Enclosure at small scale can be 3D printed. Use FDM for mechanical fitment checks, then make in SLA resin printers for first couple clear case prototypes. I wish I could do keyboard as easy...
It's going to be tooling for the enclosure, and if there is other NRE to be considered for PCB testing (ICT, solder stencil, etc).
With a $15 BoM cost, using a domestic contract manufacturer, this would probably come out to be no cheaper than $30/unit with very decent volumes, and that doesn't factor in your profit. Need to remember to pay someone to assemble it and test it.
This is nice. This is a simple, straightforward design, and a reasonably convenient form factor.
Two biggest limitations are RAM and wireless interfaces, or rather lack thereof. This thing has less RAM than my router (admittedly a $70 box), and has neither WiFi nor BT. It does not seem to have many GPIO pins, too.
With the amount of RAM installed, it's mostly a handheld terminal, and maybe a handheld console with emulators for old games.
While this is admirable as a proof of concept, I suspect that moving the price point up to, say, $30 could give a much more useful and hacker-friendly device.
I greatly appreciate the split keyboard and the replaceable NiMH batteries, though.
Well said. It's a great project and impressive execution at $15!
> While this is admirable as a proof of concept, I suspect that moving the price point up to, say, $30 could give a much more useful and hacker-friendly device.
I agree. I think this project proves that ultra low cost is viable. Now relaxing the constraints a bit to add RAM and WiFi could iterate it right into an optimal spot.
I wouldn't want to go much farther than RAM and WiFi, though. It's too easy to let these projects turn into a slippery slope.
I think we've already got a pretty powerful computer at around the 40$ price point (the raspberrypi), and I feel like it'd be impossible to beat it given the scale raspberry pi is at.
I fully agree with everything that has been said in this reply chain. It is easy to get caught up in the "well, for just a few dollars more..." loop, and forget all of the accouterments that this includes, which are cheap but add so much to convenience.
The screen alone is going to triple the price. A 3A boost/buck converter to power the Pi from a battery is not going to be cheap, either. You could probably cobble a few 500mA ones together and hope everything plays nice, but that's a large footprint.
If the pi actually is being used it'll definitely draw 2.5-3A, so a 2Ah battery won't last very long. I'm not really up to date on li-poly (the flat pack lithium style batteries), perhaps there's some that would be ok for a handheld with ~3A or more of draw, but again, it's another $20-$40 for batteries that are usable for a handheld. There is the pi arcade hAT or whatever, that's about $15+ iirc. 3d print a case, if you already have a printer that's just time and materials, otherwise you're gunna pay $20 for a case design and print that actually feels nice, again.
At a certain point, the steam handheld device might be a better bet, since it'll have a warranty (don't laugh!) and a support team (okay laugh a little).
All of this could be irrelevant because perhaps the pi zero does everything people want, and that's dirt cheap and also probably uses way less power.
> A 3A boost/buck converter to power the Pi from a battery is not going to be cheap, either.
LM2596 costs <$1 and it powers my rtl-adsb for 4 years so far (yes, this is in step-down mode, but you either want a 2S/3S battery anyway, or you use the similar step-up chip).
I am not doubting your claim, but it makes me wary since all the "cheap" wallwarts that claimed "2.5A" and now "3A" ran about $10, whereas the official RPI wallwart is double that (maybe $18), and a really awesome 5V PSU that can run two rpi at full TDP costs between $35-$120.
I have a bunch of "QC3.0/3A Buck converters" for 6-36VDC to USB-A, maybe i should try to run a pi on a SLA Gel 12V battery.
I think MEAN WELL LRS-50-5 (5V/10A) can easily run 2 or even 3 Pis at full power and costs $13 ($15.5 incl. VAT) at EU reseller. Or is it not "awesome" enough?
It only has one usb port. If you want to use the port for something other than wifi, then you would have to add a usb hub that would cost more and be dangling off.
I have the intuition that integral wifi is table stakes for a general computing device.
USB dongles piss me off; specifically the Logitech Mouse USB dongles:
Why the heck hasnt a single manufacturer included the USB Dongle radio IN the mobo?
So with slim laptops you have few USB ports.
I currently am typing this on an HP Omen flagship gaming laptop... It has ONE USB-C port, which is under-powered (I have a USB-C Hub, that requires an external USB-C Power source... so I have to plug the uSB-C Hub into my machine's C port, then plug the power USB-C <--> USB-B port consuming TWO of my USB ports on my machine...
I plug in multiple USB-based monitors as well - and I can carry it all in my backpack...
But we need MORE USB ports than fewer... and Mice should not consume a port.
BT mice have never been subjectively responsive enough for me. For example, I can test-map-out my BT environment in my home by connecting to the BT speaker and moving around and it skips....
> Why the heck hasnt a single manufacturer included the USB Dongle radio IN the mobo?
USB radio dongles are not standardized, that's what Bluetooth is for. (There used to be a Wireless USB standard but it was never widely adopted, and it has fallen out of use altogether.)
There are USB-C power bricks that also work as hubs, so you're not wasting your only USB-C port.
Ive never purchased anything but Logitech, to ensure all of my mice work, so they are pretty standardized to me.. but again I may be a minority in this opinion...
