Mp3 Player
Last night I had an idea, I need an mp3 player, my sony walkman is dead, and an ipod classic goes for 150 aud... So my idea was lets build one then?
This is also probably a better first electrical engineering project than a dumb phone. Instead of spending 3 hours making the symbol and footprint for a cellular chip, i spent 3 hours putting together the entire schematic for the mp3 player. Most of that is because I already knew basically what it needed to do; power the esp32, power and data to the screen and audio dac, input for 5 buttons and a hold switch to not take input while its in your pocket.
And when I made a very rough bill of materials (before chassis and pcb cost). It landed at $90 dollars, which is a lot less than the $200 i had for the dumb phone. add 20 bucks for odd parts i didnt account for, 30 for pcb manufacturing, 50 or something for a resin 3d print of the chassis and it will be more expensive than just buying an mp3 player that works... but this'll be more fun.