Comments on: Hardware On Rails

By: wjhuie

wjhuie — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 12:10:03 +0000

I know I’m late to the party but I also concur that I was thinking ‘buglabs’ while I was listening to the shot.

I also have a friend who’s tried to solve this problem from a ‘web integration perspective’. His solution is over at; http://iobridge.com/

It’s more for hooking up the capacitors and servos to the web vs. an embedded system that can run Ubuntu.

And as with the other comments, I think gumstix is an awesome solution except every time I try to go order one I’m overwhelmed with the choices. Which speaks to the comments in the shot about how usable the systems really are right now…

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:14:55 +0000

How about apt-get for open source hardware?

http://designfiles.org/dokuwiki/skdb http://gnusha.org/

By: FranticFinn

FranticFinn — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 06:51:06 +0000

So the answer is right under your nose. (Slack given because it was just before you joined as a host)

http://www.arduino.cc/ (Open source hardware Mate!) and affordable for all, go Massimo! (Love that podcast)

And all the parts your heart desires from: http://www.makershed.com/

Also, many pre-written programs, ready for your compiling pleasure http://arduino.cc/en/Reference/Libraries

FranticFinn

By: Dorian

Dorian — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:31:43 +0000

Modular hardware would be a cool idea. But I can’t see this taking off with regular consumers for obvious reasons. However if some enterprising soul would want to start a firm that offers custom kits or nice easy to use hardware snap-on style modules, I’m sure they’ll find a decent number of hobbyists. Heck I’d buy kit from said firm/person. But I’m already up to my ears with a hobby startup… Anyone else up for the task?

By: ken_fallon

ken_fallon — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:25:10 +0000

Jono get’s a dishwasher – problem solved.

By: Jason Kridner

Jason Kridner — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:04:56 +0000

Thanks! I would have made a Top Trumps reference, but I think most people wouldn’t have gotten it. I’m still addicted to the Buffy Top Trumps game!

By: sil

sil — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:18:47 +0000

That’s a really interesting article! And it’s nice to see that our categorisations for why people get involved still live on

By: Jason Kridner

Jason Kridner — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:08:39 +0000

Arduino is great, but you aren’t going to be running Ubuntu on it. The BeagleBoard, however, will run Ubuntu and I believe the Canonical folks are working on adding native support for the BeagleBoard-xM (has the extra memory to do native builds and >1GHz clock speed).

With the Bug 2.0, they gain compatibility with the BeagleBoard by using the same core chipset–and they are doing exactly what you are talking about. Doing more to enable people to build more plug-in modules for the Bug 2.0 seems to me to be the way to cover a lot more use cases. If you do want to do Arduino stuff, the Bug 2.0 has a Bugduino plug-in module–so you can have Ubuntu and Arduino in a nice tight plastic case with a battery.

You might be interested in the write-up I did on building an open source hardware community based on your self-analysis with the LugRadio guys. See: http://www.osbr.ca/ojs/index.php/osbr/article/view/1050/1009

BTW, the Always Innovating Touch Book is also based on the BeagleBoard as are the Gumstix Overo modules (very cool, much smaller than the BeagleBoard). You can also get one of another more than a dozen OMAP3-based modules that will run the higher level bits (some may require additional low level bits to boot into Ubuntu). See http://wiki.omap.com/index.php?title=OMAP3_Boards.

The thousands of hackers on the BeagleBoard means that there are plenty of good starting points for building your next open hardware project off typical desktop software without the great power sucking sounds and space taking of traditional computing hardware.

By: jgbreezer

jgbreezer — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:57:44 +0000

it sounded altogether like JonO wants hardware lego bricks. Anyone can easily build something.

By: sil

sil — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:54:02 +0000

All the good ones are really short.

By: Gerv

Gerv — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 20:43:01 +0000

Why have a Youtube-playing touchscreen thing anyway? Why not just listen to podcasts? Or are they all dull and boring?

Gerv

By: sil

sil — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:16:44 +0000

Well, of course everyone does. This might be independent invention, mind

By: Ronoc

Ronoc — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:09:12 +0000

It appears that IDG listens to shot of jaq as well: http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=25B8CB70-1A64-67EA-E4D482E1CEBA3792

By: Antonio Roberts

Antonio Roberts — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:32:42 +0000

Therein lies the problem with learning a new skill: it's hard to get into. Learning French, learning to drive, learning how to cook or even learning how to walk are all hard things to learn at first. Even more visual ways of programming like Pure:Data, nodebox and Scratch still have their learning curves.

The solution in each of those cases was to either take care of the a lot of the simple tasks for you (which just about every programming language does) or lots of education.

