valid at brick…
      ecma on HN
    • I went to the trouble of getting an Intex phone. Even for its price it's not worth it - even if I can build the JanOS/FFOS sources I don't think I have the driver to flash the…
      voltagex_ on HN
  • Many phones lack easily exposed GPIO

    From 2 comments
    • I have been able to use the modified System application on my own firefoxos-based boards. However, for GPIO I have used a background process based on NodeJS (which exposes the…
      gbraad on HN
    • ... of the GPIO on the SoC, you only have some of the exposed buttons a device might have. Far from ideal... also, at the moment FirefoxOS itself does not have a notion of GPIO…
      gbraad on HN

Requests

  • Support for more accessible devices

    From 1 comment
    • Would device donations be of any use to you? I love the idea behind this project. It would be great to see "out of the box" support on some more accessible devices.
      saschlac on HN

Questions

  • Is it a fork of Firefox OS?

    From 1 comment

Alternatives named

  • Arduino with GSM shields

    From 2 comments
    • RadioShack is closing a lot of stores, many of which sell Arduino things. I got two ~$60 MSRP GSM shields for $24 a piece. Pair that with the minimal T-Mobile $3/month sim ...…
      colechristensen on HN
    • For anyone interested, the $30 smartphone seems to be from a special Christmas time deal from CherryMobile [1] (a Filipino phone retailer) and may only have been valid at brick…
      ecma on HN
  • Geeksphone Keon

    From 1 comment
    • For anyone interested, the $30 smartphone seems to be from a special Christmas time deal from CherryMobile [1] (a Filipino phone retailer) and may only have been valid at brick…
      ecma on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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