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The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

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Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#41

Post by thatsit »

pugio wrote: post #17

AI + hardware has really helped my wife and I get more sleep. I 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 trainin…

This is one of the killer use cases of AI, build personalized stuff for your life, that no company does. It is kind of generalized „intelligent stuff“ that one can use. Like minecraft your life

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#42

Post by embedding-shape »

nerdsniper wrote: post #40
mapontosevenths wrote: post #6

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…

What confidence would you have in AI's ability to do 20-40GHz signal routing with good integrity? HDMI + USB4 + USB-C DP AltMode and a bunch of USB4 routing/switching fabric stuff?

Hook it up so it can experiment away by itself with tools, provide a end goal and ask it to iterate until it reached it. What the "AI can do vs not" becomes more about how long you can let it do inference in such loop, with local hardware it gets really cheap (granted you have the hardware already), with remote inference cost is probably the limiter.

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#43

Post by petra »

pugio wrote: post #17

AI + hardware has really helped my wife and I get more sleep. I 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 trainin…

This actually feels like something that could be a popular app on a baby monitor.

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#44

Post by dashersw »

Animats wrote: post #31

> Here's the catch. To put a decent interface on a seven-dollar board today, you still need C++, a board SDK... None of that looks anything like building for the web, so the way most people build interfaces stops at the edge of the device. So they put a web browser in the device?

Here is the author of Gea Stack. There is no browser in the device, none of these devices could run one with 512KB of RAM (+2-8MB of PSRAM). We instead transpile TypeScript and CSS into native code, so the UI you build with web technologies look and behave identical on a microcontroller.

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#46

Post by shevy-java »

I won't submit to data sniffing from corporation, so "personalized" hardware won't make it into this area here.

By the way, this is not new either. In the 1990s Microsoft tried to convince people how great it is if their fridge gives data to MS so MS can order needed food etc..

Fast forward some decades - many don't want to yield any more data to private entities, no matter which alleged "benefit" this would bring.

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#47

Post by nerdsniper »

embedding-shape wrote: post #42
nerdsniper wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What confidence would you have in AI's ability to do 20-40GHz signal routing with good integrity? HDMI + USB4 + USB-C DP AltMode and a bunch of USB4 routing/switching fabric stuff?

Hook it up so it can experiment away by itself with tools, provide a end goal and ask it to iterate until it reached it. What the "AI can do vs not" becomes more about how long you can let it do inference in such loop, with local hardware it gets really cheap (granted you have the hardware already), with remote inference cost is probably the limiter.

> Hook it up so it can experiment away by itself with tools, provide a end goal and ask it to iterate until it reached it

Those "tools" you throw out so cavalierly cost around $50,000 to $300,000 per annual seat license with all the optional packages needed for 40GHz signals (like Cadence Allegro + Sigrity X Speed / SystemSI). Even if AI could do it it'd be much cheaper ($3-8k) to get someone in China to use their license and knowledge to do it.

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#48

Post by StrLght »

I feel like the article ignores the elephant in the room — production costs.

Producing PCBs (say, 5 or 10 units) is pretty expensive, and components are also costly on such a small scale. Combining these two requires additional money or time. Beyond that, you need to consider that you probably won't get it right the first time, and every attempt multiplies the cost.

It'll be a deal-breaker for many people — the risk is just too high.

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#49

Post by engineer_22 »

StrLght wrote: post #48

I feel like the article ignores the elephant in the room — production costs. Producing PCBs (say, 5 or 10 units) is pretty expensive, and components are also costly on such a small scale. Combining these two requires additional money or time. Beyond that, you need to consider that you probably won't get it right the first time, and every attempt multiplies the cost. It'll be a deal-breaker for many people — the risk…

Pcbs are basically rolling off a laser jet printer in shenzhen and they’ll do pnp for a few dollars more. Pcb cheap.

Have engineer sit there to design pcb is expensive

Re: The Age of Personalized Hardware Is Coming

#50

Post by embedding-shape »

nerdsniper wrote: post #47
embedding-shape wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hook it up so it can experiment away by itself with tools, provide a end goal and ask it to iterate until it reached it. What the "AI can do vs not" becomes more about how long you can let it do inference in such loop, with local hardware it gets really cheap (granted you have the hardware already), with remote inference cost is probably the limiter.

> Hook it up so it can experiment away by itself with tools, provide a end goal and ask it to iterate until it reached it Those "tools" you throw out so cavalierly cost around $50,000 to $300,000 per annual seat license with all the optional packages needed for 40GHz signals (like Cadence Allegro + Sigrity X Speed / SystemSI). Even if AI could do it it'd be much cheaper ($3-8k) to get someone in China to use their li…

But how is cost related to "AI's ability to do X"? Of course if you can't afford the required tools, or inference for that part, remote or local, then you can't do any of that stuff. The same if you don't speak/know the language the specifications/manuals/guides are done in, and you can't afford a translator, but kind of besides the point when we're trying to discuss AI's ability to do something.
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