"Peek" handheld company calls it quits; Offers cheap handhelds for cheaper?

[Prometheus]

I'm sure this will be of interest to some folks here! (Goodness knows, it is to me, but I lack the technical skill to actually do anything with this. )


A company called Peek, which apparently released a handheld based around e-mailing via GSM in 2008, has called it quits, citing the expenses of operating in the US market as a reason for doing so.


The remaining stock of the device, which has a 2.5" QVGA display, QWERTY keypad, and is based on Texas Instruments' ARM7-based "LoCostco", will apparently be sold off to hardware hackers, who they are challenging to "build something great" with them.


The price is not mentioned, but an e-mail address to contact is. Apparently Peek will throw in tools so that those taking on the orphaned devices can work with them.


More information, and the e-mail address, can be found in this report from Linux for Devices.

 

[shinifish]

Ooh I could either find something to do with it or I could try and cannibalize it for parts that would be usefull in something I want to try and build, I just hope that the price will be right for me. (well hopefully I wouldn't damage anything in the process.)

 

[Prometheus]

I found it via this thread, for the record. It seems you need to pay for shipping, but that it appears to be a no-questions-asked thing.

 

[gadgetoid]

Damn, I'd love to get my hands on one of these! I suspect great things could be done with it. But I have neither the time, nor the money to be implementing obscure gadgetry from the US. Wife may, indeed, remove my testicles for even thinking about it.


Also, I don't possess the necessary skills to make great things happen! Booo... I really should work on changing that.

 

[erico]

You could use it to hijack a money machine like in terminator 2! If that kid can do it so can all of us!


Seems like a nice device, but I see more point into getting one of those raspberry pi or similar.


But I´m tempted.

 

[shinifish]

I sent an email and it looks like all that is needed is a prepaid envelope message below

Hey - we are psyched that you want to play with the Peek.


Sorry for the multiple mass mails but we got many thousands of requests and won't be able to read them all, even though we want to make sure everyone gets a reply of some kind.

• WARNING Peek's platform is not easy to work on; playing around with Android or iPhone is actually 10x easier. The TI platform at the heart of Peek is the Nucleus OS from Mentor, written in C/C++, compiled with a pretty old c compiler. The Peek code that is on there and talks to the Peek servers, but you can just grab the chipset and do whatever you want. If you know what you are doing with ROMs, bootloaders, etc etc you could make some cool stuff. So you will fail unless you are experienced or extremely persistent.
  
• INSTRUCTIONS
  
• visit http://www.peek.ly/blog/news/old-peeks-testbeds/
  
• send a prepaid label attached back amol+devpeek@peek.ly with a from address of Peek, 33 w 17th street, ny ny 10011 to wherever you are
  
• if you are overseas, it will be hard for you to do this. sorry
  
• we will drop a Peek, battery, charger in the envelope. About 0.5 lbs
  
• we'll post some tools and code
  
• you'll need to get a flashing cable (important and non-trivial)
  
• use http://peekhack.posterous.com as the hub for the community
  
• If you already sent a prepaid label, great. We have it. If you give up at some point or don't get a Peek soon, you can just cancel the label and get a refund from the carrier you used.
  
• We are going to go through every email with an attachment by hand and look at it. If there is reason to think the person who sent it is not skilled enough, we won't send you a Peek. Sorry but there aren't enough. So please include specifics on your background.
  

That's it. Happy Peeking,


Amol from Peek

 

[WizardStan]

Seems simple enough. If only I had any idea what I'd use it for.