Well yes, they may be "standardized" within one brand, but that isn't standardized. Why include a Logitech mouse/keyboard radio in a mobo when the one making the mobo isn't Logitech?
> BT mice have never been subjectively responsive enough for me.
Anecdotally, I've experienced very few issues with the Logitech MX Master (both the original and v3) on my Mac via BT - every once in awhile (often enough to be aware of it, but infrequently enough that it's not something I'd consider a problem) the original would cut out for a few seconds, but other than that it tracked perfectly, and I haven't even had the periodic cutting-out issue with the Master 3 (yet; I've only had it for a little over a month now).
Of course, this is dependent on the BT implementation of both the mouse and PC being used, which is something to take into consideration (I've had way fewer BT connection issues in general with MacBooks than with any Windows laptops).
> BT mice have never been subjectively responsive enough for me.
I wanted to like Bluetooth mice, but they just didn't work out for me. Some of the wireless mice these days are dual mode though; can run with proprietary wireless or switch to BT to avoid the proprietary dongle (some of the proprierary dongles also can act as a standard BT dongle, if your computer doesn't already have one). I know there was a line of mice that did wifi instead of BT too, because that makes sense.
My Logitech BT mouse works pretty well. I only notice one thing that's "special" about it and that is that it takes about 2 seconds to connect. As a result, when I first unlock my machine I'm spinning the mouse in a few circles until the cursor comes alive. Once it's alive, all is good. It's weird all these little things we learn to live with.
How so? (I also have to carry devices occasionally for work with stuff like nethunter (pentester)) and I can’t imagine replacing the flashed pixels/galaxies I use for that with even some 40 euro…. Thing…
idk but relying on USB in something with only 32MB RAM sounds potentially cumbersome. Besides a device like this is the intended use case for original ESP8266 so that's probably the way to go.
Unlike an RPi, this thing has a screen, a keyboard, a sleek case, a battery compartment. What are other devices that have these all, and cost, say, under $40?
$15 is BOM cost, so ~$30 after assembly and ~$60 including margin for manufacturers and resellers. I don't know of anything that has both screen and keyboard at that price, but the $45 M5Stack has a screen and the $70 Raspberry Pi 400 has a keyboard.
These little game things are $40. I have one. They use an old style removable cell phone battery and have a screen that isn't great (320x240 though similar to the one described in the article). It runs linux but Lamentably I don't think its easy to install your own version.
Have one too, got it at £27 with delivery, very nice hardware (especially with the custom miyoocfw firmware installed). If a device like this, with perhaps slightly larger screen & wifi, was integrated with keyboard (like the rpi 400) one would have killer device for nerd-working/gaming on the go.
> neither WiFi nor BT
I understand having WiFi, it'd be great for a small device like this. But why would we need Bluetooth? It only has 32MB of RAM so I doubt you could get any music running on it.
A standard mp3 runs about 1MB per minute. You should really only have to buffer a couple seconds if you're streaming. If you try to keep a 4 second buffer your going to be somewhere between 40 and 70kb (this thing also has an SD card so you could keep a much shorter buffer if it was local.)
It really doesn't take much else, you'd need a tcp stack where most of the memory usage is buffers. Maybe 15-30 kb, and you'd need to load some player into mem as well.
There are tiny embedded devices all over that have music running on them. I've seen lightbulbs and light switches that can stream music.
Idk why everyone thinks it takes 500mb to play an MP3. Maybe because the vast majority of compute power these days seems to go to all the shit the app puls in to sell ads and native programs are all just electron apps but it really doesn't have to be like that for most functions of a computer.
I played MP3 files in realtime on my old Pentium 75 with 16MB of RAM with plenty of CPU and memory to spare. This thing is way more powerful than you need for simple music playback. Getting audio out however may be a challenge, maybe USB speakers?
This chip is clocked over 7 times higher than my old Pentium, and it's not like the Pentium was massively super scaler. I'm not sure how the IPC compares, but I can't imagine that ARM is that much worse than a mid-90s Intel chip.
ESP32 is a custom CPU architecture... But they recently released an ESP32 varient with a RISC-V core. Still don't think it has an MMU though, which linux requires.
ESP32 is a microcontroller with tiny amounts of RAM and flash storage (smaller than any 386 machine). It's not going to run anything close to a "real" OS. You'd want to do the opposite: use a machine like OP's for near bare-metal programming, where the only things it's running are a minimal kernel and a custom init binary with your actual, single-purpose app. That way you make the best use of a limited amount of RAM.
You can get similar type of modular RISC-V + Linux systems on AliExpress if you want to do something closer to what OP is doing. Lichee is one of them who seem to have a crazy number of modules (I've not tested any of them - they could well be total junk), including also ARM boards and FPGA boards.
> Surely an ESP32 should be able to run Linux. Then you would get Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
Yes, but it wasn't easy, and only recently achieved. [0][1][2][3] Unfortunately, for both those examples, the WiFi module itself had to be disabled so that Linux had enough memory to function.
Though, of course, they should be able to do something like my favourite tiny Linux board, which wired in extra RAM. The 8bit Atmega [4], that only takes 4 hours to boot Ubuntu.
Interesting, so linux was ported to RISC-V architecture, and there's a RISC-V emulator that runs on ESP32. I guess this means all the virtual memory is emulated. I think the more interesting step is if the successors to ESP32 have virtual memory. In the meantime, I found playing with freertos on esp32 lots of fun.
