Ehhh, maybe? I haven't heard many people wishing for devices that were within the realm of practicality (I.E. not a flying car). If someone has an actual good idea, then the cost of the components and tools and rework is the next major hurdle (soldering by hand is where cool ideas go to die). Meanwhile a commercial off-the-shelf device probably works good enough.
The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
21–30 of 90 posts
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
anything but be owned by you
No, by reasonable definitions that's doable too. My phone runs an OS I chose, that I have admin access on, that runs any app I tell it to run. And, y'know, it's my property that I bought with my own money, but that's probably aside your argument.
One can say that he chose iOS by buying iPhone. I don't see any strong argument here
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#23This reminds me of the other article posted on here, https://isene.org/2026/05/Audience-of-One.html Everyday more bespoke dotfiles are coming online for an audience of one. I am not surprised that this is coming to hardware as well.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#24And it's probably going the same way all the personalized software we've been seeing: used as a spam "I built this" post on reddit or hacker news and to never be touched again.
With hardware you get extra safety risks of fires and shocks, so let's see
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#25I 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…
That's mildly surprising to me, given what I've seen when I ask current models to make an SVG of something.
Would I be on the right track if I guessed there's a DSL for designing PCBs that would help enforce functional correctness?
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#26The author is missing the _hardest_ part of small hardware: power management.
The reason why AR glasses are not a thing yes is because there isn't a big enough battery to allow them to function for more than a few minutes.
Glasses form factor have space for about .9watt hours now, and ~2 in 4 years time (assuming current trends) Assuming a 14 hour day, that means that your have 140mwhr to spend every hour. A not very bright light on your glasses is about 30mw, a decently bright one is 90mw. Processing imagery on that kind of budget requires custom silicon, and a huge bunch of optimisations.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#27Mmmmmmmmmm… sort of.
If you are keeping inside the LEGO level of complexity, almost. But just as with code, if the project is complex you need a real engineer herding the cats. That said, it certainly can extend the reach of an effort, and is a huge help doing board reviews and data sheet analysis, etc. but the real engineering decisions are very very hit and miss, just like with code.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#28I 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…
That's mildly surprising to me, given what I've seen when I ask current models to make an SVG of something. Would I be on the right track if I guessed there's a DSL for designing PCBs that would help enforce functional correctness?
A lot of human PCB errors could be caught by analyzing the netlist against requirements and knowledge of the datasheet. Schematic and board formats are usually plaintext, so you can generate those directly even. Or kicad + python?
That’s probably enough for an LLM to check if you’ve mis-wired something, missed a part or chose the wrong resistor to set a regulator voltage. Plus good old DRC/ERC. If you pass all of those, there’s a good chance things will work unless your placement is really bad, but you could manually lay out and autoroute a lot of simple boards. Not to belittle the parent but a 4 layer board is actually simpler in some ways because you have a power plane which is one less net to worry about.
For analog work you can even run a SPICE simulation.
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#29I 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…
In so far as AI can do hardware reliably you can bet your bottom dollar the big chip fabs have already been doing that. They don’t call it AI though and the models aren’t language based, surprisingly enough /s
Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming
#30> People build their own applications now
All the people that I know in tech and not in tech, don't do that, even if presented with the option they're too busy to also get into this endeavour that still requires a lot of expertise. I stopped reading there