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https://davehakkens.nl/news/re...

dave hakkens is the person who really inspired the modular smartphone movement and brought it to prominence (buglabs was the first to really implement the concept, almost a decade ago). however we don't really have an actual explanation of what went wrong with project ara. here's some hints (search in this document for "ara" obviously): http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep...

basically it's down to the fact that google has more money than they have creative sense. they therefore tried to use "financial brute force" to solve problems. the summary is: with their financial resources they created a "backbone standard" called MIPI UniPro... forgetting that in the process it would be patented by the partners, thus AUTOMATICALLY locking out ANY kind of interoperability and competition for the next 20 years. how, exactly, is that supposed to be "open"???

if we want modular smartphones to be successful, we need PROPERLY OPEN STANDARDs that have no vendor lock-in, but that are also properly protected by a Certification Mark (the standards-equivalent of a Trademark) and a Foundation (or CIC or Benefit Corporation), which is given the financial clout by its sponsors to jump on anyone who wrongly implements the standard in such a way as to cause short-circuits (and end up killing someone due to lithium battery fires for example). it's not like a software standard, where interoperability failures cause a segfault: a HARDWARE fault can genuinely be dangerous.

also the standard needs to be made up of *other* standards that are unencumbered and royalty-free, so that companies and makers alike are incentivised to create modules (using 3D printers and low-cost off-the-shelf circuits), for example this one, under development: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Ope... . Google *literally* did the total opposite of this strategy in every single conceivable way. paying companies to develop new chipsets (patented, proprietary) and saying "here! it's open! sign our NDA, agree to our policy, and you'll be fiiiine!" i'm just staggered by the naivety of a billion-dollar company that had to add me to a special list "stop phoning this person to invite them to interview, you've called them five times already over the past 10 years".

the other thing is, whilst i am delighted at dave's success in bringing the benefits of modularity to a wider audience, he doesn't have any technical knowledge. he views an *increase* in the number of companies on the phonebloks.com front page as being a good thing. the key question which illustrates the point without having to spell it out: are any of the products listed on the phonebloks page interoperable in *any* way?

so. if there is anybody who would like to see this done properly - in an open fashion so that the mistakes of both google and fairphone are not repeated (see http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/...) do reach out on the arm-netbook mailing list http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mail... i've been investigating and researching this for years and waiting for the right opportunity. often it's good to wait for "big" corporations to fail to deliver, because it means that the hugely-public lessons sink in. a "small person" saying "this ain't gonna work no matter how much money they throw at it" tends not to be believed until the predicted failure comes about.

just as i did with the successfully-crowd-funded modular libre eco-laptop i've set up a stub page (for now) http://rhombus-tech.net/commun... which is a hybrid phone that acts "dumb" and may be upgraded to "smart" by plugging in a computer-on-a-module in Compact-Flash form-factor. "peripher

Sounds interesting, but I'd have to see a complete proposal before I'd chip in. I'd want to see the schedule, the budget, the resources, and the success criteria to know if the project succeeded.

most of the information you've asked for, because this is a *genuinely* open and transparent project, is on http://rhombus-tech.net/crowds... - including the BOM, a full risk analysis, and much more. having been around for a long time, long enough to have seen the openmoko fail, and the pi-top team break their promises, and the shit-storm that resulted from the purism team's deceptive marketing, and the difficulties that the openpandora team had with R.F. and firmware: if you have any specific advice, TELL ME. i WANT TO KNOW. best place to do that is the mailing list because then other people can help evaluate your proposals and questions - http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

The summary sounds way too grand, so I think I'd want to see it broken down into pieces that are small enough to understand, too.

it's been five years: that's a lot of time to think, plan and get everything lined up. if you're interested in the background as to *why* i am tackling this, it may help to read the background section (first question) http://lkcl.net/articles/eoma6...

"breaking it down into small pieces" it turns out is extraordinarily difficult. the simplest i've found is, "you know like a pause memory pause card? yeah? well this is a pause computer pause card. same benefits as memory cards except now you move the *whole computer*". but even that often is not conceptually enough. after repeating things about 200 to 250 times at hope2016 (and losing my voice on the first day) there's a live video which you can find at https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... - i managed to get it down to *only* 3 minutes, to cover *a few* of the benefits. the rest (that i have been able to think of over the past five years) are covered here in the "scenarios" section: http://rhombus-tech.net/whitep...

