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Linux-Powered Lego-Like Devices Target Developers
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."
Haha. It's a joke!
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
But who's gonna wanna develop a hardware- and software-based solution from pieces called 'BugModules'? I mean, if I'm a developer, do I want to use something that has 'BUG' right in the name? That doesn't instill any confidence in the product, if you ask me...
My blog
Is this like and adult open source version of lego mindstorm? I remember loving that as a kid, never really figured out how to make it do anything, though....
Remember those toys?
This makes me think of an adult version of that. Just sayin'.
Oh, wait. It DOES run Linux!
"Slapping lipstick on a pig does NOT make it Natalie Portman. Paris Hilton, maybe, but not Portman." - UncleTogie
is Lego. (or Lego Bricks to be _really_ picky)
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
will it blend?
Great, now so-called engineers can build things without knowing how they work, doesn't sound like an engineer to me, more like a simple programmer, more specifically, a java programmer. Nothing more than a glorified typist.
Don't worry about the 'complex' stuff, let java do it FOR you.
No need to learn electronics, let other people do it for you. Just snap together the components.
I look dread the new crop of programmers and 'engineers' being 'output' by the educational system.
That big picture at the top is the stuff of friggin' nightmares:
http://linuxdevices.com/files/misc/buglabs_community_legos-sm.jpg
"How come I don't hear nothin' when I connect my speakers to my GPS? I tried calling support on the video camera and got no answer!"
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
So it truly isn't a bug - it's a feature...
Now we can have open-source linux fanatics...graduating from elementary school.
The Lego Group has a trademark on Lego(tm) brand plastic building bricks. Maybe better to call BugLabs' products building bricks?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
These are nice, but at what additional cost over something like the Gumstix (http://gumstix.com/)? For a kid or someone who really does not know computers, etc., these might be good. However for a hobby, I would think the gumstix and similar (even a WRT54GL) would be a cheaper alternative.
The real proof will be the software and the marketing. If they can get the price low enough and can market it to smart teenagers as the "must have", and if they can get the software easy-enough for entry level developers, it might (should?) succeed.
Douglas Coupland got there first, well sort of anyway.
I'm the proud owner of a slug (ARM + 32M ram + ethernet + 2 USB ports for $100). I love it, but the memory limits my options. This looks like what I've been dreaming of (excluding NSFW stuff).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Speaking from personal experience, this sort of building-block approach to electronics can let a person down. I've designed a bunch of electronics, small simple chunks that do things like translate a logic-level signal to a relay that can switch ovens or computer-controlled A/D converters. By themselves, they work, but when you start just stacking them together like black boxes, their cumulative errors start to bite you -- or you put in a black box that contains a switching regulator and the line noise on the output wipes out everything downstream. If you don't know what they're actually doing, you don't know what their side-effects are going to be. The amount of post-regulator processing required to make a switching regulator look like a good, pure voltage source would be bulky enough to make that black box significantly less useful, and all that processing might not be required for 95% of possible loads.
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.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
If you're trying to produce an artificial intelligence to run the robot then the low level electronics aren't terribly important to you.
Deleted
>Capsela! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsella http://www.discoverthis.com/capsela.html
I think this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela is what you meant, unless theres really something relevant about the Capsella plant.
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.
Now there is an idea worthy of speculation -- modular porn.
These stories are free but worth money.
No, it will make 'buliding' stuff available to a larger audience.
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.
I've been following this and it looks interesting, but I'm waiting to hear about pricing.
I'm afraid I'm not going to like what I hear, though.
How's that going to work? The only way they can ship a product bug free is not to ship the product... Maybe their marketing guys should have spent a little more time coming up with a name...
Currently, the ante is just too high for most home-automation experimentation -- and I speak as one who actually works with the applications department of a semiconductor manufacturer.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This was a big improvement over the Radio Shack kits that used springs and jumper wires.
How does this differ from LabVIEW / G programming ?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Can you even put a slug and bug together?
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Am I the only one who, on reading "Lego-like devices target developers" pictured clunky little robots chasing terrified geeks around their labs?
Anyone else get visions of Cartman's modular Trapper Keeper?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapper_Keeper_(South_Park_episode)
Here's the link to the official website of BugLabs.
How about old Wang laboratories on Pecker road? (littleton mass IIRC)
There used to be a real funny one in midtown Atlanta (the metrosexual area of town), I kid thee not, S&M Clutch and Brake company.
But will it run Linux?
itsnotlegosdammit
First New Robots Hunt Pirates and now LEGOs are targetting developers! We're all doomed!
The USB-IF is working on an interchip USB spec, so basically, yes you can start stacking IC's together and have a reasonable chance of stuff just working. That's when the whole robotics/sensor fusion/custimization/modding scene will really take off.
This is straight out of Microserfs fyi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microserfs
I've got a Lego Mindstorms new in the box from last Christmas. I'd pay a developer $50 to make it into something cool that my Bluetooth phone could control. Or entertain requests for more money, if it were cool enough.
--
make install -not war
I've often wondered about the OS of the Replicators in Stargate SG-1.
Now, it's obvious.
Linux-Powered Lego-Like Devices: Exterminate, exterminate the devs, exterminate!
Carbon based humanoid in training.
"Linux-Powered Lego-Like Devices Target Developers"
Am I the only one who pictured giant LEGO robots armed with rifles shooting at a terrified mob of computer programmers led by Steve Ballmer?
lego build you!
prepare the survey weasels.
The idea is nice: shift the innovation for electronics to the consumers. In the automotive and aerospace engineering industries, there definately is a need for quick prototyping of electronics parts. But at Buglabs they don't explain well how they could help here. So I think these Buglabs building blocks the coming years probably just will just be used by some researchers. Hard to see also how with a company of 6 people they can provide support and challenge competitors like Sun's Sunspot. The Sunspot parts (Java, not OS) are going to be easier to program and also will be wireless (why do the Buglab parts necessarily have to click together??). So I imagine many more useful applications and much more success for Sunspot.
Now Lego-like devices target another segment of the modern society ! when will this strife end !
Read radical news here
Have a look at Virtual Cogs - http://www.virtualcogs.com/ Same concept, much more mature...