Enough for Tmux, busybox, SSH/Mosh, Lynx, Gopher, NNTP, IRC over bitlbee, music and video playing
over Bluetooth speakers, PDF readers (fbipdf, fbpdf2), epub readers (unzip+lynx script), on the go coding...
Would you really want to code on this tiny screen though? I guess some people would, but you'd probably be a lot more comfortable even on a 12" or 10" laptop/netbook.
Oh ofc this is not "practical", but projects like these are always fun to see, how much something can be scaled down, that it can be in some cases be viable (think washing machines) to be a full linux-powered computer.
A forth env fits in 64x16. Nethack has a patch somewhere for low resolutions, from the zipit z2, based on the 3.4.3 release. If it works on Nethack, Slashem
should be easily patchable, too.
Coding... what? Coding on other retro technologies? I guess if you enjoy working on system software sure, but if I can't even allocate enough memory to hold a large-ish JSON payload in memory, then I'm not going to be able to do much with the system. Only protocols like SMTP or NNTP are built around the ability to parse with minimal overhead (and even they can have large line lengths.)
Eh, wait a moment. I did several fun stuff with just CLI and C/tcl under the zipitz z2. Even with TLS. You understimate what we did in the 90's too with just 32 or 64MB of RAM.
Jabber uses XML and I did it fine under a system daemon like Bitlbee AND an IRC client on top of that. 48MB overall on the Zipit z2, 32MB + compressed ZRAM. The total usage was about ~16MB with a tiny MUSL build, tmux, ash, bitlbee and sic.
SMTP, NNTP, Gopher... are protocols for 16 and 8 bit architectured computers. Go figure.
A Classic Mac with System 6 could do IMAP just fine, jcs wrote a client for it.
Sure I'm not saying it's not possible. I did stuff in the 90s too. But usually you had to put a lot of effort into arena allocators and reusing pointers. Also lots of software then was pretty jank and would just segfault and errnos we're often not handled.
in the 90s i remember waiting 15-30 minutes to send an email. maybe revisiting some of these super low end devices would be worth it now that fiber is ubiquitous.
The RAM is embedded in the CPU - the slightly-more-expensive F1C200s doubles it to 64MB, but going beyond that would require a fairly significant redesign.
I don't disagree with you on the wireless, it would be nice to have built-in. But, all the same, there is a USB port, so it's at least possible.
I don't need wireless on something like this. Sure it will help in some cases, but if you need wifi connectivity, then you can usually use a full laptop while lounging on a couch. And you do not really need this. I am sure most people even considering something like this have a wifi enabled laptop already.
This would be great for plugging in in random places and making sure things work and initializing/configuring/troubleshooting various devices that for some reason cannot be reached over the wifi.
As far as complaints, I would go the other way -- why does it not have an Ethernet port. Yes you can use an Ethernet to usb adapter, but it would be so much more convenient if it had a port.
This does remind me that I have a OnePlus 3T laying around in a drawer that would be an excellent degoogled Android device. And my old HTC Dream / Tmobile G1 that I have Android 2.2 on if I wanted a full keyboard...
It'd be great if there were some standardized way to turn older smartphones, whose on-paper computing power is astronomical, into viable Linux servers or controllers.
I've got plenty of old shit phones around that barely respond to touch (or whose displays are just outright unusable) but I'm here considering a new rpi for my next project instead of repurposing one.
There's also a ton of leftover supply of these things, and they have built in power backups, networking, and often lots of shared platform parts (ie, target just one snapdragon based platform and get a swath of compatibility in the galaxy s3 era or whatever).
Totally cool, but more geared towards rehabilitating old devices than repurposing. Still probably a lot of the work done there could be repurposed (reverse engineered drivers or code for working with a SoC) for plug in server functionality. Thanks for the link, I'll waste some time on it :)
For a server, I likely don't need or even want most of the stuff that's on a stock android install (or even kernel). GPS, audio, graphics drivers, mic, camera, SMS, etc are all worthless at best. Bluetooth (and maybe wifi, if you're USB-plugged) represent explicit unnecessary attack surface for a device that I'll be running with dodgy ported software inside my home network.
What I'd love for someone to share is the MVP Linux machine I can use to run PiHole... Starter Raspberry Pis (e.g. by Canakit) ... are >$150 CAD on amazon.ca which just seems so expensive.
Mine runs on a years-old Raspberry Pi Model B Rev 2. A Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ (which has an ethernet port), SD Card and case is about £40 at pihut, that's CAD70
A Zero 2 W with wireless is half that or less including the case, SD Card and power supply.
the canakit packages are luxury items with a bunch of stuff you don't need.
get a pi, an sd card, a power supply, and a cardboard box to shove it into. you don't need any of the other stuff they include.
also get an old pi, not one of the most recent. maybe ask around, lots of folks have a box of older pis. i'd certainly love to get rid of all of the 1s and 2s i've got.
The Bom for 1000 pieces is per piece 15$ (and 2.00$ for a 64gbyte sdcard looks optimistic, but difficult to tell typing on my phone). Placing, soldering and assembly is not factored in, wouldnt be surprised if this is another 15$, so production price is 30$, sales price then would be more like 60$.
