10 ms·

A free/open computer on a card that you swap in and out of a 3D printed laptop

74 points by MilnerRoute 10y ago

jbob2000 10y ago
Impractical and gimmicky. "You can literally plug in a new CPU -- or swap your CPU into a variety of devices. (Laptops, phones, tablets -- all powered by the same motherboard!)" My phone's battery would last 2 seconds if it used the processor my laptop would use. And my laptop would be slow as shit if it used a processor compatible with a mobile phone. "you simply PRINT OUT REPLACEMENT PARTS with a 3D printer" 3D printers have terrible quality. They are for prototyping. You'd be printing out replacement parts every month. "you can connect the computer card to your TV set to continue working if your monitor fails" I've never had a monitor fail on me, is this an actual problem? Aside from hobbyists, I'm not sure anyone actually wants this product. Open to some feedback here!
- TaylorAlexander 10y ago
  I'm constantly frustrated when people make claims like that about 3D printers. You can absolutely make durable parts on a home 3D printer. I designed a whole remote control car to prove that [1], and even the gears are 3D printed. Despite the car having 1/4 horsepower and being able to flip itself backwards with all that torque, the gears never wear out. There is no such thing as "3D printers are for prototyping". They're a machine. They're for whatever you want them for. If you consider the parts okay for your non prototype use, then that's fine. Also, this absolutely is for hobbyists. I'm not sure how that detracts from anything. Maybe the marketing is too suggestive that general consumers will want to build their own laptop, but that's fine. That's marketing. Personally I think the product is excellent as I've wanted an open laptop that runs all free software. I've also had a laptop monitor fail on me, and had to connect it to an external monitor to recover the files. [1] http://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-badass-rc-race-car/ http://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-badass-rc-race-car/
  - lkcl 10y ago
    totally cool, alexander. btw look up "Flex3Drive" esp. my reports on it - best of both the direct and bowden worlds and more. the guy behind it is a quiet genius who worked in the automotive industry. regarding the laptop monitor failure: were there instructions online on how to repair the screen? because what i'm doing is about empowering people with not only the concept "right to repair" but one that seems to be quite novel these days called "right to own" - anyone with an apple product knows exactly what i'm talking about - as well as "right to not be spied on" and "right to not be afraid of your computer any more". frickin love the RC car :)
- Artlav 10y ago
  > 3D printers have terrible quality. They are for prototyping. You'd be printing out replacement parts every month. You might be confusing appearance and durability. The appearance of 3D printed parts is usually far from designer's tastes, but they are really durable. I have 3D printed whole flying drones and structural robot parts many times, and they are sufficiently strong and durable for the task and last a while. My main 3D printer is mostly made of 3D printed parts that are load-bearing, and none broke over the last 5 years or so. Only problem i ever had was a reel of bad Chinese plastic that degraded quickly under sunlight. Easy to avoid by not buying on e-bay...
  - zokier 10y ago
    I'm pretty sure that for the same amount of similar material injection molded parts are generally stronger than 3d-printed ones.
    - Artlav 10y ago
      Sure, and it's much faster too. But the former is a rigid industrial process needing complex machinery, while the latter is a fully configurable process with machinery you can make out of assorted scrap at home.
    - TaylorAlexander 10y ago
      True. Also, aluminum parts are stronger than plastics. And magnesium parts are stronger than aluminum. But we don't make everything out of magnesium. The question is not "could it be stronger?", to which the answer is always yes until you've hit the extreme end with some kind of inconel/titanium/carbon nanotube mix, but "is it strong enough?". Also cost to manufacture, including tooling costs, is an important factor in choosing the best manufacturing method for a given part.
- cordite 10y ago
  > "you can connect the computer card to your TV set to continue working if your monitor fails" > I've never had a monitor fail on me, is this an actual problem? In one monitor I've had a contact go loose that would black out the screen. Positioning it in a special way would reestablish it. As for laptops.. the only cases I have seen are user caused, like closing the screen on some earbuds in a rush.
  - wolrah 10y ago
    I've had two laptops where the hinge started failing over time (I'll gladly admit I'm not the nicest to my hardware) but this resulted in the fragile little LVDS cable running through the hinge getting messed up. My TiBook (which is well known for cracking hinges) would only display blue unless I had the display propped just right.
    - lkcl 10y ago
      i'm taking that into consideration with this design - the hinge parts are separate (10mm high and about 25mm long) so that if those really do get broken you're not looking at a total replacement of all the casework parts. i'll most likely be 3D printing just these parts alone in Polycarbonate or Nylon just to make absolutely sure they don't break. the cable i've had to think about quite a lot, and there's now a spacer which keeps it away from sharp edges as the hinge rotates in its socket. last thing you want is a 90 degree turn and the socket to rub continuously against the cable, breaking it within a matter of weeks. but, man those LVDS cables are thin. a 3.5mm bundle (wrapped in special cloth tape) of 28 wires! just incredible. anyway, repair and maintenance will be fully documented so that people can sort their machines out. i really don't want these things ending up in landfill.
    - mwcampbell 10y ago
      Or consider the case of a child or teenager being careless with the hinge on a laptop (I regret that I was in 1995, when it was uncommon for a 14-year-old to have a laptop). Wouldn't it be nice if just the housing could be replaced or repaired?
- khedoros 10y ago
  > My phone's battery would last 2 seconds if it used the processor my laptop would use. And my laptop would be slow as shit if it used a processor compatible with a mobile phone. A powerful ARM CPU, down-clocked and/or in a big.little configuration would cover those cases, somewhat. Low clock during mobile operation, higher clock+power usage when docked in a non-battery situation. The concept seems to work fine with phones + ARM Chromebooks that are out there now. > Aside from hobbyists, I'm not sure anyone actually wants this product. Open to some feedback here! Still true. Most people probably don't want to upgrade that often, deal with their phone not working when the CPU is stuck into a dock, etc. I still like the idea of this kind of upgradeable hardware. Maybe it would make more sense to have different form factors for cards, with adapters to connect smaller cards into larger enclosures. It seems like that kind of schema would provide the greatest coverage of different use-cases (although, it'd require either standard buses/data connections through the entire line of hardware, or conversion hardware included in the card adapters).