As more and more people start to use Arduino's and custom hardware in their work hopefully people will see that it's just not as scary as it once was. Aside from learning at university/college I'm sure there's lots of people who have learnt things from the Internet and things like Jono's recent Lernid python tutorial. More plz!

However, one overriding thing in all of this is one thing: dedication. If you're not dedicated to learning something you simply wont. If there's a hacking community near you just ask someone to teach you the basics and I'm sure within 30 mins you'll be on your way...

By: richc

richc — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:00:46 +0000

Just fitted an old Maemo touchpad device into the kitchen for a very similar purpose to the original idea in this shot. Modular hardware would be of great interest as I often come up with projects to build and end up searching around for a compromise platform to modify.

By: sil

sil — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:26:45 +0000

ah, the instructions are…hard to get in to. Hardware hacking is like programming; once you know what you’re doing, there’s a world of possibility, but it’s really hard to get over the initial hurdle. I’m not sure how that’s best fixed…what would you suggest?

By: Antonio Roberts

Antonio Roberts — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:23:43 +0000

Does it need to be done? I think it's a case of a solution looking for a problem.

The components to build just about anything that you want are out there, with instructions on how to use them.

There is of course issues around patents that would stop you selling your creations, but that's a whole other problem!

By: sil

sil — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:25:40 +0000

Agreed. However, hardware carries a setup cost, unlike software. It costs a reasonable amount of money to set up a company or organisation that can create and sell this open-source hardware, and there’s no guarantee that you’ll sell enough to make that money back. Which is why no-one’s done it…

By: Exabyte

Exabyte — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:02:39 +0000

This was a really interesting shot, I would love if there were a way to just put hardware together a bit like the way you might put together our own PC for example… I am a designer and I get ideas all the time that I have no idea of how to implement and try them out which makes me really jealous of people like Steve Jobs who can do that because they have all the people and resource to do just that… What I think need to be done to make this a reality of it is even possible as they said in the shot since I am a noob to is for hardware people to start make some open source hardware to begin whit and then for those people to start up a webpage were they could sell theses hardware components. That way they would make some money and the components could get better and better over time…

By: .james

.james — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:52:07 +0000

It has USB ports on there, man. What else need ye?

By: hessiess

hessiess — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:33:59 +0000

The Beagleboard would be a better starting point for the device described in the shot, its smaller and has a HDMI/DVI output. USB simply does not have enough bandwidth to drive a LCD display at any usable resolution. The USB monitors which exist all use very heavy, lossy compression which means that they heavely degrade the image quality before displaying it.

By: hessiess

hessiess — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 16:28:10 +0000

The thing with software frameworks like rails is that if you do something which the software cannot do, you can dig into the source code and change it. With hardware that simply isn’t possible because you would have to reprint all or some of the integrated circuits. Such modular hardware would result in an extremely inflexible system, such as exists within desktop computers.

By: hessiess

hessiess — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:54:25 +0000

Having a common interface for all mobile phones would be a good thing, however this is currently dominated by proprietary connections. The reason for this is so the providers can create vendor lock in, and force you to buy more products from them, The same problem use to be a major problem in software, but is less so now, thanks largely to reverse engineering efforts. Vendor lick-in in hardware should also work itself out over time.

By: Antonio Roberts

Antonio Roberts — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:49:45 +0000

Hey, Antonio here, co-founder of fizzPOP. Someone's already mentioned it, but there is the stuff from Bug Labs that is very modular.

Otherwise, I'm not really sure what your vision is. You can already by components from any hardware shop and make them into anything. Sure, it's not plug-and-play but that's because they're designed to be as open as possible. For example, if companies only made components for Arduino's, they'd be locking out anyone who doesn't use one, including the big boys like Sony and Apple etc.

Oh another note, Mitch Altman is coming to Birmingham, UK and other UK hackerspaces this March, so you could meet him and talk about this yourself if you wanted to

By: marxjohnson

marxjohnson — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:32:39 +0000

I don’t have any experience of Auduinos or hardware hacking as yet, but I’m not sure I really understand what Jono’s vision is here.

Like Aq said, it’s possible to have a waterproof touch screen. Just get something like a touchbook (http://alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/) and put it in something waterproof.

If you want something more basic to start from, maybe something like a Sheevaplug (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SheevaPlug) would be a good starting point? Its got USB (the most common modular I/O interface you’re likely to find), ethernet and an SD slot, it runs ubuntu, and it’s small enough to put in some sort of case. It’s also (relatively) inexpensive so makes a good arduino-style “lump” to start from when you need something more towards the microprocessor than the microcontroller.

If that doesn’t provide the kind of thing you’re after, I’d be interested to hear some more examples of the kind of things you’d like to be able to build where your need hasn’t been anticipated by a company.