Edit: is the sd card connector missing in the bom?
The SD card is on the BOM (it’s on the bottom) but agree that the price for it looks optimistic.
Looking on AliExpress there are lots of unrealistically priced SD cards (1tb for $7!) so I wonder how many of these are just scams where they are formatted to appear bigger than they are, and also if that’s a realistic price that they are using.
Something that I have always wanted was an SMS ONLY device.
A device, kind of like the SideKick (remember Danger invented Android, got bought by Google - then the founder was paid ~$90,000,000 severance from Google for coercing a female colleague to be his 'sex slave' -- Yeah, that Danger, Andy Rubin.)
but I just want a device that only sends and receives SMS and thats it.
Can this machine accept a SIM in a future iteration?
(I interviewed with Danger back in the day... but I had the freaking flu and felt like death, and I failed the interview as I was reeling from the flu. It was super stupid of me to go to the interview whilst sick, but I REALLY wanted to work at Danger...)
I'd love a modern RIM 850 that could do all my messaging (Discord, Telegram, SMS) and nothing else. Keep the 850 formfactor, keyboard, that amazing thumbwheel, but give it something like e-ink and great connectivity. Hell, throw a WiFi hotspot in it if we absolutely must.
I've always wanted a receive only messaging device. Iridium still supports satellite pagers which would be perfect for that, but the hardware isn't manufactured anymore and you can't get service without a big plan attached (like DoD)
> I’m changing the title of this page just to screw with mods on the orange website
Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about?
I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? (Presuming access to a 3d printer and a reasonably cheap PCB fab company)
That is the way it was done back in the day, usually when admin wanted guests to not come through Google Search or to come through a correct word-of-mouth bouncer page. Client side JS implementations allow content to be viewed by blocking JS.
He checks the Referer header[1]. In Firefox you can prevent that header from being sent by setting `network.http.sendRefererHeader` to 0 (in about:config).
Same here, but my browser still uses orange as the theme colour for HN, which is interesting - I guess it grabs the dominant colour from the favicon (it even does it on sites that try to set the meta theme-color, which is interesting)
That would only be true if votes were a limited resource. There's no real "competition" here. Something good getting upvoted doesn't stop absolute trash from getting upvoted. donio posting something incredible wouldn't mean it would offset something awful; it would just slightly change the timeslot of the awful thing.
Articles that go deep into technical subjects generally stay on the front page for half of the time of trendy lightweight posts.
Raspberry Pi Foundation does the "minimum order of 1000" and passes the savings on to you. Try and buy all the individual components of a RPi Zero and see how much it costs. It is way more than $15.
P.S. The RPi Zero does not come with a display and keyboard like the computer in this article does. So, we are talking about two different types of computers.
$15 is a pretty good guess for per-unit cost of mass-produced RPi0, I reckon.
Look at the price of "WH" version with superficial changes that cost pennies to add (wifi chip and 0.1" header), and (used to be) easily obtainable with no limit on the order size. Or, at least that was the status quo before the the great chip shortage of 2021.
I was thinking about the fact that 40 years ago there was the Sinclair ZX80, a $100 computer that you could hook to your TV and there's not really a whole lot in that space/price point¹ now other than the hobbyist Raspberry Pi/arduino/other hobbyist machines. I'd have to think that it's possible to make a consumer-grade PC that you hook up to your own monitor for around $100, although I guess the cost of a Windows license is an obstacle to that. Surely someone could build a windows PC (or I guess Linux) that's inside a keyboard enclosure for around $100 that could be commercially successful now.
⸻
1. We can ignore inflation adjustments because computer prices have generally stayed flat or gone down (the rule used to be that the PC you wanted was around $2000–3000 and nowadays if we're talking about a desktop system, assuming one even specs such a thing, it's less than that).
> Surely someone could build a windows PC (or I guess Linux) that's inside a keyboard enclosure for around $100 that could be commercially successful now.
Raspberry Pi actually did that. [0] The RPi 400 is right around that $100 mark, fully assembled, and is basically a keyboard with a bunch of ports for the people who end up with it.
There is a raspberry pi kit to do just that (keyboard + screen + computer all in one).
The only other option is a ZXSpectrum Next (Kickstarter that is having trouble with supply chain right now for the latest batch). It's freaking awesome though. You can directly download new spectrum games from the internet or just use the SD card. Someone wrote a new assembly language book. There is a BBS app...so many cool things going on. The commander x-16 will also be cool if it ever comes out.
There were those stick pcs for a while. I think those started around $100, add a $10 keyboard and a $10 mouse and you're not too far from your price point.
I bought a Samsung Chromebook 4 for $92 including tax on Black Friday. You can buy one today for $120+tax at Walmart.
It’s plenty capable, especially as compared to other sub-$250 options and has power supply, battery, screen, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, camera, and microphone included.
There are some real gems & genuine insight to be found. But the comments still follow a Pareto distribution and there's a lot that is worth disdain[1], IMO.
Besides, I found it's better when I don't take HN too seriously; I now often enjoy HN the way I "enjoy" Curb Your Enthusiasm
1. Often as a top comment too! A lot of inaccurate, stripped-of-nuance or outright ignorant hot takes get voted up if they confirm the biases of the majority of HN users.
