I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about. I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable. Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosm…
The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
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Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#12I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about. I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable. Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosm…
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#13I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about. I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable. Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosm…
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#14I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about. I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable. Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosm…
Im surprised by how bad LLMs are with SVGs but somehow are oke-ish with CAD and other weird files.
I also believe most design related to a physical object have documentation justifying the choices.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#15I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about. I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable. Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosm…
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#16I tried building a health device few years ago and got completely lost in how to setup camera and touch display with a raspberry PI. Would imagine, with AI running in a command line, it would be much easier.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#17I had an esp32-box-3 lying around from a lapsed "voice agent" project from a year or two ago. Had a baby. Baby moved to another room, sleep trained. Baby either: 1. wakes up a few times a night, babbles for a bit, goes back to sleep OR 2. baby wakes up and fusses for N (=10) minutes, at which point parents need to go in and settle (that's the sleep training routine we use).
In either case, we do NOT want to wake up every time the baby does. Baby can go back to sleep easily, we adults have a harder time. A few rounds with Claude and the esp32 is now our new baby monitor. It tracks cry/fuss duration and publishes an audio stream (via a web UI or direct with, say, VLC). The audio only comes through AFTER N minutes of fussing have elapsed. It also posts notifications (to ntfy) after 30s and N minutes. My log says baby often wakes up 1-2 times a night and resettles almost immediately. We only wake up if the audio comes through, after N (10) minutes.
Also during the day it's really handy to be notified when baby has woken up from her nap. Let's us be out of the house, or in a distant room, and still keep track of what's going on.
It's fun to keep improving and adding features to this. Never would have had the time/energy to get this done without a coding agent. I ordered a set of 10 more of the esp32-box-3s to give them out to my friends (well, some are for other projects... so much potential).
(EDIT: Yes, I know this isn't AI designing hardware, but even writing code for embedded off the shelf stuff feels like a huge new potential.)
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#18I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about. I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable. Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosm…
But that was a few months ago, getting high hope with fable and seeing killed before I could even try it for that project killed all my motivations.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#19While personalization is definitely the trend, I don't think people are going to build code just to personalize. A tiny few of all who bought the device could do that. A few more could flash the device with some open firmware that gives more features and personalization and most will stick with the range of the personalization provided by the vendor. For the most people, the risks outweigh the desire for tinkering. P…
I think so. There will be a short period, like now, where many will attempt to build their own products and the five good ideas out of five thousand will be incorporated into products built by those who know what they’re doing.
An absolutely technophobic friend asked me what agentic AI was today. I think Charlie Munger said “When even your barber is talking about it, sell and run”
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#20There's a whole continuum from "Buy an off the shelf unit" to "here's a barebones case you can slide ready made switches and caps into" to "mix and match custom PCBs and cases" to designing your own PCBs and/or cases. There are pretty clear pipelines and even some levels of tooling for "draw up the layout you want and get a bunch of files you can send to production houses"
Takeaway 1: A lot of this is grounded in economic realities. I did the full bespoke route (custom PCB, custom 3-D printed case) and figured it probably cost me about $500 all inclusive to get what I wanted, and that's honestly a lot of money for a keyboard.
AI won't solve any of the economic problems. They can't fix "the minimum PCB order is N units, so now you have a drawer full of spares you paid for". They can't make the expensive part you needed cheaper, especially if you're an individual buying quantity of 1/5/10 instead of an OEM buying reels and containers-full. They can't change the fact that a case for a large widget will be expensive to mill/3-D print/mould/etc.
Takeaway 2: Customers may have surprisingly limited imagination for bespoke gear. There are galleries (and even coffee-table books) full of exotic keyboards. But Micro Center is full of $50 interchangeable "tenkeyless with RGB lighting" boards; throwing on a random set of "custom" keycaps, and that's enough for a large part of the audience.
Will these customers want or benefit from more tools, or will it just give them rope to hang themselves on and give them an excuse to bail out of the purchase entirely? Even if you can provide them a gallery of vetted turnkey choices, there might be more choice paralysis than actual benefit.
Takeaway 3: Hardware is forever (relative to software). You have a lot of small firms and group-buy products that disappeared and now the owners can't get an exact replacement or repairs. Conversely, Unicomp can gut and rebuild a 1986 Model M with new innards in large part because they've been selling the same basic design since a 386DX/16 cost as much as a Toyota Tercel.
If your AI spawns a galaxy of 1-of-1 bespoke products, who services and supports them? That seems like it's only going to appeal to the enthusiast-hacker type who can keep them alive themselves, who is least likely to need AI help designing them. Design for disposability isn't a great look for anything but incredibly low-cost, limited-usecase items.