Also important to make sure nothing is overlooked, such as sufficient testing. Be fine if the same organization that helped check the proposal evaluated and reported on the results (perhaps holding the money, too).

well - it's just me, self-auditing with an "always transparent GENUINELY open approach learned from software libre project management of 20 years" unless other people pop up to help. so, you and everyone else on the mailing list will just have to keep an eye on me. and help out with the testing... because it's a software libre project, and i can't do everything, so *need help*. funny and really cool story: a guy called albert contacted me last month, asked if there was any plans to do a french keyboard. i went (internally), "argh, haven't got time, let's point him at the git repo and tell him about the STM32F072 nucleo boards, see what happens" and surpriiise! turns out he's an embedded hardware engineer... so guess what? he's now joined the mailing list and is helping to do french keyboard firmware and much more! https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... and you can check the mailing list archives as well.

P.S. I think this is a solution to the general problems with all of the crowdfunding systems that I have examined. No accountability or adequate planning.

you're telling me. i spoke to a battery manufacturer last year: we had a bit of a laugh as he explained that a *FUNDED* project for a head-wearable device contacted them and asked him to violate the laws of physics. they'd used a high

short version: the plan is to carry on, using the lessons learned to
try again, with a crowd-funding campaign that is transparent. please
keep an eye on the mailing list, i will also post here on slashdot
when it begins.

http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

long version:

this has been a hugely ambitious venture, i think henrik's post explains much:
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

the - extremely ambitious - goal set by me is to solve a huge range of
issues, the heart of which is to create environmentally-conscious
mass-volume appliances that software libre developers are *directly*
involved in at every step of the way.

so, not to be disparaging to any project past or future, but this isn't
"another beagleboard", or "another raspberry pi beater": it's a way to
help the average person *own* their computer appliances and save
money over the long term. software libre developers are invited
to help make that happen.

by "own" we mean "proper copyright compliance, no locked boot
loaders and a thriving software libre environment that they can
walk straight into to help them do what they want with *their*
device... if they want to".

the actual OS installed on the appliance will be one that is
relevant for that appliance, be it ChromeOS, Android, even
Windows or MacOSX. regardless of the pre-installed OS, the
products i am or will be involved in *will* be ones that Software
Libre Developers would be proud to own and would recommend
even to the average person.

by "saving money over the long term" we mean "the device is
split into two around a stable long-term standard
with a thriving second-hand market on each side, with new
CPU Cards coming along as well as new products as well.
buy one CPU Card and one product, it'll be a little bit more
expensive than a monolithic non-upgradeable product,
but buy two and you save 30% because you only need
one CPU Card. break the base unit and instead of the whole
product becoming land-fill you just have to replace the base,
you can transfer not just the applications and data but
the *entire computer*".

it was the environmental modular aspects as well as
the committment to free software *and* the desire to reach
mass-volume levels that attracted aaron to the Rhombus Tech
project.

perhaps unsurprisingly - and i take responsibility for this - the
details of the above did not translate well into the Improv
launch. the reason i can say that is because even henrik,
who has been helping out and a member of the arm netbooks
mailing list for quite some time, *still* has not fully grasped
the full impact of the technical details behind the standards

(hi henrik, how are ya, thank you very very much for helping
with the boot of the first A10 / A20 CPU card, your post on
the mailing list last week was very helpful because it shows
that i still have a long way to go to get the message across
in a short concise way).

the level of logical deduction, the details that need to be taken
into account, the number of processors whose full specifications
must be known in order to make a decent long-term stable
standard.... many people i know reading that sentence will think i
am some sort of self-promoting egotistical dick but i can tell you
right now you *don't* want to be holding in your head the
kinds of mind-numbing details needed to design a long-term
mass-volume computing standard. it's fun... but only in a
masochistic sort of way!

