New Crowdfunding Campaign Offers Modular EOMA68 Computing Devices (crowdsupply.com)

A new crowdfunding campaign by Rhombus Tech "introduces the world's first devices built around the EOMA68 standard," which separates a "modular" CPU board from the rest of the system so that it can be easily used in multiple devices and upgraded more simply. Rhombus Tech is now offering a 15.6-inch laptop, a laser-cut wooden Micro-Desktop housing, and two types of computer cards, both using A20 dual-core ARM Cortex A7 processors. The cards are available with four flavors of the GNU/Linux operating system, and they're hoping to receive RYF certification from the Free Software Foundation.

"No proprietary software," explains their campaign's video. "No backdoors. No spyware. No NDAs." They envision a world where users upgrade their computers by simply popping in a new card -- reducing electronic waste -- or print new laptop casings to repair defects or swap in different colors. (And they also hope to eventually see the cards also working with cameras, phones, tablets, and gaming consoles.) Rhombus Tech CTO Luke Leighton did a Slashdot interview in 2012, and contacted Slashdot this weekend to announce: A live-streamed video from Hope2016 explains what it's about, and there is a huge range of discussions and articles online. The real burning question is: if a single Software Libre Engineer can teach themselves PCB design and bring modular computing to people on the budget available from a single company, why are there not already a huge number of companies doing modular upgradeable hardware?

Comments

Re:Because.se one size does not fit all

[chris2net23]

Your missing the point and value of this project entirely. We're giving the community and users control over the design of there computing devices. Right now we're stuck behind crappy poorly supported proprietary systems full of backdoors and malicious code. Modern Intel and AMD systems, televisions, every Android device, most Raspberry Pi-like boards, tablets, and even routers have backdoors and other malicious features.

You can't replace wifi cards in most devices these days because manufactures like Intel are integrating the chips into the boards. All modern NUCs for instance ship with proprietary intel wifi chips. Companies like Linksys are undermining our freedom and calling it "open source" trapping us into a system that ensure we won't retain control over critical aspects of the firmwares. Without access to these pieces important user contributed features including good support for mesh networking will no longer be possible. A great example of this is Atheros moving all the important bits in its 802.11ac chips into the firmware and is now refusing to release the code. Atheros *was* one of the better companies, but not because Atheros is good. But because we had multiple free software activists inside the company and because of work my company did to push things forward.

We don't need more than 2GB. We want more than 2GB. And that's fine. We can do that. But the first priority has to be to get a basic system out the door and funded. There are already efforts to get code released for more powerful SOCs. In six months you'll be able to replace that 2GB dual-core 32BIT card with a quad core card. And clearly the issue is not with the 2GB of ram. The issue is with bloated desktop environments. That's a solvable problem by simply not utilizing said desktop environments. You simply can't buy a new computer for $65- but that's exactly what you will be able to do. These aren't intended to replace your high end Intel/AMD system just yet. That's farther out.