The problem with comments like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30088471 is that they poison the ecosystem with more of the very thing you're complaining about, plus they lower the signal/noise ratio with tedious meta.
Supercilious posturing over other people is bad for comments here because it's reliably uninteresting. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site more in the intended spirit? We're trying for curious conversation here.
> "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.
It might be worth pointing out that you are dismissing a comment discussing a page that is (likely) making a criticism of the HN rules by implying - without good reason - that it is instead a criticism of the community, and not a critique of the site rules and the kinds of content it promotes.
Unless you're only meaning the "don't sneer" part - which is difficult to police among intellectuals, and if it's only policed at HN-directed criticism, is probably bad form.
In short: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
I'm sorry but I don't really follow what you're saying here. That the GP comment was a supercilious putdown seems completely obvious to me. Perceptions differ, of course.
Ars Technica basically does this (with two headlines), since the Conde Nast acquisition. Drives me nuts, and makes a significant portion of the post-article discussion incomprehensible.
There's something so hilarious about the idea of an HN thread full of people who only read the title, while the website is A/B testing ten different titles.
I'm looking forward to the GPT3 generated titles using a prompt that involves something along the lines of "Given this excerpt of the HN discussion: .... This is the most amusing title: ..."
JWZ will replace links from HN to his site, jwz dot org, with an NSFW image and an insult. It does this based on the Referer: header, so people using Firefox in private browsing mode aren't affected.
As the practical build here shows you simply need 15$ and one capable engineer. To be fair you'll also need something to tool a case out of, be it FDM or extractive machining.
3d-printing is very expensive in terms of variable costs but super cheap in terms of fixed costs. For low volumes, the math is usually in favor of 3d printing.
This is $15 BoM cost (ie, parts), not including assembly, packaging, shipping, etc etc. So not what most people think when they see the headline.
Still, it is a nice design
This is like the "budget" posts on /r/DIY: "porch renovation for only $200!" > proceeds to use the industrial sawmill they have in the garage that costs $100k
Not sure where you're getting that idea. All of the parts are purchased, then assembled. There's really no tooling beyond what most electronics enthusiasts would have at home.
One reason I'd love one of these (or a generally cheap low power linux PC) is just so I could e.g. muck around with e.g. code golf or advetnt-of-code programming puzzles on my commute.
I'm wondering if we can use the same principle to design a miniature cell phone: can only text and make phone calls, very small screen, small keys, etc, using cheap components.
I've been thinking about this, too. On Linux this looks like a configuration nightmare of bodging together USB GSM/3G/4G/5G modems and piped commands [0].
Wow the price point is way above. I'm thinking about the mini phone in the movie Taken 2. I actually found a website to purchase a year ago but couldn't find it right now.
A similar but more powerful and flexible device is the Core2 from M5Stack. It's expandable through stackable snap-on blocks, USB, multiple I2C and a full set of GPIO and signal pins on a header. It has ESP32 CPU, Wifi, Bluetooth, 2" color touchscreen, microphone, power indicator, 6-Axis IMU, vibration motor, I2S codec, amplifier, speaker, RTC, power button, reset button, 10 x RGB LEDs, SD card slot and 3 programmable soft buttons for ~$45.
There are dozens of snap-on expansion modules which can also be screwed on for permanent use, including a keyboard module, joystick/D-pad, expanded battery, prototyping breadboard breakout, ethernet and various wireless modules including cellular and LORAWAN. I have several of these along with a bunch of the modules and the system is ideal for prototyping up various things super quickly. Amazon sells their own Core2 bundle with an expanded battery module which is pre-programmed with their IOT prototyping platform firmware but you can just overwrite that back to stock firmware which supports FreeRTOS, MicroPython, UIFlow and Arduino frameworks.
FYI the kit you linked shows the M5Stack Core1 and shows EOL. The Core1 has been replaced by the Core2 which has improved hardware. I bought the Amazon bundle of the Core2, which is yellow, and separately ordered the modules I was interested in from M5Stack directly including the bottom board and the QWERTY keyboard.
These used to be a lot cheaper, IIRC I got mine for about $25. I would recommend these to anyone wanting to go beyond "just looking" for ESP development, especially beginners. Yea, you can buy the components you need separately, but having everything integrated in one small package makes it easy to try things out quickly. No breadboards, jumper wires, etc just to have a button to press. And when you're ready to dedicate hardware to the project, you can build it with one of the cheaper modules. But all of the debugging, etc is a lot easier with the big screen, and integrated peripherals. At $45, I'm not so sure, might just be recommended for people who'll really get into ESP development.
The M5Stack Core1 was about $10 cheaper but it's now been replaced with the Core2 which has several nice HW upgrades. It's easy to tell the difference because the Core1 has 3 physical buttons below the screen but the Core2 has 3 backlit soft buttons below the screen.
You can buy dev board ESP32 modules for as little as ~$10 but the M5STack comes with with a bunch of additional hardware that basic ESP32 dev boards don't. As you mention, the upside of the M5Stack Core2 system is all the extra hardware already integrated into a very well thought-thru expandable design. The fit and finish of the Core2 case and all the expansion modules I've gotten is also uniformly excellent.
Important to note that the quoted $15 doesn't include shipping, assembly, tax or any other costs.
