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Comment by michrassena | Hacker News Reader

I'm imagining a row of pins along the back or bottom of the cartridge, or an edge connector, like in the old Nintendo cartridges.

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Remember how after a few months you'd always have to clean those Nintendo cartridge connections otherwise the game wouldn't load?

My point is that making those types of custom, physical connections are kind of a manufacturing nightmare. If the hobbyist that did this was able to do it with WiFi with no need for more manufacturing and making sure the sled would be able to reliably push the pins in every time, then WiFi was the right call in my eyes!

While it's easy to second guess the decisions that were made here, I have to agree that the solution obviously works fine. Since a physical connection to charge the battery pack was designed in, it seems a shame not to utilize the physical connection for data transfer. I personally have an allergy to using wireless when a physical connection is possible, so that's a bias I bring to the table.

I wonder if there's not an off-the-shelf connector that can be used to route power and USB signals which would fill the role. There's nothing saying the connector has to be small, the entire back and underside of the cartridge is available for the purpose. The original Polaroid film packs had two large pads on the bottom and the camera two long springs to connect with them to provide power from the pack to the camera. However, Polaroid didn't have to contend with ejecting the entire pack with every photo.

My bias says that using wifi adds complexity, but I can see that getting the physical connector right is also not as simple as it first appears.

lol guys go see the album, that is exactly what I have done.. there are two copper pads at the back of the cartridge which make contact with two pogo pins when the cartridge is slid all the way in.. so it can charge when its inside and can also be taken out and removed without a problem

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