Solder Together Your Own Smart Phone, With Ringo

The Ringo MakerPhone by Circuitmess is a pretty interesting kit. The concept of making your own phone has been visited a few times, but I feel they’ve got an interesting approach. You’re basically making something that feels like an old Nintendo Gameboy, that can also make calls

The kit comes with all the parts very neatly packed and labelled, there’s no confusion there. I also got the additional toolkit that includes everything you need, including a tiny soldering iron.

Assembly was pretty easy, and took me much less than the 5 hour time they say to set aside, but I can solder pretty quickly. Actually, I may be soldering too quickly as I ended up frying a board while trying to set up a pretty macro shot of soldering.

The system runs on CircuitOS, which allows for simply block style programming of games and other concepts. Of course if you’re a more advanced user, you can jump to some more lower level programming and get right at the ESP32 at the brains of Ringo.

The cost for the phone itself is $169 and you can pay an additional $10 to have them assemble before shipping, if you’re more interested in programming than soldering.

Available now in the Maker Shed.