For the same actual cost I'd go on EBay/Craigslist/FB Marketplace and buy an unlimited number of old computers with 1000x the specs of this one that are going to be otherwise placed into a landfill.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 304 ms ] threadI figured it would be one of these parts, at this point they are pretty old, but capable. And available apparently.
I'm not clear on why the first one would cost $10k. The enclosure, maybe?
If he were going to sell these, the rule of thumb I heard was to charge the cost of parts x 10. (Edit: maybe a factor of 2? I forget.)
PCBs are pretty cheap at this size, and the components wouldn't be THAT much more expensive to grab in smaller quantities.
If someone would get a group buy started just for the components and 3d case files I'd hapilly sign up and 3d print the thing.
Same with the plastic enclosure.
You might want to make a top-level comment, like "This is the author, ask me anything".
With a $15 BoM cost, using a domestic contract manufacturer, this would probably come out to be no cheaper than $30/unit with very decent volumes, and that doesn't factor in your profit. Need to remember to pay someone to assemble it and test it.
Safety first. Ha!
Two biggest limitations are RAM and wireless interfaces, or rather lack thereof. This thing has less RAM than my router (admittedly a $70 box), and has neither WiFi nor BT. It does not seem to have many GPIO pins, too.
With the amount of RAM installed, it's mostly a handheld terminal, and maybe a handheld console with emulators for old games.
While this is admirable as a proof of concept, I suspect that moving the price point up to, say, $30 could give a much more useful and hacker-friendly device.
I greatly appreciate the split keyboard and the replaceable NiMH batteries, though.
> While this is admirable as a proof of concept, I suspect that moving the price point up to, say, $30 could give a much more useful and hacker-friendly device.
I agree. I think this project proves that ultra low cost is viable. Now relaxing the constraints a bit to add RAM and WiFi could iterate it right into an optimal spot.
I wouldn't want to go much farther than RAM and WiFi, though. It's too easy to let these projects turn into a slippery slope.
If the pi actually is being used it'll definitely draw 2.5-3A, so a 2Ah battery won't last very long. I'm not really up to date on li-poly (the flat pack lithium style batteries), perhaps there's some that would be ok for a handheld with ~3A or more of draw, but again, it's another $20-$40 for batteries that are usable for a handheld. There is the pi arcade hAT or whatever, that's about $15+ iirc. 3d print a case, if you already have a printer that's just time and materials, otherwise you're gunna pay $20 for a case design and print that actually feels nice, again.
At a certain point, the steam handheld device might be a better bet, since it'll have a warranty (don't laugh!) and a support team (okay laugh a little).
All of this could be irrelevant because perhaps the pi zero does everything people want, and that's dirt cheap and also probably uses way less power.
LM2596 costs <$1 and it powers my rtl-adsb for 4 years so far (yes, this is in step-down mode, but you either want a 2S/3S battery anyway, or you use the similar step-up chip).
I have a bunch of "QC3.0/3A Buck converters" for 6-36VDC to USB-A, maybe i should try to run a pi on a SLA Gel 12V battery.
I have the intuition that integral wifi is table stakes for a general computing device.
USB dongles piss me off; specifically the Logitech Mouse USB dongles:
Why the heck hasnt a single manufacturer included the USB Dongle radio IN the mobo?
So with slim laptops you have few USB ports.
I currently am typing this on an HP Omen flagship gaming laptop... It has ONE USB-C port, which is under-powered (I have a USB-C Hub, that requires an external USB-C Power source... so I have to plug the uSB-C Hub into my machine's C port, then plug the power USB-C <--> USB-B port consuming TWO of my USB ports on my machine...
I plug in multiple USB-based monitors as well - and I can carry it all in my backpack...
But we need MORE USB ports than fewer... and Mice should not consume a port.
BT mice have never been subjectively responsive enough for me. For example, I can test-map-out my BT environment in my home by connecting to the BT speaker and moving around and it skips....
/rant
USB radio dongles are not standardized, that's what Bluetooth is for. (There used to be a Wireless USB standard but it was never widely adopted, and it has fallen out of use altogether.)
There are USB-C power bricks that also work as hubs, so you're not wasting your only USB-C port.
Anecdotally, I've experienced very few issues with the Logitech MX Master (both the original and v3) on my Mac via BT - every once in awhile (often enough to be aware of it, but infrequently enough that it's not something I'd consider a problem) the original would cut out for a few seconds, but other than that it tracked perfectly, and I haven't even had the periodic cutting-out issue with the Master 3 (yet; I've only had it for a little over a month now).
Of course, this is dependent on the BT implementation of both the mouse and PC being used, which is something to take into consideration (I've had way fewer BT connection issues in general with MacBooks than with any Windows laptops).
I wanted to like Bluetooth mice, but they just didn't work out for me. Some of the wireless mice these days are dual mode though; can run with proprietary wireless or switch to BT to avoid the proprietary dongle (some of the proprierary dongles also can act as a standard BT dongle, if your computer doesn't already have one). I know there was a line of mice that did wifi instead of BT too, because that makes sense.
That seems like a winning combination!
Its used in so many tracking methodologies for BT Unique IDs tied to real humans...
Unlike an RPi, this thing has a screen, a keyboard, a sleek case, a battery compartment. What are other devices that have these all, and cost, say, under $40?
https://powkiddy.com/products/powkiddy-v90-3-inch-ips-screen...