  - slowmirai 10y ago
    I'm having trouble finding actively cooled ARM boards that are clocked higher than 2Ghz. I don't even care about the fact that I might need to buy multiple boards and form a cluster but for a cluster of 8 rasperry pi 3 including sd cards, network equipment, etc is more expensive and still far slower than of some cheap AMD CPU like the fx8300 with 8GB RAM, a 320GB hdd, psu and case which can be had for less than $300.
    - aidenn0 10y ago
      There are some POWER boards that offer much better single-package performance vs. ARM, but they are also much more expensive than an x86. In the mid-to-high-end laptop/desktop business it's hard to beat the economies of scale that x86 has.
- saynsedit 10y ago
  Look at the new MacBook airs motherboard sometime
- lkcl 10y ago
  > My phone's battery would last 2 seconds if it used the > processor my laptop would use. lucky we ain't gonna be using processors that are in the laptops that you're currently buying, then, eh? :) > And my laptop would be slow as shit if it used a > processor compatible with a mobile phone. again, luckily, it's possible to upgrade this design (for a fraction of the cost) so that that's not such a problem, then, eh? :) if you look at the videos i made you'll find that the performance is "good enough", and if you truly consider it not to be "good enough" (for you) but you'd still like to back the project so we can get to the point where it's "good enough (for you)", you can always get the pass-through card. https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/speedy-devuan https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/spe... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/web-browser-performance https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/web... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/cedrus https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/ced... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pass-through-card https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pas... basically i've come up with a strategy where i can reach the goal that you're looking for.... in financially responsible steps that allow me to retain 100% control of the project. no VC funding. sponsorship only. that we've got this far, if i'm allowed to assess it impartially: that's pretty fg awesome all on its own. > 3D printers have terrible quality. china-produced 3D printers are even worse than terrible: they're illegal (copyright-violating) and* the only thing that's good about them is that you end up with a stack of parts that's cheap. people who've bought them instantly regret it. no, you have to be REALLY careful about where you get your 3D printer from. the one that DJDemon made - an all-aluminium design - is pretty damn good. https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/printing-parts https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pri... > You'd be printing out replacement parts every month. correct... if you pick the worst-quality PLA available on the market, today. if however you use high-quality PLA such as that from Faberdashery, or if you use Polycarbonate or Nylon.... no. also it's down to internal design: the base back part that i designed uses an internal structure similar to that used in Gothic Cathedrals. the result was a part so strong that on attempting to snap it with my hands i actually became concerned for my safety due to the amount of pressure i was applying to be able to bend it. > They are for prototyping. that's right. so what we will be doing when this gets to MOQ 2500 and above is: going to injection-molding... BUT - and this is really REALLY important - the parts will be EXACTLY THE SAME so that people can, on buying a mass-produced variant of this laptop housing, go down to a local library or go to UPS's web site and order a replacement. if they really want high quality they can go to shapeways and get it powder-printed. it'll cost them a fortune but they'll get a "decent-looking" replacement part. > I've never had a monitor fail on me, is this an > actual problem? this was a way to illustrate flexibility. lots of people were saying "what happens if the LCD on the laptop breaks and i can't replace it" etc. etc. and yes i have actually managed to break monitors by running them at higher-than-rated refresh rates.... oops :) > Aside from hobbyists, I'm not sure anyone actually > wants this product. well, we're almost up to 1,000 backers so i must be doing _something_ right!
Artlav 10y ago
While neat in theory, this have zero practical possibility. It could be improved a bit if they used a smartphone instead of a card, but that still leaves the problem of there being no "base stations" around. Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI computer - a stick that carries everything and is pluggable into a regular TV, but that's invented already.
- chriswarbo 10y ago
  > Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI computer - a stick that carries everything and is pluggable into a regular TV, but that's invented already. Would it even be possible to make a free/libre machine which uses HDMI? One of the reasons I don't use HDMI/HD equipment is because of they use DRM (and, of course, because there's nothing wrong with my VGA equipment)
  - wolrah 10y ago
    HDMI does not mandate HDCP. You can use it as just DVI with audio if you want. That's the default mode for all PCs and the Xbox consoles, which only switch to HDCP mode if you try to play DRM-protected content like Blurays. PS3 is shitty and runs in HDCP mode all the time, but that's Sony for you. As far as I'm aware even on HDCP-compliant hardware none of the Linux drivers can even use it if they wanted to.
  - lkcl 10y ago
    the DRM on HDMI is so broken - even the master key has been reverse-engineered - that it's completely open, now.
- lkcl 10y ago
  > While neat in theory, this have zero practical > possibility. how so? at the time of writing almost 1,000 backers would disagree with you. > It could be improved a bit if they used a smartphone > instead of a card, but that still leaves the problem of > there being no "base stations" around. smartphones are typically DRM-locked, have unethical OSes that make it impossible for people to say that they truly own their own devices, are so full of spying at the HARDWARE level it's just flat-out nuts, and the components are so cartelled it's just.... gahh :) google "qualcomm 900 million security vulnerability" and you'll start to understand why i didn't start with a smartphone! > Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI > computer - a stick that carries everything and is > pluggable into a regular TV, but that's invented already. it is... but look at what you have: a morass of cables. by total contrast, you can simply plug the Computer Card snugly into the Laptop Housing (or any other Housing) and it won't get destroyed accidentally.