anyway. i did say long, so i have an excuse, but to get to the
point: now that the money is being returned, we can start again
with a new campaign - using a crowdfunding site that shows
numbers, and starts with a lower target (250) that offers more value
for that same amount of money to everyone invo

short version: the plan is to carry on, using the lessons learned to
try again, with a crowd-funding campaign that is transparent. please
keep an eye on the mailing list, i will also post here on slashdot
when it begins.

http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

long version:

this has been a hugely ambitious venture, i think henrik's post explains much:
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipe...

the - extremely ambitious - goal set by me is to solve a huge range of
issues, the heart of which is to create environmentally-conscious
mass-volume appliances that software libre developers are *directly*
involved in at every step of the way.

so, not to be disparaging to any project past or future, but this isn't
"another beagleboard", or "another raspberry pi beater": it's a way to
help the average person *own* their computer appliances and save
money over the long term. software libre developers are invited
to help make that happen.

by "own" we mean "proper copyright compliance, no locked boot
loaders and a thriving software libre environment that they can
walk straight into to help them do what they want with *their*
device... if they want to".

the actual OS installed on the appliance will be one that is
relevant for that appliance, be it ChromeOS, Android, even
Windows or MacOSX. regardless of the pre-installed OS, the
products i am or will be involved in *will* be ones that Software
Libre Developers would be proud to own and would recommend
even to the average person.

by "saving money over the long term" we mean "the device is
split into two around a stable long-term standard
with a thriving second-hand market on each side, with new
CPU Cards coming along as well as new products as well.
buy one CPU Card and one product, it'll be a little bit more
expensive than a monolithic non-upgradeable product,
but buy two and you save 30% because you only need
one CPU Card. break the base unit and instead of the whole
product becoming land-fill you just have to replace the base,
you can transfer not just the applications and data but
the *entire computer*".

it was the environmental modular aspects as well as
the committment to free software *and* the desire to reach
mass-volume levels that attracted aaron to the Rhombus Tech
project.

perhaps unsurprisingly - and i take responsibility for this - the
details of the above did not translate well into the Improv
launch. the reason i can say that is because even henrik,
who has been helping out and a member of the arm netbooks
mailing list for quite some time, *still* has not fully grasped
the full impact of the technical details behind the standards

(hi henrik, how are ya, thank you very very much for helping
with the boot of the first A10 / A20 CPU card, your post on
the mailing list last week was very helpful because it shows
that i still have a long way to go to get the message across
in a short concise way).

the level of logical deduction, the details that need to be taken
into account, the number of processors whose full specifications
must be known in order to make a decent long-term stable
standard.... many people i know reading that sentence will think i
am some sort of self-promoting egotistical dick but i can tell you
right now you *don't* want to be holding in your head the
kinds of mind-numbing details needed to design a long-term
mass-volume computing standard. it's fun... but only in a
masochistic sort of way!

anyway. i did say long, so i have an excuse, but to get to the
point: now that the money is being returned, we can start again
with a new campaign - using a crowdfunding site that shows
numbers, and starts with a lower target (250) that offers more value
for that same amount of money to everyone invo

i did an analysis of the Quark X1000 based on the Galileo schematics, and the assessment isn't good:
http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2013-October/008979.html

the key failure is that there's absolutely no I/O multiplexing. given that intel actually designed the PXA series of ARM processors before selling them to marvell you have to wonder what was going through the minds of the engineers behind the Quark X1000.

the main points of the above link which automatically and very unfortunately make the Quark X1000 a complete failure are:

1) there's no video outputs, and the only options are USB2 (DisplayLink with no 3D capabilities and too slow to do video), SPI (for character-based LCDs) or PCIe. to match a 0.4 watt processor with a 20 watt 3D PCIe Graphics card is completely insane. there are therefore no good options for video display of *any* kind.

2) there's no "industrial" or "embedded" style GPIO. no CAN bus, no PWM, no ADC, no DAC. there's also no audio. there's not even I2S and there's certainly no SPDIF. so to make up for that lack you'd have to add something like a Cortex M0, M3 or M4 embedded controller... and given that those usually come with built-in Power Management, NAND Flash and SDRAM, for the majority of purposes where you'd need to use an embedded controller with a Quark as a GPIO expander you'd be better off, cost-wise, with... just the embedded controller.

overall then there really aren't *any* markets that this chip could be useful for. if i'm wrong about that, and anyone can actually think of good uses for it, please do speak up.

