rakshat hooja wrote: > From the little feedback I have received about the Nanonote, they really > like the production quality of the product
Thanks for the flowers ! :-) I wasn't aboard Qi-Hw when they made the Nanonote, but since I've heard much of the backstory, let me try to fill in some details, as far as I think I know them: There are three areas to consider: 1) the software, 2) the electronics, and 3) the case. "We", meaning the Qi-Hw community and closely cooperating projects like Open Wrt, JLime, etc., can take full credit for the software, i.e., the availability of a feature-rich Linux distribution that's been adapted for the capabilities and needs of the Nanonote. Regarding the electronics and the case, the Nanonote is derived from an earlier product design, a Chinese dictionary, that Sharism licensed. Some modifications had been made specifically for Qi-Hw, such as the keyboard, and also some changes to the circuit, plus other details like branded batteries. We have Free schematics of the Nanonote but layout and case design remain with the original company. The Nanonotes have also been manufactured by the company that had produced the original dictionaries. I think this was a very smart approach, because it allowed Qi-Hw to have a hardware platform to hack on in almost no time, allowing the project and its community to learn and grow. What didn't go so well is that we lacked (and still do) the resources for a follow-on product that would overcome some of the more bothersome shortcomings of the Ben. > and are quite amazed how you got > the cost as low as 99 usd and got such a good open product out for such a > small run. The low price is mainly due to hardware R&D having been written off already. A product completely designed from scratch would have to have a considerably higher price and/or larger volume to recover the development and production setup cost. > I did tell them that QI would most probably only focus on developing > products whose production plan is fully sharable and hardware documentation > is publicly availableI. Yes, that would roughly be the common requirements. Part of keeping things Free is also the use of Open Source tools, like KiCad for EDA, and possible FreeCAD for mechanical designs. Where we find such tools lacking, we extend or complement them. I wouldn't be as harsh as Joachim in dismissing any piece of hardware that has a bit of closed IP in it, but any such subsystem would have to be considered as inexistent as far as we're concerned. I.e., the product would have to make sense even without using that subsystem, be it 3D acceleration, wireless, or whatever. Furthermore, that subsystem would have to be considered dead weight, adding chip cost and possibly other issues at no benefit. Opinions are divided where binary-only firmware that gets loaded into some chip is concerned. As a pragmatist, I don't see them as evil, as long as they can be freely redistributed, but I also recognize their potential for causing trouble. More ideologically inclined people would rather draw and quarter them, then burn the parts at the stake, and hang the ashes :) > My question to the list is how and if can we take this forward? Well, the question is what TI are looking for. If they're interested in developing a Nanonote-like device in cooperation with the Qi-Hardware community, I could definitely see potential there. Within the Qi-Hw community, the abilities for making electronics operating at moderare speeds and the system software that runs on them should be more than adequate. We would need to find equipment or help when it comes to debugging high-speed designs. We lack experience in the area of mechanical engineering, though. I.e., we can make some types of cases, e.g., the one for the Milkymist One, but we currently couldn't pull a case as smooth as the Nanonote's out of our hats. This could of course be an opportunity for improving. Since high-quality mechanical design is a fairly costly process that requires specialized machinery, a reasonable goal could be to make a fully open case design in prototype quality and have a more polished but not easily reproducible variant made for actual production. If TI aren't looking for cooperation but just want to find a low-cost clamshell case, perhaps Wolfgang could put them in touch with the manufacturing company. - Werner _______________________________________________ Qi Hardware Discussion List Mail to list (members only): [email protected] Subscribe or Unsubscribe: http://lists.en.qi-hardware.com/mailman/listinfo/discussion
