Building the MacPaint for hardware • Hacker News Board

Re: Building the MacPaint for hardware

#21

Post by fit2rule » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 5:34 AM UTC

andymacd wrote: post #5

fit2rule wrote: post #3

I think whats needed is a revival of the Denshi Blocks paradigm, but with a lot of rPi, 3d-printing, eurorack-modular-synth, and a whole lot of open source mixed in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gakken_EX-System Imagine a new attempt at making something similar in the modern era ..

It sounds like your basically describing what littlebits are doing ( http://littlebits.cc/ ) - modular electronic blocks that can be arranged in a multitude of combinations

Sure, thats pretty close. But .. take it up a notch. Make it an open spec that anyone can manufacture. Make the block stacking standard really work .. littlebits has its virtues, but the whole thing is quite delicate and really only suitable in the lab/workbench. A 21st Century Denshi Block system would have to be a lot more resilient to spills and bumps.

Re: Building the MacPaint for hardware

#22

Post by pjc50 » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 9:38 AM UTC

Gracana wrote: post #9

It's interesting how he talks about the raspberry pi: > The first was listening to Eben Upton, the brains behind the Raspberry Pi, describe that the number of qualified applicants to study computer science is dropping. Rather than learning how computers work at a more fundamental level, students are applying only with knowledge of webpage construction and high-level scripting languages. He argued that this is emblema…

One of the early prototypes of the Pi was built around a microcontroller that bit-banged video output. It was a lot closer to the ultra-low-level experience that you describe. He decided it was just too alien an experience and too limited compared to a modern desktop PC - there's no way it could ever run a web browser, for example.

A fundamental problem with the "modern C64" ideal is that the software stack is much deeper these days, especially in the browser.

The nearest thing to your hardware-orientated version of simplicity would be something like this: http://hackaday.io/project/3877-layerone-demoscene-board which outputs raw VGA from a PIC24.

Re: Building the MacPaint for hardware

#23

Post by hga » Thu, Feb 12, 2015, 6:24 PM UTC

divy wrote: post #4

moe wrote: post #2

Isn't this more like "Lego" for hardware? In MacPaint I can paint anything. In your toolbox I can only assemble something with the parts that you give me. The MacPaint analogy would hold water if you'd let me draw any shape that I want (to be 3d printed), and merely assist by enforcing the basic constraints required for my device to be manufactured and functional (e.g. enough space to put the electronics in, etc.).

To be fair, there were many constraints in MacPaint - color being the most obvious example. It was a limited drawing program. Put into context, I do believe the analogy works - you start simple (box, few components, limited layout) and evolve to include malleable 3D printed materials and generated electronics. Disclosure - I wrote the post.

Quick question, perhaps: what's the maximum computing power, especially RAM, you're thinking of offering?

If it's just microcontrollers, my interest in somewhat limited. Something I reasonably put a Lisp on (code as data wants RAM, even if a lot can live on flash) ... well, looking at Wikipedia's list of Arduino CPUs, 96KiB is a very qualified maybe, 64MiB is a lot more like it.