jcl 10y ago
A step closer to the Sandbenders computer from William Gibson's "Idoru": ...he used to tear up her hardware, the designer's, and put the real parts into cases he'd make in his shop. Say he'd make a solid bronze case for a minidisk unit, ebony inlays, carve the control surfaces out of fossil ivory, turquoise, rock crystal. It weighed more, sure, but it turned out a lot of people liked that, like they had their music or their memory, whatever, in something that felt like it was there... And people liked touching all that stuff: metal, a smooth stone... And once you had the case, when the manufacturer brought out a new model, well, if the electronics were any better, you just pulled the old ones out and put the new ones in your case. So you still had the same object, just with better functions.
- josh-wrale 10y ago
  This reminds of something... As a kid, I played the game "Neuromancer" (1989, Interplay) which is based on the book of the same name by William Gibson. The images of "decks" (portable computers) always struck me as odd and quite visually disconnected from the combination appearance of my Amiga 500 and its Commodore monitor. And yet, looking at a MacBook Pro from the front or side, it looks a great deal like those renderings of decks in that game (minus some of the features that make the images in the game more than just rounded rectangles). I know laptops existed earlier than that time, but to think they got a futuristic drawing so right it astounds me (not that we're quite to "deck" level with tech just yet). Screenshot from the game: http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=778&screenname=neuromancer_16.png&kuk=16 http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=77... The front-closed profile of a MacBook Pro for comparison: http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-frontclosed20081014_02.jpg http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-... Edit: I guess it's not a big jump though, considering these were some contemporary laptops of 1989: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/200808292255.jpg http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/200...
- lkcl 10y ago
  hooray! you know what, i am so pleased that someone finally noticed. congratulations :) the hilarious thing is, i read that book too - i confused it initially with the computer that Hiro opens up at the beginning of Snowcrash. even more hilariously i had clearly totally forgotten about both books when developing this laptop concept, but just as clearly there must have been something in my subconscious that was still working on it... because i've implemented the damn thing :) so, thank you from the bottom of my heart for noticing :)
teekert 10y ago
I'd certainly like a 13 inch laptop housing that I could plug progressively newer raspberry pi's into. When all you do is ssh-ing and using atom or Jupyter notebooks on remote servers, that would be a very nice computer to have.
- lkcl 10y ago
  yeah exactly. now, here's the thing: if you want to plug in newer hypocritical-boards... ... i'm sorry, you may be confused by the use of that phrase - allow me to explain before completing the sentence. broadcom is a highly unethical company that was caught completely off-guard by the rbpi phenomenon. their MOQ for this processor is 5 million units. the only reason they allowed it is because it was for "education" and it was one of their own employees working on it. now, when you get one of these "education" boards, the first thing that happens is that a proprietary program is uploaded to the GPU, which then and only then turns on the CPU. this should be ringing massive alarm bells already for anybody who knows that respecting the privacy of children is fundamentally important. but if that's not enough, if these children wish to watch films on these "educational" devices, they are forced to pay $2.50 to a cartel in order to obtain - not information but a PROPRIETARY library. so here's the message that broadcom tells kids: "we want you to get educated! you're free to do so... except no further than WE say you can. fuck off kids if you want to educate yourself about the way our cartelled business makes money". total hypocrisy. now, i'm keenly aware that they're under enormous pressure to release the GPU's inner details, but dumping the tools onto the software libre community and expecting them to pick up the pieces doesn't strike me as being particularly responsible either. anyway so back to answering your comment... :) so if you want to plug in 15mm high boards you need a housing that can cope with 15mm high boards. you want a pi-top in other words not this one. if you've seen the pi-top, however, you'll notice that it's almost 1.25 in thick, possibly even more! there are other issues with it as well, such as: the team haven't fulfilled their promises to be open with the schematics or the 3D CAD files. i've taken a heck of a lot of issues into consideration in the design of the 15.6in laptop housing, basically as a demonstration to the industry that there is another way.
  - tbirdz 10y ago
edvinbesic 10y ago
I kind of wish that this was simply transferring the userland (maybe state) from one device to another instead of carrying as much computing power you can cram into a credit card sized device. I want my laptop to last 10h while being very portable, so I will gladly sacrifice performance there whereas when I am at my desktop I do not have the same limitation. If I could simply unplug this from my desktop and plug into my laptop to resume my work that would be interesting to me, or work to home etc., but as is it feels more like a gimmick.
- thia 10y ago
  A fun thing is that it is possible with the Qubes architecture, since VMs can be saved to a file and resumed at will (although qubes-rpc may not support it properly). Xen also has some other useful features like live transfer. Note: I have not actually tested any of this due to lack of time, but is seems quite possible, although some software modifications may be needed.
  - lkcl 10y ago
    the Allwinner A20, amazingly has Virtualisation: it's a Cortex A7 (the baby brother of the A15). google "Xen allwinner A20" for instructions on how to set it up. i'm looking forward one day to trying out android where it belongs: as a highly restricted and compartmentalised "application" that can be run full-screen on the desktop of a trusted OS.
    - mwcampbell 10y ago
