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Without knowing if Bug Labs had developed in the open like Motorola will, that will make a crucial difference.
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Motorola is seeking nothing short of reinventing the mobile phone. The problems you mention could result from working within the constraints of the established paradigm.
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A useful analogy in GPS : imagine the problems and 'impossibilities' that engineers would've encountered had they approached GPS technology from the paradigm of Newtonian physics. Well actually they had, and upon failure promptly upgraded to the physics of relativity.
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If Bug Labs, Open Moko, etc, were all working with components that are optimized for the established paradigm, that could've been the problem. Motorola is likely to work with components reinvented specifically for their new architecture of plug/unplug DIY modules.
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Because the easiest way to fail without any gain, or to pre-fail (failure by giving up before exhausting all avenues), is to view the goal as impossible, instead of merely doubting the current method of getting there.
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Since Project Ara is being developed in the open, with community input, we avoid the cathedral effect that can reinforce the existing paradigm and even produce tunnel-vision. To break the existing paradigm, you need a more diverse environment where for every set of engineers that see a dead-end, another set of engineers see the possibilities.
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What if you could bypass the solder problem entirely by merely bypassing solder itself, with chips in the electronics using the principles of wireless power? Or nano chips that don't use solder in a
<a href="http://www.research-tv.com/stories/technology/nanotech/">magnetic circuit</a>?
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The great thing about developing in the open is that more people get to see when the team decides something is a dead end, and the extra eyes boost the chance that someone outside the core team will have a solution.
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Marino Hernandez
<br />(just a founder of
<a href="http://www.marketply.org">Marketply</a>)
<br />203-429-4205
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On November 29, 2013 at 9:35 AM FarMcKon <eponymous@farmckon.net> wrote:
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I love the idea, but I've been down that road once (I was a kernel/app developer at Bug Labs) and while 'lego hardware' is a great concept, it's impossible to make practical.
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<br /> Here is what (at an engineering level) made a lot of trouble at Bug (IMHO, not an official view):
<br /> - To get people onboard, you really need 2-4 years of engineering experience. It's not a 'get it for christmas' hobby. The people that will use and benefit from this are other R&D Departments.
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<br /> - The faster, hotter, and smarter you make electronics, the more finicky they are. A ****LOT*** of chips are hard to get happy and stable if hand soldered by a pro. Making them a plug/unplug module (and protections circuits to go with it) and your failure rate explodes, or your engineering effort expodes.
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<br /> - A lot of the protocols they are trying to use over these wires are not built for plug/unplug. So most chips will need to have a 'translater' to get on a bus that can handle that spec, or you will need to do a hell a lot of hack arounds to get those protocols working in a plug/unplug environment.
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<br /> - Cost. On My Christ, sourcing high-end chips (Broadcom GSM, low-power wifi) is hard enough for medium sized firms. Sourcing them in hobby quantity, and then ruggidizing them. By the time you get them stable and out 3 years later, they are so outdated it's sad.
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<br /> - Delay: The open phone tech will always be 6 to 24 months behind the advertised *buy now, we ship next month* phones.
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<br /> We've been down this road (Open Moko. Bug Labs, and more)**. The 'fully configurable' system is going to be crash-tastic. It's great PR, it's shit engineering. It's always amazing to watch computer science (and some engineering disciplines) waste weeks or months of effort when 2 days of research (google, and calling experienced friends) could have mapped out the problems space and either stopped the project, or avoided the giant time-suck holes other people fell in.
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<br /> I have more hope for jolla, where the 'plugable' modules are nice-to-have add-ons and external to the core system. They are a bit isolated, and they are not core components of operation. It's much more likely to succeed, and they can use isolation circuits and 'firewall' the electronics at a few external point, instead of ruggidizing a lot of internal connections.
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<br /> IMHO The game-changer in the rise of Open Hardware is going to be:
<br /> - Moore's law slowing down (+)
<br /> - Retired Baby Boomer engineers getting into less-profit-driven positions as they retire (+)
<br /> - Patent trolls focusing on hardware more (-)
<br /> - Competition from China driving Americans companies to be more collaborative, and doing that collab open (+)
<br /> - Price concerns driving Americans companies to be more collaborative, and doing that collab open (+)
<br /> - Internet of things drive + SDR: Wireless technologies make it easier to sniff and reverse-engineer internal protocols, meaning it will be harder to lock folks out. You just need an antenna, and compatible code to hack something in the system. It lowers integration cost for legit partners, as well as 3rd party add on's and hackers as well.
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<br /> hack on,
<br /> - Far McKon
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<br /> On 11/29/13 4:04 AM, Marketply wrote:
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<a href="http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2013/about_page">Google Summer of Code</a> pays students to write code for open source projects. Thus increasing the pool of people introduced to open source while at the same time improving the health of open source.
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Android has helped to get open source operating systems into people's hands (and smart handhelds) globally.
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<a href="http://motorola-blog.blogspot.com/2013/10/goodbye-sticky-hello-ara.html">Project Ara</a> could similarly help propel the global reach of the open source hardware movement:
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<em>Project Ara is developing a free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones. We want to do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, and substantially compress development timelines.</em>
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Aside: the next logical progression could be a Motorola Summer of Hardware.
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How do you feel about this and who else do you see as a game changer for the rise of open source hardware?
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Marino Hernandez
<br /> (just a founder of
<a href="http://www.marketply.org">Marketply</a>)
<br /> 203-429-4205
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