It seems like you can. Pico8 does have a raspberry pi (ARM cpu version) Through retro-arch? I’m not sure how it all goes together.
https://retrogamecorps.com/2021/02/01/review-powkiddy-v90/am...
This is an unofficial player.
https://github.com/jtothebell/fake-08
It makes a fun little device that much better. Plus it's a good starting point if you want to try doing your own Linux stuff on it.
The display on this thing is the biggest limitation. 320x240? Is he fucking joking?
ZRAM did magic expanding the RAM to 24MB.
And under text mode you can do lots of things. With a framebuffer, say hello to 420p videos, PDF's and some web pages with images thanks to links -g.
You must use tmux+ash as your "interface", but it works.
It really doesn't take much else, you'd need a tcp stack where most of the memory usage is buffers. Maybe 15-30 kb, and you'd need to load some player into mem as well.
There are tiny embedded devices all over that have music running on them. I've seen lightbulbs and light switches that can stream music.
Idk why everyone thinks it takes 500mb to play an MP3. Maybe because the vast majority of compute power these days seems to go to all the shit the app puls in to sell ads and native programs are all just electron apps but it really doesn't have to be like that for most functions of a computer.
I could play music. Not waveforms, but MIDI-level.
- Direct file transfer between devices, with simplicity not comparable to wifi.
- Easy connection to the internet using a mobile phone (likely even the cheapest feature phone).
- Connecting a mouse (and maybe an external keyboard).
- Connecting a 2FA security token (may be important in the SSH terminal capacity).
Get off my lawn. With 8MB of RAM you could run Win95 AND a MP3 player.
After all Linux used to run on 486, BSD ran on 386.
Yes, but it wasn't easy, and only recently achieved. [0][1][2][3] Unfortunately, for both those examples, the WiFi module itself had to be disabled so that Linux had enough memory to function.
Though, of course, they should be able to do something like my favourite tiny Linux board, which wired in extra RAM. The 8bit Atmega [4], that only takes 4 hours to boot Ubuntu.
[0] https://twitter.com/xiaohui10556190/status/14163071689916047...
[1] https://whycan.com/p_66202.html
[2] https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/07/18/linux-5-0-esp32-proc...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/esp32/comments/dtlj7n/booting_linux...
[4] https://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/04/02/191203/gnulinux-ru...
Main issue with Linux on an MC is lack of MMU, though YMMV
Granted, that's going through SimH; it would be interesting to see if retrobsd or litebsd could be ported to run on ESP32 natively.
https://www.96boards.org/product/orangepi-i96/
Price isn't much higher than most ESP32 modules, and it can run plain Linux.
Jabber uses XML and I did it fine under a system daemon like Bitlbee AND an IRC client on top of that. 48MB overall on the Zipit z2, 32MB + compressed ZRAM. The total usage was about ~16MB with a tiny MUSL build, tmux, ash, bitlbee and sic.
SMTP, NNTP, Gopher... are protocols for 16 and 8 bit architectured computers. Go figure.
A Classic Mac with System 6 could do IMAP just fine, jcs wrote a client for it.
If you meant early-mid 90's, that's true.
I don't disagree with you on the wireless, it would be nice to have built-in. But, all the same, there is a USB port, so it's at least possible.
This would be great for plugging in in random places and making sure things work and initializing/configuring/troubleshooting various devices that for some reason cannot be reached over the wifi.
As far as complaints, I would go the other way -- why does it not have an Ethernet port. Yes you can use an Ethernet to usb adapter, but it would be so much more convenient if it had a port.
You can almost certainly do better than $30 on local marketplaces, or by asking friends if they have a disused smartphone sitting around.
reusing is absurdly cost efficient
I do love the look of the form-factor though. Want to need it.
I've got plenty of old shit phones around that barely respond to touch (or whose displays are just outright unusable) but I'm here considering a new rpi for my next project instead of repurposing one.
There's also a ton of leftover supply of these things, and they have built in power backups, networking, and often lots of shared platform parts (ie, target just one snapdragon based platform and get a swath of compatibility in the galaxy s3 era or whatever).
Peripherals using proprietary drivers being the obvious offenders.
Good for proof-of-concepting tho, I bet.
A Zero 2 W with wireless is half that or less including the case, SD Card and power supply.
get a pi, an sd card, a power supply, and a cardboard box to shove it into. you don't need any of the other stuff they include.
also get an old pi, not one of the most recent. maybe ask around, lots of folks have a box of older pis. i'd certainly love to get rid of all of the 1s and 2s i've got.
Edit: is the sd card connector missing in the bom?
Cool project though.
Looking on AliExpress there are lots of unrealistically priced SD cards (1tb for $7!) so I wonder how many of these are just scams where they are formatted to appear bigger than they are, and also if that’s a realistic price that they are using.
A device, kind of like the SideKick (remember Danger invented Android, got bought by Google - then the founder was paid ~$90,000,000 severance from Google for coercing a female colleague to be his 'sex slave' -- Yeah, that Danger, Andy Rubin.)
but I just want a device that only sends and receives SMS and thats it.
Can this machine accept a SIM in a future iteration?