      It had also occurred to me that virtualization might be the best way to get Android running on an ARM-based EOMA68 computer, especially in a desktop or laptop housing. The Shashlik project (http://www.shashlik.io/ http://www.shashlik.io/) might be useful as a starting point for getting there. My one concern is that, in my experience with virtualization on a Windows PC, audio in a VM always has noticeable latency. But maybe it'll be better with Linux as the host OS, especially if the Android guest OS can be modified to cooperate more closely with the virtualization layer. Some equivalent of VirtIO for audio.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I like the concept, especially the compute module you can move around. But the this call to action for a crowd funded platform is based on "truly open" ? Given that I was a bit disappointed it was using an Allwinner A20 CPU, at this point shouldn't "truly" open source use a chip with a RISC-V core?
- lfam 10y ago
  My understanding is that the Allwinner A20 is one of the very few systems produced today that can be used with 100% free software. Not that Allwinner themselves helped very much, from what I've read — the sunxi community has spent a lot of energy on reverse engineering.
  - david-given 10y ago
    I was briefly involved with this back when the project started --- I quit after having one run-in too many with the project lead, who was, um, difficult --- and the Allwinner kernel was best described as a ghastly mess. It had, e.g., a big chunk of code bolted on that loaded a binary data file at boot time and configured the various peripherals. My suspicion is that that was the init code from an entirely different operating system completely that they'd just duct-taped onto the Linux kernel. Unwiring that was a problem. The chip itself is pretty nice from the hackability perspective. It has a boot rom, like the processor in the Raspberry Pi, and is capable of loading the kernel from flash or an SD card, so you can build unbrickable hardware with it. (For years I ran my personal website off an A20-based TV set-top-box nailed to a plank.) It's not entirely true about running entirely free code. Apart from the boot ROM, which I suspect you can change if you pay Allwinner enough money, it's got a Mali 400 GPU. There's some of an open source driver here: http://limadriver.org/ http://limadriver.org/ ...but I don't know how usable it is. If you want full acceleration I believe you need a blob. It's still a four-year-old semi-obsolescent SoC, of course. Perfectly adequate for low-end work but compilation on it is for masochists. (I should know; I did.)
    - lfam 10y ago
      You're right, I forgot about the GPU. I consider that a very optional part of the computer. I've also used an A20 for compilation... briefly. And not much was compiled in the brief period ;) As for the boot ROM blob, do you know if that is the 'boot0 and boot1' that Olimex apparently published the source code for? http://linux-sunxi.org/BROM#Source_code_for_boot0_and_boot1 http://linux-sunxi.org/BROM#Source_code_for_boot0_and_boot1
sschueller 10y ago
What we need/want is to use our phones. There should be a dock that lets the phone use a faster processor and GPU etc. Data would be stored on the phone and accessible but for desktop performance and full os it would need to be docked.
- deleted 10y ago
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- rbanffy 10y ago
  It exists. It's called a computer and it can read the files you store on your phone while using a much more powerful processor and a more complete OS.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    This. If the "dock" is using a better processor for computing then it's not just a dock, it's its own computer.
  - lkcl 10y ago
    * how compatible are all the different file-formats? * have you worked out how to bypass the DRM inherent in many of these phones? * does the device even have a means to transfer the data! ipads force you to use "cloud" services (other people's computers) for goodness sake! :)
- toast0 10y ago
  This feels like what windows continuum is (was?) trying to do. Maybe if Microsoft and Intel hadn't both given up on phones, we could have a continuum phone with an x86 processor, so the full windows library while docked.
  - lkcl 10y ago
    > Maybe if Microsoft and Intel hadn't both given up on phones maybe there's a backlash against the wintel cartel that leads people to no longer trust them. maybe the DRM-locking that goes onto the microsoft phones and intel-based phones respectively is enough that people are absolutely sick of them.
rbanffy 10y ago
I find the PCMCIA format a bit too restrictive. I would prefer to have a larger card with female HDMI (or DP) and USB (female for power and eventual storage access by a beefier host and male to use the mouse and the trackpad and other USB ports on the laptop or dock.
- floatboth 10y ago
  Um, it has: - Micro-HDMI Interface (for 2nd monitor) - Micro-USB-OTG (bi-directional power) USB-C would be great though
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - lkcl 10y ago
    > USB-C would be great though when the USB3 world stabilises - even intel can't get it right. also it'll be a while before GPL-compliant SoCs come out that have stable USB3 hardware. it's quite costly at the moment and the low-to-medium end tablet/smartphone fabless semi companies can't justify the cost.
- Animats 10y ago
  Maybe they can sell this to F-16 squadrons. The F-16 loads its targeting information from a PCMCIA memory card. They're having trouble getting machines that can still talk to PCMCIA cards.
  - lkcl 10y ago
    it's not PCMCIA compatible. the connectors and housings are still available - the problem is getting hold of the chipsets. yes there are a few processors around that can do PCMCIA, but they're rapidly going out of production nowadays. you might be able to bodge something together because PCMCIA is effectively just the ISA bus... anyway... digression... :)
- digi_owl 10y ago
  The idea is that all the major ports etc will be covered by a shell going around the card.
justinlardinois 10y ago
So...what exactly is in the little card? > You can literally plug in a new CPU -- or swap your CPU into a variety of devices. Either they're using the term "CPU" in a colloquial sense to refer to the processor plus other things, or it's literally just the processor. If it's the latter, what's the point? The CPU is hardly the important thing when I'm switching between devices. If anything, I would want a set of devices that all boot from the same storage device.
- lkcl 10y ago
  where did you see that misquoted? there was an article on zdnet which was so badly written that i refused to put it on the campaign front page - the editor totally garbled pretty much everything about the project. the CORRECT phrase to use is: "You can literally plug in a new COMPUTER CARD -- or swap your COMPUTER CARD into a variety of devices". does that start to make much more sense now?

