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tech

The hardware and software HALL is building

HALL is building its own tech: a phone, a computer, the Badge of Honor, and free editors for everything you make. Each project has a goal and a bar that fills as people fund it. The same bars are in project HALL, and money given in either place counts once.
HALL phoneHALL computerBadge of HonorHALL software

HALL phone

Our own phone, with our own operating system
The OS
The open Android base with no Google inside. Your data stays on your phone unless you choose otherwise.
HALL built in
Messages, calls, video, radio and your wheel, without a single app store download.
The first run
5,000 phones made with a manufacturer partner, certified for US carriers, sold straight to members.
Yours to keep
A battery and screen you can swap yourself, parts sold at cost, and years of security updates.

HALL computer

A laptop, and HALL OS free for any computer
HALL OS
Linux underneath, HALL on top: the free editors, your files and HALL in one place. No ads, nothing watching you.
Free for any computer
Put it on the laptop or desktop you already have, at no cost, or keep it next to what you run now.
The HALL laptop
The first 2,000, made with a laptop maker and shipped with HALL OS, sold straight to members.
Checked from outside
Safety certification for the laptop and an independent security audit of the OS before it ships.

Badge of Honor

A badge that remembers what you hear, privately

Privacy comes first

A badge that hears everything is only worth wearing if nobody else can get at it. These are the rules it’s being built to.

✓
Only you can open it
Audio and text are encrypted on the badge before they leave it, with keys only your own devices hold. HALL stores them but can’t read or play them.
✓
Turned into text on your phone
Not on HALL’s servers, and never sent to another company.
✓
A real off switch
A switch on the badge cuts power to the microphones. The screen shows whenever it’s listening, so the people around you can see it too.
✓
Other people stay out unless they say yes
The badge keeps your voice and drops everyone else’s until they agree to be included. Nobody else’s voice is ever turned into a voiceprint.
✓
No camera, and the sonar stays on the badge
The 3-D picture of the space around you is used on the badge and never uploaded.
✓
Locked, and wipeable
Nobody gets in without your drawn pattern. If you lose it, wipe it from your phone.
✓
Never sold, never mined
No ads from what you hear, no training AI on it, no selling it. Delete a day or everything, and it’s gone from HALL too.
How it works
Listens for you
Four microphones hear the room around you and pass the sound to your phone over Bluetooth, which uploads it.
Free: the text
Your phone turns what was said into text with a free, open model that runs on the phone itself. Search every word.
$5 a month: the recordings
Play back the real audio, both raw and cleaned up (noise taken out, voices separated).
An always-on screen
Dim until you need it. Unlock it by drawing your own pattern with your finger.
Your calls, on your chest
The screen brightens to show a call. Any call’s audio works through it; video works for HALL calls (Apple doesn’t let other devices show FaceTime video).
Sonar, not a camera
A steady sonar pulse, pitched above what people and pets can hear, maps the space around you in 3-D. Paired with the microphones, it knows where each sound came from.
Belt-buckle add-on
A second sonar on your belt covers what’s behind you.
Later: the tail seat
The buckle folds out into a seat you can adjust. It carries your weight, so it gets its own safety testing and comes after the badge.

HALL software

Every kind of editor, free forever
The editors
PhotoVideoAudio & podcastsDocumentsSpreadsheetsSlidesMusicDrawing & logosPDFCode3-DAnimationPage layoutDiagramsSubtitlesE-books

Highlighted ones come first.

Free, for good
No subscription, no watermark, no “pro” version holding back the good tools.
Your files stay yours
The editors run on your own device and work offline. Nothing is uploaded unless you share it.
Opens what you already use
Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, PSDs, PDFs, MP4s and the rest.
Everywhere
In your browser, and built into the HALL phone and HALL computer.

These are projects in progress, and what each one does and costs may change as it gets built. Even if one isn’t fully funded, HALL will still try to build it, paying the rest from its own earnings. Need a hand with a device you have now? Hire one in handy HALL.