Linux-Powered Lego-Like Devices Target Developers 164
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."
So.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Without Learning? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is ideal for prototyping.
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.
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.
There are different levels of organisation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
it'll just be more accessable (Score:1, Insightful)
The engineers will still have to learn C, BSIM and low pass filters. The market might insist on hiring cheaper, non-engineers in the positions formerly occupied by engineers, but engineers will still be engineers as long as there is a demand for them.
Could someone explain (Score:2, Insightful)
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!
Re:The plural of Lego (Score:3, Insightful)