74 points by MilnerRoute 10y ago

jbob2000 10y ago

Impractical and gimmicky. "You can literally plug in a new CPU -- or swap your CPU into a variety of devices. (Laptops, phones, tablets -- all powered by the same motherboard!)" My phone's battery would last 2 seconds if it used the processor my laptop would use. And my laptop would be slow as shit if it used a processor compatible with a mobile phone. "you simply PRINT OUT REPLACEMENT PARTS with a 3D printer" 3D printers have terrible quality. They are for prototyping. You'd be printing out replacement parts every month. "you can connect the computer card to your TV set to continue working if your monitor fails" I've never had a monitor fail on me, is this an actual problem? Aside from hobbyists, I'm not sure anyone actually wants this product. Open to some feedback here!

TaylorAlexander 10y ago
I'm constantly frustrated when people make claims like that about 3D printers. You can absolutely make durable parts on a home 3D printer. I designed a whole remote control car to prove that [1], and even the gears are 3D printed. Despite the car having 1/4 horsepower and being able to flip itself backwards with all that torque, the gears never wear out. There is no such thing as "3D printers are for prototyping". They're a machine. They're for whatever you want them for. If you consider the parts okay for your non prototype use, then that's fine. Also, this absolutely is for hobbyists. I'm not sure how that detracts from anything. Maybe the marketing is too suggestive that general consumers will want to build their own laptop, but that's fine. That's marketing. Personally I think the product is excellent as I've wanted an open laptop that runs all free software. I've also had a laptop monitor fail on me, and had to connect it to an external monitor to recover the files. [1] http://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-badass-rc-race-car/ http://makezine.com/projects/3d-print-badass-rc-race-car/
- lkcl 10y ago
  totally cool, alexander. btw look up "Flex3Drive" esp. my reports on it - best of both the direct and bowden worlds and more. the guy behind it is a quiet genius who worked in the automotive industry. regarding the laptop monitor failure: were there instructions online on how to repair the screen? because what i'm doing is about empowering people with not only the concept "right to repair" but one that seems to be quite novel these days called "right to own" - anyone with an apple product knows exactly what i'm talking about - as well as "right to not be spied on" and "right to not be afraid of your computer any more". frickin love the RC car :)
Artlav 10y ago
> 3D printers have terrible quality. They are for prototyping. You'd be printing out replacement parts every month. You might be confusing appearance and durability. The appearance of 3D printed parts is usually far from designer's tastes, but they are really durable. I have 3D printed whole flying drones and structural robot parts many times, and they are sufficiently strong and durable for the task and last a while. My main 3D printer is mostly made of 3D printed parts that are load-bearing, and none broke over the last 5 years or so. Only problem i ever had was a reel of bad Chinese plastic that degraded quickly under sunlight. Easy to avoid by not buying on e-bay...
- zokier 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure that for the same amount of similar material injection molded parts are generally stronger than 3d-printed ones.
  - Artlav 10y ago
    Sure, and it's much faster too. But the former is a rigid industrial process needing complex machinery, while the latter is a fully configurable process with machinery you can make out of assorted scrap at home.
  - TaylorAlexander 10y ago
    True. Also, aluminum parts are stronger than plastics. And magnesium parts are stronger than aluminum. But we don't make everything out of magnesium. The question is not "could it be stronger?", to which the answer is always yes until you've hit the extreme end with some kind of inconel/titanium/carbon nanotube mix, but "is it strong enough?". Also cost to manufacture, including tooling costs, is an important factor in choosing the best manufacturing method for a given part.
cordite 10y ago
> "you can connect the computer card to your TV set to continue working if your monitor fails" > I've never had a monitor fail on me, is this an actual problem? In one monitor I've had a contact go loose that would black out the screen. Positioning it in a special way would reestablish it. As for laptops.. the only cases I have seen are user caused, like closing the screen on some earbuds in a rush.
- wolrah 10y ago
  I've had two laptops where the hinge started failing over time (I'll gladly admit I'm not the nicest to my hardware) but this resulted in the fragile little LVDS cable running through the hinge getting messed up. My TiBook (which is well known for cracking hinges) would only display blue unless I had the display propped just right.
  - lkcl 10y ago
    i'm taking that into consideration with this design - the hinge parts are separate (10mm high and about 25mm long) so that if those really do get broken you're not looking at a total replacement of all the casework parts. i'll most likely be 3D printing just these parts alone in Polycarbonate or Nylon just to make absolutely sure they don't break. the cable i've had to think about quite a lot, and there's now a spacer which keeps it away from sharp edges as the hinge rotates in its socket. last thing you want is a 90 degree turn and the socket to rub continuously against the cable, breaking it within a matter of weeks. but, man those LVDS cables are thin. a 3.5mm bundle (wrapped in special cloth tape) of 28 wires! just incredible. anyway, repair and maintenance will be fully documented so that people can sort their machines out. i really don't want these things ending up in landfill.
  - mwcampbell 10y ago
    Or consider the case of a child or teenager being careless with the hinge on a laptop (I regret that I was in 1995, when it was uncommon for a 14-year-old to have a laptop). Wouldn't it be nice if just the housing could be replaced or repaired?
khedoros 10y ago
> My phone's battery would last 2 seconds if it used the processor my laptop would use. And my laptop would be slow as shit if it used a processor compatible with a mobile phone. A powerful ARM CPU, down-clocked and/or in a big.little configuration would cover those cases, somewhat. Low clock during mobile operation, higher clock+power usage when docked in a non-battery situation. The concept seems to work fine with phones + ARM Chromebooks that are out there now. > Aside from hobbyists, I'm not sure anyone actually wants this product. Open to some feedback here! Still true. Most people probably don't want to upgrade that often, deal with their phone not working when the CPU is stuck into a dock, etc. I still like the idea of this kind of upgradeable hardware. Maybe it would make more sense to have different form factors for cards, with adapters to connect smaller cards into larger enclosures. It seems like that kind of schema would provide the greatest coverage of different use-cases (although, it'd require either standard buses/data connections through the entire line of hardware, or conversion hardware included in the card adapters).
- slowmirai 10y ago
  I'm having trouble finding actively cooled ARM boards that are clocked higher than 2Ghz. I don't even care about the fact that I might need to buy multiple boards and form a cluster but for a cluster of 8 rasperry pi 3 including sd cards, network equipment, etc is more expensive and still far slower than of some cheap AMD CPU like the fx8300 with 8GB RAM, a 320GB hdd, psu and case which can be had for less than $300.
  - aidenn0 10y ago
    There are some POWER boards that offer much better single-package performance vs. ARM, but they are also much more expensive than an x86. In the mid-to-high-end laptop/desktop business it's hard to beat the economies of scale that x86 has.
saynsedit 10y ago
Look at the new MacBook airs motherboard sometime
lkcl 10y ago
> My phone's battery would last 2 seconds if it used the > processor my laptop would use. lucky we ain't gonna be using processors that are in the laptops that you're currently buying, then, eh? :) > And my laptop would be slow as shit if it used a > processor compatible with a mobile phone. again, luckily, it's possible to upgrade this design (for a fraction of the cost) so that that's not such a problem, then, eh? :) if you look at the videos i made you'll find that the performance is "good enough", and if you truly consider it not to be "good enough" (for you) but you'd still like to back the project so we can get to the point where it's "good enough (for you)", you can always get the pass-through card. https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/speedy-devuan https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/spe... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/web-browser-performance https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/web... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/cedrus https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/ced... https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pass-through-card https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pas... basically i've come up with a strategy where i can reach the goal that you're looking for.... in financially responsible steps that allow me to retain 100% control of the project. no VC funding. sponsorship only. that we've got this far, if i'm allowed to assess it impartially: that's pretty fg awesome all on its own. > 3D printers have terrible quality. china-produced 3D printers are even worse than terrible: they're illegal (copyright-violating) and* the only thing that's good about them is that you end up with a stack of parts that's cheap. people who've bought them instantly regret it. no, you have to be REALLY careful about where you get your 3D printer from. the one that DJDemon made - an all-aluminium design - is pretty damn good. https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/printing-parts https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/pri... > You'd be printing out replacement parts every month. correct... if you pick the worst-quality PLA available on the market, today. if however you use high-quality PLA such as that from Faberdashery, or if you use Polycarbonate or Nylon.... no. also it's down to internal design: the base back part that i designed uses an internal structure similar to that used in Gothic Cathedrals. the result was a part so strong that on attempting to snap it with my hands i actually became concerned for my safety due to the amount of pressure i was applying to be able to bend it. > They are for prototyping. that's right. so what we will be doing when this gets to MOQ 2500 and above is: going to injection-molding... BUT - and this is really REALLY important - the parts will be EXACTLY THE SAME so that people can, on buying a mass-produced variant of this laptop housing, go down to a local library or go to UPS's web site and order a replacement. if they really want high quality they can go to shapeways and get it powder-printed. it'll cost them a fortune but they'll get a "decent-looking" replacement part. > I've never had a monitor fail on me, is this an > actual problem? this was a way to illustrate flexibility. lots of people were saying "what happens if the LCD on the laptop breaks and i can't replace it" etc. etc. and yes i have actually managed to break monitors by running them at higher-than-rated refresh rates.... oops :) > Aside from hobbyists, I'm not sure anyone actually > wants this product. well, we're almost up to 1,000 backers so i must be doing _something_ right!

