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Linux-Powered Lego-Like Devices Target Developers
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Nov 05, 2007 05:12 PM
from the plug-and-play dept.
from the plug-and-play dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A six-person startup is readying a product resembling nothing so much as a set of electronic Legos for device designers. The idea is to provide a set of snap-together components from which engineers can build 'anything,' the company claims, without having to learn solid state electronics. Both hardware and software (Linux/Java phoneME/OSGi) are open source, so that over time, the Lego box will grow, the company hopes. Initially, there's an ARM11-powered base with built-in wifi, and modules for camera, GPS, motion detector, LCD display, keyboard, touchscreen, and stereo speakers. Ooh, and a mysterious 'teleporter,' too."
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Firehose:Linux-powered Legos target device developers by Anonymous Coward
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Do you program them in Logo? (Score:4, Funny)
Right.... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Sell it as environmentalism. "We take discarded bugs from software around the world, run them through our industrial-grade recycling plant, and turn it into pure, post-consumer recycled BUGS(r)."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Cue ASP.NET jokes in 3... 1... 2...
Re:Right.... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Yes, but... (Score:3, Funny)
The plural of Lego (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What's good for legoose is good for le gander?
Building blocks need a good foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
Likewise, my coworkers do analog design of IC's, and even though we have a design reuse library for the company, every design they do is basically ab initio because another similar design does something they don't need and as a result uses up vital silicon space, and they can't simply remove just that bit.
A talented designer could use building blocks to build something great. A lousy designer could use those same blocks to build something dangerously unsafe -- they facilitate only design, not quality. Speaking as a lousy designer, I think it's a much better idea to actually do the work in analyzing the problem and coming up with an adequate design, and the good designers, in my experience, already *have* a head full of black boxes, for which they understand the limitations and how they interact.
Connector problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Brick-like things with multi pin connectors are usually a headache. Either one side of the connector has to float, or you need a very rigid mounting system. Military systems tend to be built with boxes that you shove into a slot, and even with military grade components, heavy latching systems, and high insertion forces, those connectors are a trouble spot. That's why you don't often see things like that in consumer products.
Cute idea, though, if they get all the mechanical details right.
Re:So.. (Score:5, Funny)
They weren't even released until 1998. You either weren't a kid, or I have good reason to feel old.
Parent
Re:So.. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:So.. (Score:5, Funny)
- Build an adjustable motorized ramp, so your robot can go uphill both ways.
- Find some snow.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We used the lego-mindstorms in my grad-level robotics class. We were using a C compiler for them (think it, and the OS we were loading were open source even), and as long as you remembered that you didn't have any floating point... (i.e., 5/2*2 would be 4 not 5...) and that you had very limited stack space with no protection (use more than 1k stack and you were overwriting your heap...) you could do pretty much whatever you wanted. For example we were doing onboard inverse kinematics and path
Re:Without Learning? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is ideal for prototyping.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Without Learning? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with using high-level programming languages, software libraries, and pre-built hardware. Using these pre-built components to build a useful device is no different than combining servers, routers, and wiring to build a network. You do *not* have to be intimately familiar with the low-level details of all the hardware in order to combine it together in a useful way.
These hardware modules looks like they could be very fun and very useful. A great way for a DIY person to put together a fun toy, or an inexpensive solution to a problem, etc. It could also be quite useful for people who want to prototype new device ideas without commissioning expensive custom components.
No one is arguing that the existence of these modular devices will replace the need for dedicated hardware for many applications (and the associated specialized engineers who design that hardware). The idea instead would be to lower the barrier to creating novel devices, so that hobbyists and non-specialists can try out new ideas that would have been prohibitively expensive otherwise.
I know many people bemoan this "Cult of the Amateur [wikipedia.org]" (e.g. Wikipedia, blogs, citizen journalism, high-level programming languages, etc.); but to me the whole "point" of technology in general (and computers in particular) is to reduce the barriers, so that "ordinary people" can do things that previously only a "selected few" were allowed to do. I find that this push towards community-driven work and lower barriers to technological progress and education are very much good things.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You do *not* have to be intimately familiar with the low-level details of all the hardware in order to combine it together in a useful way."
OK, I agree, but simply mashing together some technologies does not an engineer make.
Perhaps not, but it's a damned good start. I was just thinking about the world my seven-month-old daughter will be growing up in. Computers are ubiquitous, nearly throwaway, and run extremely complex operating systems that abstract out the hardware as much as possible. Electronics of any complexity require you to use surface-mount components on two or four-layer PCBs, well beyond the breadboard-and-solder level. There's no real analogue to the DOS command line and GW-BASIC I grew up learning to program
Re:Without Learning? (Score:5, Funny)
I have mod points today. I was going to mod your post but I couldn't find 'Bitter' or 'Grizzled'.
Parent
There are different levels of organisation (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bad programmers think they're good programmers, think pretty much everyone else is a bad programmer, and thinks that platforms matter more than they do.
Re:Without Learning? (Score:5, Insightful)
I look dread the new crop of programmers and 'engineers' being 'output' by the educational system.
Yeah...
I suppose you layered the LCD screen on your laptop yourself, cast the engine block on your car yourself out of aluminum and oil-sand, burned a DVD with a pencil laser by hand, and fabricated the CPU of your computer with a blow torch on the beach?
Come off your high horse, man. As technology progresses, and gets more complex, the complexity of it is buried in abstracted "boxes" with vastly simplified interfaces that make it easier to use. You don't work out the details of range detection for interpersonal radio communication, you pick up your cell phone and dial a telephone number. If you are a programmer, you *might* write to registers, and you *might* understand memory offsets, but it's unlikely that you actually bother computing an offset with any regularity. And neither is particularly beneficial to getting the job done except in very rare cases.
There's evidence that that's how your mind works - intelligence involves the development of abstract ideas in order to make the cost of computation cheaper. By the time you are conscious of what you are seeing, most of the detail in what you actually see has been stripped out and replaced with vastly simpler, less detailed, abstract ideas.
You don't see the details of a house as you drive by, you see the abstract idea of "house". The lower layers of your brain have stripped away all the minutiae and replaced the image of the house with the idea of house. It's so effective that even as you are looking at it, if somebody asked you what color the house was, you'd have to take a brief moment to figure it out, first.
It's not shameful, it's an ordinary part of legitimate progress!
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a little sad that people have to pay that much when all they really need is a $5 PIC and a few throwaway components.