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A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

bbenchoff.github.io

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Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#311

Post by Gracana »

eternityforest wrote: post #253
miav wrote: post #222

> It costs $10,000 USD to build one of these > The ten thousandth one costs $15 As a software engineer, I'm used to being able to build essentially whatever I want, with the only cost being my time. I'm often unpleasantly reminded that software is an outlier in that regard and as soon as physical items are concerned, especially hardware, it turns out that manufacturing even a simple thing is prohibitively expensive i…

You could probably build one at home for a few hundred if you really wanted and did not care at all about time. You would just need to 3D print a case and somehow cast your own silicone keypad. DIY electronics is actually not too bad cost wise.

I've been doing some test runs with HP multijet fusion prints, and I think that would be a great technology to use for case like this. You likely would need a couple-few tries to get it right, but it cleans up very nicely. I really don't like the look of FDM printed parts, so that aspect of it really appeals to me.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#313

Post by aidenn0 »

Teknoman117 wrote: post #299
tdeck wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could probably design a very similar one of tbese wirh a standard enclosure ($5) tactile switches, and a custom PCB for the top. Custom PCBs are ridiculously cheap now and even pick and place has gotten affordable for small runs.

You can even run 4-layer impedance controlled boards that support BGAs for ~$60 and get 10 of them. Problem is I now have a bunch of unpopulated PCBs I don't really intend to use. I made a few PCIe x1 to SMA adapters for an FPGA devkit - even building a single one and considering the rest of the PCBs as write-offs was less than a quarter the price of premade ones.

Can you verify good flow of solder on a BGA without an x-ray? Do you just reflow it for the prescribed time and see if it works?

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#314

Post by mike_hock »

mastazi wrote: post #227
miav wrote: post #222

> It costs $10,000 USD to build one of these > The ten thousandth one costs $15 As a software engineer, I'm used to being able to build essentially whatever I want, with the only cost being my time. I'm often unpleasantly reminded that software is an outlier in that regard and as soon as physical items are concerned, especially hardware, it turns out that manufacturing even a simple thing is prohibitively expensive i…

In the software world something that works roughly similarly (i.e. where a prototype is differentiated from production) is devops. If you are deploying a toy-project once, maybe you are not setting up a CI/CD pipeline, Terraform templates, Github team permissions, Github/Jira integration, etc etc. - you do all of these things only for "real" products. But yeah, going from prototype to production with hardware is much…

And the macro architecture of the project. As a one man project, the only thing it makes sense to build is a monolith.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#315

Post by Taniwha »

joemi wrote: post #268
miav wrote: post #222

> It costs $10,000 USD to build one of these > The ten thousandth one costs $15 As a software engineer, I'm used to being able to build essentially whatever I want, with the only cost being my time. I'm often unpleasantly reminded that software is an outlier in that regard and as soon as physical items are concerned, especially hardware, it turns out that manufacturing even a simple thing is prohibitively expensive i…

Most of that "$10,000" is because of paying someone else for custom parts. If you use existing parts or make the custom parts yourself (if you have the ability/tools), it's less than $100. So the software equivalent would be if you oursourced a large chunk of your project to someone else, and in that case, I think $10,000 might not be too far off.

Injection moulding is not cheap, getting the high quality steel mould produced costs $1000s, a largish portion of this is just the cost of a giant block of steel (there are two moulds here)

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#316

Post by [deleted] »

throw10920 wrote: post #275
renonce wrote: post #200

In China we buy second-hand Redmi 2 for 60RMB each (roughly $9.5). Can be bought in quantities. Fully functional with 2GB RAM+16GB eMMC, and battery, touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth, camera, and even 4G support. It's not built from scratch like this one, but if you are just looking for something cheap, then this price is insane.

Amazing that we went from this potato[1] for $12 in 2013 to that Redmi 2 in 9 years. Now, you said that you buy the Redmi second-hand, but still - the leap is amazing. [1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=3107

[deleted]

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#317

Post by skykooler »

Anunayj wrote: post #232
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well said. It's a great project and impressive execution at $15! > While this is admirable as a proof of concept, I suspect that moving the price point up to, say, $30 could give a much more useful and hacker-friendly device. I agree. I think this project proves that ultra low cost is viable. Now relaxing the constraints a bit to add RAM and WiFi could iterate it right into an optimal spot. I wouldn't want to go much…

I think we've already got a pretty powerful computer at around the 40$ price point (the raspberrypi), and I feel like it'd be impossible to beat it given the scale raspberry pi is at.

Raspberry pi is just the motherboard. Add in a screen, power supply, keyboard and case, and that's going to inflate the total cost.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#318

Post by BenjiWiebe »

samstave wrote: post #302
zozbot234 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why the heck hasnt a single manufacturer included the USB Dongle radio IN the mobo? USB radio dongles are not standardized, that's what Bluetooth is for. (There used to be a Wireless USB standard but it was never widely adopted, and it has fallen out of use altogether.) There are USB-C power bricks that also work as hubs, so you're not wasting your only USB-C port.

Ive never purchased anything but Logitech, to ensure all of my mice work, so they are pretty standardized to me.. but again I may be a minority in this opinion...

Well yes, they may be "standardized" within one brand, but that isn't standardized. Why include a Logitech mouse/keyboard radio in a mobo when the one making the mobo isn't Logitech?

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#319

Post by anthk »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #300
anthk wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough for Tmux, busybox, SSH/Mosh, Lynx, Gopher, NNTP, IRC over bitlbee, music and video playing over Bluetooth speakers, PDF readers (fbipdf, fbpdf2), epub readers (unzip+lynx script), on the go coding...

Coding... what? Coding on other retro technologies? I guess if you enjoy working on system software sure, but if I can't even allocate enough memory to hold a large-ish JSON payload in memory, then I'm not going to be able to do much with the system. Only protocols like SMTP or NNTP are built around the ability to parse with minimal overhead (and even they can have large line lengths.)

Eh, wait a moment. I did several fun stuff with just CLI and C/tcl under the zipitz z2. Even with TLS. You understimate what we did in the 90's too with just 32 or 64MB of RAM.

Jabber uses XML and I did it fine under a system daemon like Bitlbee AND an IRC client on top of that. 48MB overall on the Zipit z2, 32MB + compressed ZRAM. The total usage was about ~16MB with a tiny MUSL build, tmux, ash, bitlbee and sic.

SMTP, NNTP, Gopher... are protocols for 16 and 8 bit architectured computers. Go figure.

A Classic Mac with System 6 could do IMAP just fine, jcs wrote a client for it.

Re: A Minimum Viable Computer, or Linux for $15

#320

Post by pbronez »

skykooler wrote: post #317
Anunayj wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we've already got a pretty powerful computer at around the 40$ price point (the raspberrypi), and I feel like it'd be impossible to beat it given the scale raspberry pi is at.

Raspberry pi is just the motherboard. Add in a screen, power supply, keyboard and case, and that's going to inflate the total cost.

Is there a kit that adds all the stuff needed to make an rPi into a battery powered hand-held device?
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