Artlav 10y ago

While neat in theory, this have zero practical possibility. It could be improved a bit if they used a smartphone instead of a card, but that still leaves the problem of there being no "base stations" around. Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI computer - a stick that carries everything and is pluggable into a regular TV, but that's invented already.

chriswarbo 10y ago
> Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI computer - a stick that carries everything and is pluggable into a regular TV, but that's invented already. Would it even be possible to make a free/libre machine which uses HDMI? One of the reasons I don't use HDMI/HD equipment is because of they use DRM (and, of course, because there's nothing wrong with my VGA equipment)
- wolrah 10y ago
  HDMI does not mandate HDCP. You can use it as just DVI with audio if you want. That's the default mode for all PCs and the Xbox consoles, which only switch to HDCP mode if you try to play DRM-protected content like Blurays. PS3 is shitty and runs in HDCP mode all the time, but that's Sony for you. As far as I'm aware even on HDCP-compliant hardware none of the Linux drivers can even use it if they wanted to.
- lkcl 10y ago
  the DRM on HDMI is so broken - even the master key has been reverse-engineered - that it's completely open, now.
lkcl 10y ago
> While neat in theory, this have zero practical > possibility. how so? at the time of writing almost 1,000 backers would disagree with you. > It could be improved a bit if they used a smartphone > instead of a card, but that still leaves the problem of > there being no "base stations" around. smartphones are typically DRM-locked, have unethical OSes that make it impossible for people to say that they truly own their own devices, are so full of spying at the HARDWARE level it's just flat-out nuts, and the components are so cartelled it's just.... gahh :) google "qualcomm 900 million security vulnerability" and you'll start to understand why i didn't start with a smartphone! > Perhaps a better idea would be something like an HDMI > computer - a stick that carries everything and is > pluggable into a regular TV, but that's invented already. it is... but look at what you have: a morass of cables. by total contrast, you can simply plug the Computer Card snugly into the Laptop Housing (or any other Housing) and it won't get destroyed accidentally.