(I interviewed with Danger back in the day... but I had the freaking flu and felt like death, and I failed the interview as I was reeling from the flu. It was super stupid of me to go to the interview whilst sick, but I REALLY wanted to work at Danger...)
Loving it! What orange website could they be talking about?
I wonder what would be achievable, around the $15 mark WITHOUT needing a minimum order of 1000? (Presuming access to a 3d printer and a reasonably cheap PCB fab company)
In case that's a serious question: what website has an orange theme, and an aggressively enforced rule against editorialising submission titles?
[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/Re...
Articles that go deep into technical subjects generally stay on the front page for half of the time of trendy lightweight posts.
I wouldn't know, my topcolor is B5DB5D.
A Raspberry Pi Zero?
P.S. The RPi Zero does not come with a display and keyboard like the computer in this article does. So, we are talking about two different types of computers.
Look at the price of "WH" version with superficial changes that cost pennies to add (wifi chip and 0.1" header), and (used to be) easily obtainable with no limit on the order size. Or, at least that was the status quo before the the great chip shortage of 2021.
⸻
1. We can ignore inflation adjustments because computer prices have generally stayed flat or gone down (the rule used to be that the PC you wanted was around $2000–3000 and nowadays if we're talking about a desktop system, assuming one even specs such a thing, it's less than that).
Raspberry Pi actually did that. [0] The RPi 400 is right around that $100 mark, fully assembled, and is basically a keyboard with a bunch of ports for the people who end up with it.
[0] https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400/
The only other option is a ZXSpectrum Next (Kickstarter that is having trouble with supply chain right now for the latest batch). It's freaking awesome though. You can directly download new spectrum games from the internet or just use the SD card. Someone wrote a new assembly language book. There is a BBS app...so many cool things going on. The commander x-16 will also be cool if it ever comes out.
It’s plenty capable, especially as compared to other sub-$250 options and has power supply, battery, screen, keyboard, trackpad, speakers, camera, and microphone included.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSvHJ97d8n8
Besides, I found it's better when I don't take HN too seriously; I now often enjoy HN the way I "enjoy" Curb Your Enthusiasm
1. Often as a top comment too! A lot of inaccurate, stripped-of-nuance or outright ignorant hot takes get voted up if they confirm the biases of the majority of HN users.
Though I generally would not catch nonsense about an 40-year old Microprocessor or some newfangled K8s setup.
So perhaps I should phrase the claim differently. The "quality" of nonsense on HN is remarkably better than other social sites.
Supercilious posturing over other people is bad for comments here because it's reliably uninteresting. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use the site more in the intended spirit? We're trying for curious conversation here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It might be worth pointing out that you are dismissing a comment discussing a page that is (likely) making a criticism of the HN rules by implying - without good reason - that it is instead a criticism of the community, and not a critique of the site rules and the kinds of content it promotes.
Unless you're only meaning the "don't sneer" part - which is difficult to police among intellectuals, and if it's only policed at HN-directed criticism, is probably bad form.
In short: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
*'network.http.referer.spoofSource' in about:config : "true = send the target URL as the referrer"
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Referrer
?
Pretty much a possible competitor. I have several OrangePi boards...and they run linux and cost me around $15.
Printer filament itself costs about $10USD per pound. And then there is the inevitable one or two misprints.
Not to mention the time needed to print the item.
If you looking for cheap, low volume 3D printing ain't it.
It's basically:
That den of capitalist hubris, the Mart of Wally
For a new era.
For a few reasons.
Firstly, sometimes a shot needs to be taken at said websites and there are people who work there who will be reading it.
Secondly, because inside jokes are the best jokes.
This one isn't new to me. My old boss used to call it that.
I can't even buy a keyboard for $15 anymore since inflation took off.
So yeah if in fact this is a real product I'll throw a few bucks at it to help make it happen.
No doubt there's a better way.
[0] https://www.techytalk.info/send-receive-sms-using-gsm-modem-...
There are dozens of snap-on expansion modules which can also be screwed on for permanent use, including a keyboard module, joystick/D-pad, expanded battery, prototyping breadboard breakout, ethernet and various wireless modules including cellular and LORAWAN. I have several of these along with a bunch of the modules and the system is ideal for prototyping up various things super quickly. Amazon sells their own Core2 bundle with an expanded battery module which is pre-programmed with their IOT prototyping platform firmware but you can just overwrite that back to stock firmware which supports FreeRTOS, MicroPython, UIFlow and Arduino frameworks.
https://shop.m5stack.com/products/m5stack-core2-esp32-iot-de...
https://www.amazon.com/M5Stack-Core2-ESP32-Development-EduKi...
https://www.robotshop.com/en/m5stack-faces-qwerty-keyboard-p...
Here's a kit with everything you need, and more: https://shop.m5stack.com/products/face?variant=1729043762389...
You can buy dev board ESP32 modules for as little as ~$10 but the M5STack comes with with a bunch of additional hardware that basic ESP32 dev boards don't. As you mention, the upside of the M5Stack Core2 system is all the extra hardware already integrated into a very well thought-thru expandable design. The fit and finish of the Core2 case and all the expansion modules I've gotten is also uniformly excellent.
For the same actual cost I'd go on EBay/Craigslist/FB Marketplace and buy an unlimited number of old computers with 1000x the specs of this one that are going to be otherwise placed into a landfill.