Luke Leighton's been having trouble getting KickStarter to allow a kickstarter campaign for EOMA-68 CPU cards, as he posted here, so maybe this will at least make the requirements clear instead of going round and round with emails.

From what read elsewhere, it seems that the Aliyun people are probably not in compliance with the GPL, so they are in direct copyright infringement of code written by Google and others. While this is not too surprising given the sorry state of GPL compliance in the PRC, but this gives Google every right to strong-arm anyone touching this project.

In brief, keep up the good work, that sounds really good!

thank you, that's really appreciated. can i suggest you join the mailing list or just keep an eye on it via gmane or something, if you prefer? lots of people subscribe "no-mail" then lurk on gmane and they can then post if they want to, without filling up their mailbox. here's the subscription page:
    http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook

feel free to ask anything you like, there, ok? or, ah, what might suit you: join the irc channel #arm-netbook on freenode. /peace

i think the difference is illustrated by the following: i actually did seriously evaluate getting a beagleboard into a low-cost laptop (15in, 1920x1080 LCD). it was impossible. we had to find a massive "gaming" laptop with a 1in case that would normally have a huge fan in it, to give the height clearance sufficient to fit the beagleboard, comfortably. in the end we gave up with that one.

but yes: bari (one of the subscribers to arm-netbooks) has volunteered to convert the beaglebone, or any other board with open HW schematics such as the IMX53QSB, to EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant format, *if* there is enough community interest. personally i really like the AM3357, it's about the only low-cost decent CPU that would do for FSF Hardware-Endorsement. http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2011-December/001155.html

ok there are two answer. the first is for the EOMA-compliant module *only*.

1) we'd like to keep it somewhere between $75 and $100 for the very early runs, and it looks like we're set to achieve that. it seriously depends on the quantities, and on how much profit people would like the CIC company to make (yes, CICs can work that way whereas Ltd Companies cannot be trusted with that kind of strategy).

the NREs (non-recurring expenses) by the factory will be about $2,000, and that excludes hardware engineer's time because we've done this "you don't charge us for hardware engineering time and we won't charge you for software engineering time" deal.

we have people committed to buying about 17 units so far: if that gets to 30 then the costs are down to $75 per unit (just for those initial 30). after that, there are no more NREs, and the unit cost can, assuming large volume, approach the mass-volume price of $15.

of course... that's excluding other parts which is answer 2:

2) it's best to go on mass-volume retail cost, unless you'd like to help dominic (debian developer, see debian-arm mailing list) make one using the EOMA-compliant CPU card which is where most of the difficult work (CPU-to-DDR RAM etc.) will already have been done.

mass-volume retail cost for something that even includes a capacitive touch panel can be as low as $130, but i know from experience that there's at least a 60% markup on the BOM, possibly even more. here's a link to a discussion: http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2011-December/001136.html and please note that the example product will be yet _another_ GPL-violating tablet, absolutely guaranteed.

to work out the BOM you have to factor in the following costs, assuming mass-volume pricing: EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant CPU module about $15, 2000mAh battery $8, 7in 800x600 LCD $15, resistive touchpanel $5, main motherboard including WIFI module about $8, case (excluding *massive* NREs) about $3 - comes to a total of $39. yes, really - $39.

if you want a capacitive touchpanel instead, add an extra $15 because capacitive touchpanels, being also made of glass and having to be thicker than LCDs, are at least 25% more expensive than the LCD underneath them! but you can see, even with a capacitive touchpanel the BOM only comes to about $55.

so basically, you can see that a mass-volume retail cost of about $80 for a 7in tablet with the Allwinner A10 and a resistive touchpanel would be quite reasonable, and about $130 for one with a capacitive touchpanel would also be quite reasonable.

apologies for answering in a rather indirect and roundabout way, which i'm sure you would appreciate given that this is slashdot, and that i'm not working for a profit-maximising company that is primarily motivated to do anything including lie to you in order to get your money.