jcl 10y ago

A step closer to the Sandbenders computer from William Gibson's "Idoru": ...he used to tear up her hardware, the designer's, and put the real parts into cases he'd make in his shop. Say he'd make a solid bronze case for a minidisk unit, ebony inlays, carve the control surfaces out of fossil ivory, turquoise, rock crystal. It weighed more, sure, but it turned out a lot of people liked that, like they had their music or their memory, whatever, in something that felt like it was there... And people liked touching all that stuff: metal, a smooth stone... And once you had the case, when the manufacturer brought out a new model, well, if the electronics were any better, you just pulled the old ones out and put the new ones in your case. So you still had the same object, just with better functions.

josh-wrale 10y ago
This reminds of something... As a kid, I played the game "Neuromancer" (1989, Interplay) which is based on the book of the same name by William Gibson. The images of "decks" (portable computers) always struck me as odd and quite visually disconnected from the combination appearance of my Amiga 500 and its Commodore monitor. And yet, looking at a MacBook Pro from the front or side, it looks a great deal like those renderings of decks in that game (minus some of the features that make the images in the game more than just rounded rectangles). I know laptops existed earlier than that time, but to think they got a futuristic drawing so right it astounds me (not that we're quite to "deck" level with tech just yet). Screenshot from the game: http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=778&screenname=neuromancer_16.png&kuk=16 http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/popup_screen_index.php?id=77... The front-closed profile of a MacBook Pro for comparison: http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-frontclosed20081014_02.jpg http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/shape-... Edit: I guess it's not a big jump though, considering these were some contemporary laptops of 1989: http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/200808292255.jpg http://www.roughlydrafted.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/200...
lkcl 10y ago
hooray! you know what, i am so pleased that someone finally noticed. congratulations :) the hilarious thing is, i read that book too - i confused it initially with the computer that Hiro opens up at the beginning of Snowcrash. even more hilariously i had clearly totally forgotten about both books when developing this laptop concept, but just as clearly there must have been something in my subconscious that was still working on it... because i've implemented the damn thing :) so, thank you from the bottom of my heart for noticing :)

teekert 10y ago

I'd certainly like a 13 inch laptop housing that I could plug progressively newer raspberry pi's into. When all you do is ssh-ing and using atom or Jupyter notebooks on remote servers, that would be a very nice computer to have.

lkcl 10y ago
yeah exactly. now, here's the thing: if you want to plug in newer hypocritical-boards... ... i'm sorry, you may be confused by the use of that phrase - allow me to explain before completing the sentence. broadcom is a highly unethical company that was caught completely off-guard by the rbpi phenomenon. their MOQ for this processor is 5 million units. the only reason they allowed it is because it was for "education" and it was one of their own employees working on it. now, when you get one of these "education" boards, the first thing that happens is that a proprietary program is uploaded to the GPU, which then and only then turns on the CPU. this should be ringing massive alarm bells already for anybody who knows that respecting the privacy of children is fundamentally important. but if that's not enough, if these children wish to watch films on these "educational" devices, they are forced to pay $2.50 to a cartel in order to obtain - not information but a PROPRIETARY library. so here's the message that broadcom tells kids: "we want you to get educated! you're free to do so... except no further than WE say you can. fuck off kids if you want to educate yourself about the way our cartelled business makes money". total hypocrisy. now, i'm keenly aware that they're under enormous pressure to release the GPU's inner details, but dumping the tools onto the software libre community and expecting them to pick up the pieces doesn't strike me as being particularly responsible either. anyway so back to answering your comment... :) so if you want to plug in 15mm high boards you need a housing that can cope with 15mm high boards. you want a pi-top in other words not this one. if you've seen the pi-top, however, you'll notice that it's almost 1.25 in thick, possibly even more! there are other issues with it as well, such as: the team haven't fulfilled their promises to be open with the schematics or the 3D CAD files. i've taken a heck of a lot of issues into consideration in the design of the 15.6in laptop housing, basically as a demonstration to the industry that there is another way.
- tbirdz 10y ago

edvinbesic 10y ago

I kind of wish that this was simply transferring the userland (maybe state) from one device to another instead of carrying as much computing power you can cram into a credit card sized device. I want my laptop to last 10h while being very portable, so I will gladly sacrifice performance there whereas when I am at my desktop I do not have the same limitation. If I could simply unplug this from my desktop and plug into my laptop to resume my work that would be interesting to me, or work to home etc., but as is it feels more like a gimmick.

thia 10y ago
A fun thing is that it is possible with the Qubes architecture, since VMs can be saved to a file and resumed at will (although qubes-rpc may not support it properly). Xen also has some other useful features like live transfer. Note: I have not actually tested any of this due to lack of time, but is seems quite possible, although some software modifications may be needed.
- lkcl 10y ago
  the Allwinner A20, amazingly has Virtualisation: it's a Cortex A7 (the baby brother of the A15). google "Xen allwinner A20" for instructions on how to set it up. i'm looking forward one day to trying out android where it belongs: as a highly restricted and compartmentalised "application" that can be run full-screen on the desktop of a trusted OS.
  - mwcampbell 10y ago
    It had also occurred to me that virtualization might be the best way to get Android running on an ARM-based EOMA68 computer, especially in a desktop or laptop housing. The Shashlik project (http://www.shashlik.io/ http://www.shashlik.io/) might be useful as a starting point for getting there. My one concern is that, in my experience with virtualization on a Windows PC, audio in a VM always has noticeable latency. But maybe it'll be better with Linux as the host OS, especially if the Android guest OS can be modified to cooperate more closely with the virtualization layer. Some equivalent of VirtIO for audio.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I like the concept, especially the compute module you can move around. But the this call to action for a crowd funded platform is based on "truly open" ? Given that I was a bit disappointed it was using an Allwinner A20 CPU, at this point shouldn't "truly" open source use a chip with a RISC-V core?

