All I can say about this is 'Raspberry Pi 4 8GB @75$US' and available right now.
Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
51–60 of 64 posts
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I could only afford a Handspring Vizor. iPAQs were so high-end.
I totally forgot about the handspring, I had one in high school. Great device!
I still have two that still run. I wonder if the Computer History Museum in Roswell, GA, would take them as donations.
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#53What are some interesting use-cases for this? I can imagine sys admins would like this for remote admin. I can't think off the top of my head why general hackers would keep this in their pockets most of the time.
It's got integrated LoRa, so I assume they're targeting a lot of hackers or people working on IOT stuff "in the field", as it were. Well and I'm not one of those, but I'm still seriously considering getting it - or rather, the cheaper version without LoRa. I can't really tell you anything from the top of my head, but back when I had my N900, it found so many unexpected uses constantly. Having a full-blown Linux machi…
What are some useful/fun things to do with an N900 (or Linux with LoRa in your pocket) that a non-jailbroken smartphone like iPhone/Android can't do well?
(genuinely asking for ideas)
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#54According to Wikipedia, Palm copied the “Pocket PC” from the PDA, who knew. Or was it Microsoft first named the “Pocket PC” the “Palm PC”. So as to render confusion in the public mind and steal market share. That's probably when Palm became “a newer entrant into the Pocket PC market” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_PC
Sharp may have predated that around 1980. They were called pocket computers but the model name was PC-nnn surely implying it was a PC.
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#55> Our goal is to ensure that we get all aspects of our products mainlined so that custom kernels will not be required. I love these kinds of projects, but after being burned by the PocketCHIP, who also said this but never made it there, this is isn't somewhere I want to go again.
The big problem with the C.H.I.P. is that it used raw NAND flash as the main storage (and MLC NAND on the original boards at that), which just wasn't something that could be supported upstream. I think more or less everything else required for upstream support was there a long time ago. This should hopefully avoid that problem; it's using EMMC which doesn't have that problem and it looks like it's based on the Allwinner A64 which already has fairly good mainline Linux support.
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just want someone to take this form factor[1] (and crucially build quality ) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5#/media/File:200... and shove modern hardware/screen into it running stock gnu/linux.
this may right up your ally! https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/gemini-pda As far as I can tell, it can dualboot linux and android (or even sailfish OS!)
Yes it dual boots, I have one. The issue is that only last week they got the modem to work under Linux and there are still many open issues. I wish they opened their development including Android as there are issues that the community could fix much faster.
As for use cause. I don't know. Nice to have a keyboard but I'm carrying two phones around now which is kind of stupid. The front display it total garbage, slow ui and useless.
Their next model seems more practical as the screen is on the outside allowing use without having to fold open the keyboard which is kind of annoying on the gemini.
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#57Just out of curiosity, what kind of resources would be needed to be able to develop something like this with a risc-v processor? I know the architecture is in its infancy, but it would be awesome to have stuff like the popcorn pc or even a raspberry pi on a risc-v architecture for tinkering with.
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#58Just out of curiosity, what kind of resources would be needed to be able to develop something like this with a risc-v processor? I know the architecture is in its infancy, but it would be awesome to have stuff like the popcorn pc or even a raspberry pi on a risc-v architecture for tinkering with.
You can’t render anything complex on a FullHD screen with a low-power CPU. Need a GPU. Risc-V doesn’t have it yet, Pocket P.C. does. ARM Mali ain’t nVidia or Apple, but still, it’s not too bad for a mobile device, and orders of magnitude faster than rendering stuff on CPU.
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some hyphy SBC that's all flash and style. It's got a basic SDR and a few common SPI/i²c devices. It's 99% a marketing play. All off the shelf and any engineering team could clone it in a few days while substantially undercutting their price. I'd place bets someone already has. The cheaper clones will probably beat their flashy device to market and work better. But they'll do fine regardless because branding matters…
TL:DR; Flipper Zero has at least some purchasers who are only going to be users of the U2F or NFC features, not hacking on or with it much. The fact that it has useful applications out of the box separates it from some of the SBCs etc that need many more parts and code to have a useful application IRL. > All off the shelf and any engineering team could clone it in a few days while substantially undercutting their pri…
While I'm interested in circuit design, there are no simple books that will take you from plugging in a battery to a single led to something that can run c code. Maybe NAND to Tetris? Have had a hard time finding a physical book for that.
I don't want to address any other point, but I can share an experience here.
I went from very basic electronics knowledge (what most discrete components do in the abstract for, though not how to use them properly) to building a couple of SBCs by googling "home brew 6502" and reading whatever came up. I was a very rewarding journey, though there was certainly no book, I had to follow up on a lot of things myself.
Obviously a home brew 6502 won't do much modern, but you'll be left with way more knowledge than you need to build something with bare microcontroller / cpu and the kind of SPI/i2c bus peripherals you're talking about here.
Certainly it's a bunch of effort, but everything is there is you want to research it, and the 6502 forums are stupidly helpful.
Just in case you decide you do want to persue more DIY digital logic. It's well within reach!
PS. Nand to tetris is an awesome project, but it's waaay overkill for what you're talking about. There is a huge amount of cpu and compiler design that you don't need. And actually, not enough electrical engineering...
Re: Popcorn Computer’s Pocket P.C. Open Sourced
#60> Our goal is to ensure that we get all aspects of our products mainlined so that custom kernels will not be required. I love these kinds of projects, but after being burned by the PocketCHIP, who also said this but never made it there, this is isn't somewhere I want to go again.
Yeah, ditto. Why can't mainline Linux support come first? Then they could sell a working product. Crazy, I know. Investing in difficult R&D problems to produce a quality product is not a good business model. It's so much easier to churn out a working devkit and ask for pull requests. Sorry for the snark and pessimism, but that's what happens when you keep getting burned. This statement does not inspire confidence: >F…
> Why is software always an afterthought with these projects? Especially a project like this, which has clearly seen an enormous amount of effort put into the hardware design.
This can go either way, in my experience. I’ve worked with software developers who do a terrible job with hardware, and hardware developers who do a terrible job with software. Best I can tell, it’s a problem that’s existed since we started making computers.
In some ways, I think it’s arrogance. The rockstar software developer believes that software is infinitely more complex than the hardware it runs on. The ninja EE believes that software is trivial. And they both assume that they can effectively do each others’ jobs.