There's been a very cool development with the T-Display pager sub-project. A colleague, who currently does not wish to be named, has developed a PCB to make the build much easier and way more professional than the mess of wires in my builds.
For now, I'm just putting some initial info out about it, to gauge interest and possibly setting up for custom orders on PCBway.
Here is what it looks like with components installed:
These are the various components, before assembly:
I am now using the LLCC68 LoRa module, as it is about half the price of an sx1262, and works just as well. (it's just the LoRaWAN folks who are out of luck with this module) All up, the components (minus the PCB) come to about $38 USD, making it a very economical build!
The PCB supports multiple, optional methods for getting notifications:
vibration motor
LED strip
buzzer
There are solder bridges to enable these. Unfortunately, these cannot be enabled/disabled independently via software/on-screen menus, like in some other pager builds, as the T-Display doesn't have enough available GPIO's :-(
Here is the back of the PCB, where the LoRa module is soldered SMT-style, and where the 1S lithium battery connected:
This is the initial prototype, and I've now designed a 3D-printed case for it. Here are the first two prototype complete builds:
Anyway, that's about it for now. If you are interested in making one of these please drop a message.