Tired of Apple's rules? Build your own touchscreen handheld | Hacker News Reader

Tired of Apple's rules? Build your own touchscreen handheld

adafruit.com

Guys, come on. The bit about being a replacement for the iPhone was a joke. It's a toy. It's meant for nerding around with. It's not a production device. You probably shouldn't be depending on it to actually work more than 10% of the time.

It's a model airplane. It flies, it's kindof neat, but it's pretty much totally pointless beyond being tons of fun.

"Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest."

-- pg

Ah, mindless, out-of-context quotes. What next, the Ghandi line about laughing/winning/etc.?

This is a kit for microcontroller enthusiasts. It is not meant as some sort of alternative to anything Apple or Android or Palm or Nokia, except jokingly and in the minds of people not actually reading that page closely.

Until someone does something really interesting with it, sparks an idea, and then starts developing it as a retail product.

Seriously, RTFA. Look at the specs.

This isn't some basic version of a cutting-edge technology, it's just an 8-bit microcontroller with some geegaws. If someone wants to make yet another low-end handheld game and make some money selling it in discount stores, more power to them...but you aren't going to compete with many far more advanced platforms in the same arena.

If you want to pretend otherwise, by all means drop some pithy, defiant quotes and condemn my lack of vision...and we'll still both know nobody's going to build an iPhone-killer out of this.

Come on. $69 for a handheld touchscreen computer that you can program however you want? You'd have to be incredibly jaded to not reflect about how amazing this is. You'd have to be deliberately ignorant to not be able to imagine things you could do with this. iPhone killer no; but that's not the point.

No, you come on. You're the guy who was calling someone a troll for pointing out exactly what you just admitted - that it's a really neat hobbyist kit, not an iPhone competitor.

I'm sorry this miscommunication has caused you so much consternation; I will readily agree it's no iPhone competitor at this time. It may even be a toy. But don't dismiss it. That's all.

People aren't saying they're going to build an iPhone-killer out of this.

They're saying it's a good platform for messing around and prototyping wacky ideas, ideas which might end up with potentially for being turned into real products (with 'real' production values, technology, supply chains, etc.)

Of course people aren't going to write a couple of programs and then sell an 8-bit microcontroller off the shelf, but as a platform for experimentation - that's what it's good for.

I'm reminded of this silly little microcomputer from the 70's, where all you could do was flip switches and watch lights blink. There was a company that wrote a BASIC for it. Then, five years later, IBM came out with a much more capable microcomputer and that company made their real fortune by selling the OS for it.

The punchline being, of course, that sometimes a toy is just a toy, no matter what you end up doing with it.

I thought it would at least have a capacitive touchscreen, no?

Also, it's particularly distasteful for you to throw around a quote about "forum trolls" in response to what multiple people here have correctly pointed out - people here are misreading what this item is.

They lost me at "resistive touch screen."

Does anyone have a good source for a similar device with a larger screen and capacitive touch?

That's the beauty of open-source hardware :)

It's a great demonstration of what can be done with an 8-bit RISC microcontroller.

The biggest downside is that AVRs can only execute code from flash ROM. You can't just throw apps on an SD card and run them; the list of apps (which seem to be instances of C++ classes) is hardcoded, and adding a new app requires reprogramming the whole chip.

An intelligent bootloader that could burn executable files from the SD card into ROM would be awesome. Yes, you're only limited to about 10,000 writes, but coupled with Contiki-style multitasking, this could be quite cool.

The other idea (which not many people have tried) is to make some kind of "virtual machine" that interprets bytecode from RAM. There is a Forth implementation (amforth) but not much aside from that. Things get really tight when all you have is 2K for data and bytecode. I'm sure a couple demoscene coders just scrambled off to get working on that after reading this. :p

Rossum has also done some extremely impressive stuff with ARM chips as well, including the RBox, a game console that's literally the size of a coin: http://rossum.posterous.com/building-the-rbox

There is also EEPROM for code storage, as used in NanoVM [1].

1. http://www.harbaum.org/till/nanovm/index.shtml

This may not be the device you are looking for but the idea is not totally crazy. Powerful ARM devices can be had for a few hundred dollars. IMHO, the real trick is to implement the communications. With VoIP instead of voice, instant messaging instead of SMS, the day when you can use WiFi rather than mobile wireless may be coming.

Sounds like a Nintendo DS.

It might not be as interesting as building your own, but the Palm Pre gives you root access and Palm is very supportive of third party app stores. So if all your after is a more open touchscreen device you aren't forced to build your own.

Worked so well for the Joojoo ;)

It's somewhat mind-boggling just how little {RAM, storage, CPU speed} this thing has, while still able to do useful things.

It would be fun to try to port WebKit to something like this, but at those specs, not gonna happen.

No. I'm not tired of Apple's rules.

2.5K of RAM? Sign me up for 2000!

I guess you never dealt with microcontrollers, right?

The company is about popular DIY electronics kits, I think it's a marvelous project if you consider that, but nothing close of an iPhone, if that's what people want they should play with an ARM board.

WiFi?

No. Did you even read the specs? It says exactly what this comes with.

Arrgh. Another example of "let's interpret the comment in as idiotic a way as possible when there are other easily imagined options." I know it doesn't come with WiFi. I read the whole page. I knew it when I asked the question but it is possible with a lot of other hobbyist platforms like Gumstix to buy WiFi shields and extension boards. This is an answer more likely to be known by enthusiasts of the platform.

Yes, I read the specs. Thanks for jumping to incorrect conclusions and contributing noise when you could've contributed information.

I'm looking for a way to quickly manufacture an ad-hoc urban mobile network. Cheap processors on mobile texting devices over WiFi mesh is one way of doing this. (While providing good encryption to keep information out of the hands of the authorities.)

Congrats, you've just become an anecdote! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158202

Maybe instead of complaining that people take the "most idiotic interpretation possible" from your comment, you should write more than one word in order to give your question some meaning and context.

As it stands your basic grievance seems to be that people aren't capable of intuiting what that one word question meant in your mind.

Then you are intimating I am a liar or you have poor reading comprehension.

My grievance as stated is that people who do not have enough information to go on jump to the worst conclusion. So which is it, am I lying, did you not understand my previous comment, or is the notion of multiple interpretations too intellectually advanced for you, or is it something else? Note that I ask, and do not jump to conclusions.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158531

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158462

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158331

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158521

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158644

I'll take door #3: You're over-reacting in a wildly hyperbolic manner to the fact that the single most obvious meaning of a post consisting entirely of "WiFi?" in response to an article about a gadget is an inquiry as to whether it offers such a feature.

If you find that people are mis-interpreting your posts on a regular basis, consider looking in a mirror. And please, take the trollish aspersions to some other site.

My friend, "door #3" in the context of the post above is "the notion of multiple interpretations too intellectually advanced for you." This is an example of door #2, which is "poor reading comprehension."

And please, take the trollish aspersions to some other site.

This is incredible, since you are the only one in this whole exchange who every cast an aspersion, and you opened with it!

Nexus S? Nexus One? Nokia N900? OpenMoko FreeRunner? OpenPandora?

There are more than a few more powerful alternatives to an iPhone that are open source and ready to hack. Most of them can even make phone calls.

And yet this 8 bit microcontroller seems to have more fluid, smooth scrolling than all of them...

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