Here's the thread on debian-arm: http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2011/12/msg00008.html and the corresponding one on arm-netbook: http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/2011-December/thread.html

The problem that's been made clear time and time again is that if you want low-cost mass-produced hardware, you normally have to go with GPL-violating products (see list here http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/android_tablets/) and that means that you will spend the majority of your time reverse-engineering the product for anything between two weeks and two years, depending on luck and skill, before getting something useful. By the time you're done, the product is usually end-of-lifed: thus if it breaks, you're back to square one.

The reason for the GPL violations is that the low-cost China-based Factories simply have zero software skills: they're provided with binary-only firmware from an ODM who themselves usually had to sign an NDA from the SoC manufacturer, itself in direct violation of the GPL, in order to get access to the source code. Normally there's a chain of at least *five* companies with whom you have to negotiate with for several days or weeks - each - in order to explain the situation to them, against a precarious balance of them basically not giving a stuff because there's no financial incentive for them to give you anything at all: they're already making money, selling product, so why should they care?

thus, we logically concluded that the only way to get non-GPL-violating product out there is to go directly to the factories and be the supplier of their software.

so for the past two years i've been contacting and vetting China-based factories, directly, to find at least one which is prepared to work with us (RH Technology - http://www.rh-technology.com./ the basis of the deal is, "we won't charge you for software expertise if you won't charge us for hardware design costs", and after two years we finally found _one_ factory willing to do a deal, and are looking for more.

we've also found an absolutely great CPU, called the Allwinner A10, which in mass-volume quantities is only about $7: that means that a PCB similar to the raspberrypi with similar features can be made for about $15 (not $25) and, because the Allwinner CPU is an ARM Cortex A8 not an ARM11 it is at least three times quicker than the raspberrypi's CPU.

now we have at least 15 Debian Developers who are willing to support the project by buying beta hardware samples, and we're looking for more people to help support this effort, by committing to buy product (just like with the OpenPandora http://openpandora.org./ we have set up a CIC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_interest_company) because it's a better vehicle than a non-profit, charity or profit-maximising company. the CIC is called Rhombus Tech - http://rhombus-tech.net./

we also have the full support of the Board of Directors of the Allwinner CPU: they released full source code to us in advance. we've made it available and found it to compile successfully.

in-advance GPL-compliant hardware really is very very unusual. even USA-based companies typically release GPL source code on or after the day that a product is announced. Archos for example made a tablet that used the Telechips TCC8900 series of CPUs, and complied with the GPL (in direct violation of the standard NDA available at the time from the SoC manufacturer!).

other than that: about the only existing product on the market that i can really recommend to you is the alwaysinnovating touchbook: http://alwaysinnovating.com/ - it's about $300.

funny... i was just writing up a post to the http://openhardwaresummit.org/ mailing list about a way to accelerate the process by which enthusiasts can work with the latest mass-produced embedded hardware.

the initiative, which has a specification here - http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA - is based around the fact that, just as mentioned above, the development of processor "speeds" is slowing down. this funnily enough allows so-called "embedded" processors to catch up, and it's these embedded CPUs which are low-power enough to base an entire computer around that is still desirable yet consumes between 0.5 and 3 watts instead of 10 to 500 watts.

if anybody would like to participate in this initiative, please do join the arm-netbook mailing list - http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook

The backups on the archive server appear as complete copies of directories of the backed up machines. There will appear to be one complete backup for each day - this lets you find/restore a consistent set of files from a particular day.

The script cleverly avoids copying files that have not changed. It economises on disk use by only keeping one copy of each file - but makes that one copy appear in the various daily archives.

The idea is that one central archive server initiates backups on several other machines.

This script works well where you have many files that do not change from day to day, eg word processing documents. It is not so good where most of your files change frequently - but will still work.

GPLed, get it from: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/Packages/RsyncBackup.html

Yeah, everyone in the world knows their legal system is busted. Why do they even have free speech, if they can silence people with lawsuits?

The legal system is run by parasites called solicitors and barristers who are only interested in transferring as much of your money into their pockets.

This is nothing new, Jonathan Swift talked about it in Gulliver's Travels.

OK: there are some honest & some good ones, but most that I have dealed with are not.