Originally Posted by woody14619 (Post 893639)

While looking, could you also look for something for me? :)

I've been toying with the idea of using a mylar ribbon cable, and a micro USB male/female connector set to "move" the micro USB port on the N900. This would reduce the chance of the on-board connector separating, as it would protrude only about as much as a standard case (and thus with a case on would be flush).

The problem being, where to put the female connector in such a way that it's also flush with the surface. I really don't care where it comes out of the case, as the ribbon is quite flexible. It could run under a compartment, and preferably under the outer case to wherever there is space to embed the female port. The problem is the width/height/depth of the port. Finding a space that's at least 7.8mm x 2.8mm with at least 3.8mm depth into the device is tough.

If you spot any area that looks large enough for that, I'd love a pointer to it. :)

Originally Posted by theonelaw (Post 893624)

TriCorder yup sounds like a killer app to be sure.

We could even hack a compass into your fm transmitter-receiver
notion - I am quite busy with other things but this sounds like
it could be a game-changer for the n900 usage.

I have my spare disassembled and am looking for space to
put a coil for just such a hack - looks like the only site would be
near the stylus insertion hole, which suggests an idea.
If we replaced the stylus with a long air coil it might be
possible to wire that into the FM side and get some interesting
results from ambient fm noise (I do work on ambient noise
data acquisition techniques in geophysics so it fits right in)
Any compass app would need to integrated with accelerometer
data to provide an orientation basis.

All this might hinge on being able to (quickly) toggle FM
transmit and receive functions (which may be too slow for interaction detection):(
but a passive coil on receive only might at least be useful
for detecting metal as the induction change from nearby
ferro-magnetics might be detectable by noise attenuations.:)

Originally Posted by zimon (Post 893638)

I just want FM-radio to work without headphones plugged in.
Having stylus as a FM-radio antenna sounds interesting and patentable. Let's license it here and now with GPL3.

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