Kano - Make a computer | Hacker News Reader

Kano - Make a computer

teaser.kano.me

49 pointskunai47 comments

The page before the teaser: https://web.archive.org/web/20130820041047/http://kano.me/

That is a much better version of the page. I instantly understood what was going on without having to watch a minute-long video of a monkey bashing a computer to dubstep that ultimately made no sense.

You pretty much summarized it.

Anyway, kinda odd replacing a page explaining the whole thing to put just a teaser one with no content at all. It is supposed to be the other way around... just saying

They keyboard on the video looks much much better than to keyboard on the archived version though.

You can see our first prototype – white box – at the archive link!

(You can also contribute to repairs at The Internet Archive here, just got hit by a fire: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/internet-archive-from-lond...)

Great dialectic and questions – that’s why I love HN.

I'm Alex, cofounder and product at Kano.

On monkey – thanks for kind words all. Her name's Lily, used to work in VC.

We’re working hard to make Raspberry Pi accessible to everyone. Challenge was first set by my 7-year-old cousin, to "make it as simple as Lego." The Pi is a brilliant piece of tech and the most promising "vector" yet to infect a new generation with open source.

That’s why we’ve designed and built our own custom hardware and made sure that everything – from the touchpad keyboard to the DIY speaker – works perfectly, and sparks curiosity.

We’re also rolling out our own Debian distro, Kano OS, with new UI, utilities, and software projects – all of which we’ll be open sourcing and pushing up-stream where possible. Some cool integrations too (Minecraft, Pong, Codecademy).

We’ll try to trickle these out here amid the Kickstarter (Nov 19) for raves/heckles.

Cheers, Alex

Really just seems like you're reselling Raspberry Pi with fancy packaging and some accessories. Hardly would classify that as building a computer.

Great video and design, though.

"Kano is the first computer that anyone can make."

That's a bit of a stretch even for a marketing slogan.

Perhaps: "Kano is the first computer that everyone can make." is what the OP intended.

I strongly agree with you. The prerogative use of "first" and "best" in the description just hurts my feelings. I really like the looks of this thing, all cased up like that, but the copy I do not grok.

I like the content of the box, but I stopped reading at the lede.

What? It looks like Raspberry Pi and a case. That's not how computers are built.

For $99, it's a great introduction to the basics for people who don't have access to a bunch of white box equipment, like kids.

The package looks well put together.

For $99, you can buy a decent starter FPGA board, where you can really make a computer (and learn a whole lot in the process).

I wish I had one when I was a kid.

Link to a good one for the curious? How do you get into FPGAs for the completely uninformed? I've yet to see any posts on HN for getting into them.

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?NavPath=2,400...

At the bottom of that page there is a couple of textbooks on digital design. One of them you can find as a free pdf. These books provide an easy to follow intro with examples, intended for this board.

You can get into FPGA just like you get into any other hobby - start with something simple, then progress to something complex, one step at a time.

For example, start with implementing an adder. By implementing I mean writing a description of the adder in a hardware description language. The description can be structural (describe the circuit which does the addition), or functional (describe the desired output of the circuit given specific inputs). Then you load that description into the board, and your circuit will created there from logic gates. This is not much different from regular programming (actually simpler, because you're much closer to hardware, so you can see better what your "program" is doing).

An adder in functional Verilog:

a + b

Best go with structural if you want to actually learn something. This book ( http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Computing-Systems-Princip... ) is very good and I think still stands as the best introduction to this type of stuff I've seen. It's also presented in a straight forward enough way that it's good enough self-study for anyone with some programming experience.

Here's a link to the course based on that book: http://www.nand2tetris.org/course.php

Note, however, that it does not use actual hardware, nor a real hardware description language - it's just a hardware simulator (this might be important for someone who's interested in FPGA per se).

There are two main vendors: Xilinx and Altera. Don't bother going to their websites, they only sell the latest and greatest directly (this will easily cost over $1000).

Instead, there are discount vendors that will sell older chips (generally 2-3 generations behind the curve) for cheap. The names to watch are Digilent for Xilinx and Terasic for Altera.

I tend to prefer Xilinx stuff. I don't really have the time to write a more detailed reply, but you can browse around here [1]. Get something with lots of ports, or you won't be able to make anything interesting without a lot of pain (where interesting means "I want to hear/see/communicate-to another-computer my results"). The Zynq boards also come with an ARM processor that can talk to the FPGA fabric.

[1]: http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Catalog.cfm?NavPath=2,40...

Its exactly how computers are built: by the people who intend to use them.