lfam 10y ago
My understanding is that the Allwinner A20 is one of the very few systems produced today that can be used with 100% free software. Not that Allwinner themselves helped very much, from what I've read — the sunxi community has spent a lot of energy on reverse engineering.
- david-given 10y ago
  I was briefly involved with this back when the project started --- I quit after having one run-in too many with the project lead, who was, um, difficult --- and the Allwinner kernel was best described as a ghastly mess. It had, e.g., a big chunk of code bolted on that loaded a binary data file at boot time and configured the various peripherals. My suspicion is that that was the init code from an entirely different operating system completely that they'd just duct-taped onto the Linux kernel. Unwiring that was a problem. The chip itself is pretty nice from the hackability perspective. It has a boot rom, like the processor in the Raspberry Pi, and is capable of loading the kernel from flash or an SD card, so you can build unbrickable hardware with it. (For years I ran my personal website off an A20-based TV set-top-box nailed to a plank.) It's not entirely true about running entirely free code. Apart from the boot ROM, which I suspect you can change if you pay Allwinner enough money, it's got a Mali 400 GPU. There's some of an open source driver here: http://limadriver.org/ http://limadriver.org/ ...but I don't know how usable it is. If you want full acceleration I believe you need a blob. It's still a four-year-old semi-obsolescent SoC, of course. Perfectly adequate for low-end work but compilation on it is for masochists. (I should know; I did.)
  - lfam 10y ago
    You're right, I forgot about the GPU. I consider that a very optional part of the computer. I've also used an A20 for compilation... briefly. And not much was compiled in the brief period ;) As for the boot ROM blob, do you know if that is the 'boot0 and boot1' that Olimex apparently published the source code for? http://linux-sunxi.org/BROM#Source_code_for_boot0_and_boot1 http://linux-sunxi.org/BROM#Source_code_for_boot0_and_boot1

sschueller 10y ago

What we need/want is to use our phones. There should be a dock that lets the phone use a faster processor and GPU etc. Data would be stored on the phone and accessible but for desktop performance and full os it would need to be docked.

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rbanffy 10y ago
It exists. It's called a computer and it can read the files you store on your phone while using a much more powerful processor and a more complete OS.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  This. If the "dock" is using a better processor for computing then it's not just a dock, it's its own computer.
- lkcl 10y ago
  * how compatible are all the different file-formats? * have you worked out how to bypass the DRM inherent in many of these phones? * does the device even have a means to transfer the data! ipads force you to use "cloud" services (other people's computers) for goodness sake! :)
toast0 10y ago
This feels like what windows continuum is (was?) trying to do. Maybe if Microsoft and Intel hadn't both given up on phones, we could have a continuum phone with an x86 processor, so the full windows library while docked.
- lkcl 10y ago
  > Maybe if Microsoft and Intel hadn't both given up on phones maybe there's a backlash against the wintel cartel that leads people to no longer trust them. maybe the DRM-locking that goes onto the microsoft phones and intel-based phones respectively is enough that people are absolutely sick of them.

rbanffy 10y ago

I find the PCMCIA format a bit too restrictive. I would prefer to have a larger card with female HDMI (or DP) and USB (female for power and eventual storage access by a beefier host and male to use the mouse and the trackpad and other USB ports on the laptop or dock.

floatboth 10y ago
Um, it has: - Micro-HDMI Interface (for 2nd monitor) - Micro-USB-OTG (bi-directional power) USB-C would be great though
- deleted 10y ago
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- lkcl 10y ago
  > USB-C would be great though when the USB3 world stabilises - even intel can't get it right. also it'll be a while before GPL-compliant SoCs come out that have stable USB3 hardware. it's quite costly at the moment and the low-to-medium end tablet/smartphone fabless semi companies can't justify the cost.
Animats 10y ago
Maybe they can sell this to F-16 squadrons. The F-16 loads its targeting information from a PCMCIA memory card. They're having trouble getting machines that can still talk to PCMCIA cards.
- lkcl 10y ago
  it's not PCMCIA compatible. the connectors and housings are still available - the problem is getting hold of the chipsets. yes there are a few processors around that can do PCMCIA, but they're rapidly going out of production nowadays. you might be able to bodge something together because PCMCIA is effectively just the ISA bus... anyway... digression... :)
digi_owl 10y ago
The idea is that all the major ports etc will be covered by a shell going around the card.

justinlardinois 10y ago

So...what exactly is in the little card? > You can literally plug in a new CPU -- or swap your CPU into a variety of devices. Either they're using the term "CPU" in a colloquial sense to refer to the processor plus other things, or it's literally just the processor. If it's the latter, what's the point? The CPU is hardly the important thing when I'm switching between devices. If anything, I would want a set of devices that all boot from the same storage device.

lkcl 10y ago
where did you see that misquoted? there was an article on zdnet which was so badly written that i refused to put it on the campaign front page - the editor totally garbled pretty much everything about the project. the CORRECT phrase to use is: "You can literally plug in a new COMPUTER CARD -- or swap your COMPUTER CARD into a variety of devices". does that start to make much more sense now?