yeah that sounds solid but I would not like remembering to charge it as well as the board. Maybe battery life would be ok though.
I have wanted a phone mounted as a display for the board, I’m not sure why more people have not tried it. Besides the screen for speed and range It could function as a ride/GPS tracker and a music player.
Solid combo for only…
free.99 since you have one.
I clearly remember a period where every phone i owned would work without the battery and just the charging cable connected. If something in the era of android jellybean/kitkat can run vesc tool and/or metr, those things were indestructible and lasted months de-googled
you can take the battery out and solder wires to the battery contacts also. I did that to poke around an old phone. I wonder if you could pull ~3.7V off a VESC power rail and hook that up and if it would draw too much current.
Anyone know the max current for the 3.3V rail?
A phone can pull close to 1A if it’s screen on, scanning for gps and cpu loaded. Definetly not a good idea. Maybe a buck converter?
oh wait duh you could hook up the 5V output of the VESC to the USB charge port…
That would avoid any current spike also my idea of hooking up directly without a battery would be dumb because then it could not track when powered off.
Buck would be good, maybe they have dual 12V/5V ones
I still think touching the vesc voltage coming from the rails used to drive the mcu is a really bad idea and is calling for shutdowns mid-ride
yep even if careful you could buck it up badly.
best to use a fuck’n buck’n converter
I have heard of people powering tail lights off the 5V rail so I bet that would work fine.
Hey actually the idea of @Gabegds2001 of recycling a phone itself is a good alternative, just need to at least support 3G and be unlocked to cover most networks 
if it is to put inside enclosure, for example something similar to a Wiko Lubi might be enough? Don’t know how accurate the GPS is on this.
This or a second hand older phone with touchscreen if indeed you wanna telemetry and all.
Well, unless a full fledged tracker competes both in accuracy performance and price + size!
If it turns out possible to make it work worldwide, is anyone else interested in a uk/eu group buy?
I’m asking because shipping is $15 for a $20 item
Yea I need one for my scooter. I have a VAT number now too so I can re-distribute to Europe essentially without any chance of being double-taxed.
He said “no support”; buy at own risk.
The support page is literally removed too… i read it a long while ago and it said something about worldwide coverage as “should work, no reason not to, good luck testing tho” but i don’t want to talk out of my ass here
I wasn’t asking for a million dollars, just asking if the tracker is carrier locked.
@BuildKitBoards
As @Athrx said, the help page is down anyway which is 
It’s not carrier locked. Just needs a 2G network connection.
Installation article is here:
@Anubis clear the stock now lol. I will pay you right now for one then top up for whatever taxes/duties and if any remain, i will grab a spare too
Yep so I talked with Andrew and indeed, it runs only when the board is on.
It’s also not a tracker because as @rpasichnyk mentioned
It’s a module to combine with the the robogotchi.
Robogotchi is the brains and memory while the GPS module does the locating a tracking like a METR. The difference is that the logs stay inside the robogotchi so you don’t need a phone with you at all times.
I believe the Metr CAN has this function as well, but it also needs an external GPS module I think.
In neither case this is a GPS tracker in the sense of what we are looking for though.
Hope this clears up any confusion that I may or may not have made 
@athrx and @PixelatedPolyeurthan did either of you order the bkb one and does it work outside the US?
also is there a way to share your sim with the one inside the tracker so you dont have to pay twice for coverage?