For example, my current rPi hotness is a repurposed Motorola Lapdock, which cost me $50. Although it required some cable hacking, I can now switch out the rPi or a HDMI-stick running Android, Debian, and so on. It was a $50 solution to the problem of not having a handy HDMI monitor, USB hub, keyboard, mouse, screen, battery, power-supply set up. But, since I'm a user, I sorted it out, and the machine is indeed, an upgradable laptop.

I wish Motorola hadn't been borked on this. The Lapdock is a superb bit of kit; my rig competes strongly against the Macbook Air, for example, in terms of pure aesthetics, lightness, and utter freedom. Alas not many other laptops do so as a user, building such a thing as a cable bundle and a couple of 3d harness/cases to align with the Lapdock pinouts, for me, was quite handy..

That, my friends, is how you make an engaging teaser video. Kudos to the fellows who put it together!

Allllllmost good enough to excuse the dubstep. Almost.

Looks like a bunch of off the shelf hardware (Raspberry Pi, small monitor, keyboard etc.) put into a nice box and offered for a reasonable price? Not a bad idea, I was thinking about doing the same for my 23 month old now that he's mastered his iPad. He's really interested in my desktop and like to move the mouse and click on stuff :) anyway looks cool if I did not already have most of the components I would buy one. (still might)

I'm not sure the monitor's included, that would actually make it pretty good of an offer.

awesome, I was also curious about buying this for my little cousin (6). I think my other 10y cousin would love this too, she already told me how good a netbook fits to her tiny fingers, so sweet. But the tutorials, manual and software is all English, so he'd first have to learn English :-/

Wish people would value internationalization much more, other than just assuming English fits all.

You read our minds. We're going to launch with the Kano books translated into Spanish and Arabic, to start, and then continuing to add languages. Really important IMO to recognize that next digital generation won't just speak English, live in SF, London, etc.

If it required 100+ soldering points, and was much harder to build, they would actually sell more copies.

agree. this is just a "battery operated toy" for kids from parents with too much disposable income.

there is already tons of alternatives for 1. buy soc board and put in case (4 screws maybe not even that). 2. attach to monitor. 3. turn it on.

I'll promptly rip my MacBook Air to pieces as soon as Kano is available.

P.S. Not sure how happy Kano the rapper is going to be about you using his name:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_(rapper)

How about Kano the city in Northern Nigeria?

Then Kano from 1980 must really be pissed: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Kano

What about Kano from Mortal Kombat?

On the topic of rappers, the video is better with this track: http://youtu.be/tgA-wVkuZGo?t=38s

I'm still praying for the day that composers quit making these quaint, cute, hipster iJingles for every "innovative" tech project/product.

Also – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_Jigoro

(Primary schoolteacher, judo inventor.)

I can't tell, is the idea here to actually make a computer (wire the datapath+control+memory+IO on a breadboard or something)?

Or is it simply another PC assembly kit for dummies, where no understanding of computers is needed?

Scroll down. It's a Raspberry Pi, accessories, and manual in a shiny box.

cool for kids i guess? but growed ups should be making desktops!!

it's totally easy. the only step that can not be described as screwing/un-screwing/plugging-in is when you have to put the thermal paste on the processor. & heat efficiency of modern parts is so good that cooling otherwise isn't really an issue anymore -- i have an i7 running with a single case fan.

i did it a few months ago, built a BLAZING computer with multiple hard drives for ~$900

For new builds you don't even have to apply the thermal paste. The Intel boxed processors I used have come with pre-applied paste on the cooler. No additional paste needed.

o weird i got an boxed unlocked i7 a few months ago, no paste. it was 3000 series tho (3770k?) so maybe that is a VERY new consideration in packaging

No, it's been like that for years. Years and years.

Thats how my AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4GHz came in 2001.

I suspect that your unlocked CPU didn't come with pre-applied thermal paste because it's aimed at enthusiasts who can get their CPUs a few degrees cooler by using proper thermal paste.

(The gunk that comes standards can cost you a few degrees of CPU temp)

ah true I was thinking maybe it was an unlocked thing as well. sometimes i don't realize what a true baller i am, paste-wise

Pretty creative I would say.But need to market the hell out of it ,because the product as such is neither new nor fits any particular use case.IMHO.

Beautiful design. I wish my desktop looked like this.

Meccano! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano

Raspberry Pi + $65 + Monkey = Kano

damn good value on the monkey, if you ask me.

I'm excited other than what my poor eyes first perceived to be a Hitler favicon

Genius my ass!

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