While personalization is definitely the trend, I don't think people are going to build code just to personalize. A tiny few of all who bought the device could do that. A few more could flash the device with some open firmware that gives more features and personalization and most will stick with the range of the personalization provided by the vendor.
For the most people, the risks outweigh the desire for tinkering. Personalization will grow right at the vendor offering, not in the hands of customer. People don't even have the time to cook their own recipes. People have their own chores to worry about. I'm talking about bulk of the customer base, not the geeks.
> Personalization will grow right at the vendor offering
I think so. There will be a short period, like now, where many will attempt to build their own products and the five good ideas out of five thousand will be incorporated into products built by those who know what they’re doing.
An absolutely technophobic friend asked me what agentic AI was today. I think Charlie Munger said “When even your barber is talking about it, sell and run”
I don't think people have realized it yet, but AI can do hardware too. That's what I had hoped this was about.
I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable.
Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosmetic issues.
People have yet to even BEGIN to appreciate what these things can do with the right harness.
In so far as AI can do hardware reliably you can bet your bottom dollar the big chip fabs have already been doing that. They don’t call it AI though and the models aren’t language based, surprisingly enough /s
For small stuff, sure. For something with more components I don't think it's ever gonna be useful. Routing a pcb is an np-hard problem and, imho, no AI has enough actual thinking capability to make a good job out of it.
What confidence would you have in AI's ability to do 20-40GHz signal routing with good integrity? HDMI + USB4 + USB-C DP AltMode and a bunch of USB4 routing/switching fabric stuff?
I tried my hand at making a pcb for a project in high power rocketry but I gave up in frustration. Maybe I’ll try again and see if claudecode can help me get over the hump.
I do agree that hardware gap starts to shrink, similarly to what Software gap once used to be. It is much easier to avoid spending time loading the right drivers and looking up what error message on that tiny device you are working on means. Especially if AI could run in terminal itself.
I tried building a health device few years ago and got completely lost in how to setup camera and touch display with a raspberry PI. Would imagine, with AI running in a command line, it would be much easier.
AI + hardware has really helped my wife and I get more sleep.
I had an esp32-box-3 lying around from a lapsed "voice agent" project from a year or two ago. Had a baby. Baby moved to another room, sleep trained. Baby either: 1. wakes up a few times a night, babbles for a bit, goes back to sleep OR 2. baby wakes up and fusses for N (=10) minutes, at which point parents need to go in and settle (that's the sleep training routine we use).
In either case, we do NOT want to wake up every time the baby does. Baby can go back to sleep easily, we adults have a harder time. A few rounds with Claude and the esp32 is now our new baby monitor. It tracks cry/fuss duration and publishes an audio stream (via a web UI or direct with, say, VLC). The audio only comes through AFTER N minutes of fussing have elapsed. It also posts notifications (to ntfy) after 30s and N minutes. My log says baby often wakes up 1-2 times a night and resettles almost immediately. We only wake up if the audio comes through, after N (10) minutes.
Also during the day it's really handy to be notified when baby has woken up from her nap. Let's us be out of the house, or in a distant room, and still keep track of what's going on.
It's fun to keep improving and adding features to this. Never would have had the time/energy to get this done without a coding agent. I ordered a set of 10 more of the esp32-box-3s to give them out to my friends (well, some are for other projects... so much potential).
(EDIT: Yes, I know this isn't AI designing hardware, but even writing code for embedded off the shelf stuff feels like a huge new potential.)
The keyboard enthusiasts got to "personalized hardware" pretty early, so there might be some lessons there.
There's a whole continuum from "Buy an off the shelf unit" to "here's a barebones case you can slide ready made switches and caps into" to "mix and match custom PCBs and cases" to designing your own PCBs and/or cases. There are pretty clear pipelines and even some levels of tooling for "draw up the layout you want and get a bunch of files you can send to production houses"
Takeaway 1: A lot of this is grounded in economic realities. I did the full bespoke route (custom PCB, custom 3-D printed case) and figured it probably cost me about $500 all inclusive to get what I wanted, and that's honestly a lot of money for a keyboard.
AI won't solve any of the economic problems. They can't fix "the minimum PCB order is N units, so now you have a drawer full of spares you paid for". They can't make the expensive part you needed cheaper, especially if you're an individual buying quantity of 1/5/10 instead of an OEM buying reels and containers-full. They can't change the fact that a case for a large widget will be expensive to mill/3-D print/mould/etc.
Takeaway 2: Customers may have surprisingly limited imagination for bespoke gear. There are galleries (and even coffee-table books) full of exotic keyboards. But Micro Center is full of $50 interchangeable "tenkeyless with RGB lighting" boards; throwing on a random set of "custom" keycaps, and that's enough for a large part of the audience.
Will these customers want or benefit from more tools, or will it just give them rope to hang themselves on and give them an excuse to bail out of the purchase entirely? Even if you can provide them a gallery of vetted turnkey choices, there might be more choice paralysis than actual benefit.
Takeaway 3: Hardware is forever (relative to software). You have a lot of small firms and group-buy products that disappeared and now the owners can't get an exact replacement or repairs. Conversely, Unicomp can gut and rebuild a 1986 Model M with new innards in large part because they've been selling the same basic design since a 386DX/16 cost as much as a Toyota Tercel.
If your AI spawns a galaxy of 1-of-1 bespoke products, who services and supports them? That seems like it's only going to appeal to the enthusiast-hacker type who can keep them alive themselves, who is least likely to need AI help designing them. Design for disposability isn't a great look for anything but incredibly low-cost, limited-usecase items.
Ehhh, maybe? I haven't heard many people wishing for devices that were within the realm of practicality (I.E. not a flying car). If someone has an actual good idea, then the cost of the components and tools and rework is the next major hurdle (soldering by hand is where cool ideas go to die). Meanwhile a commercial off-the-shelf device probably works good enough.
This reminds me of the other article posted on here, https://isene.org/2026/05/Audience-of-One.html Everyday more bespoke dotfiles are coming online for an audience of one. I am not surprised that this is coming to hardware as well.
And it's probably going the same way all the personalized software we've been seeing: used as a spam "I built this" post on reddit or hacker news and to never be touched again.
With hardware you get extra safety risks of fires and shocks, so let's see
The author is missing the _hardest_ part of small hardware: power management.
The reason why AR glasses are not a thing yes is because there isn't a big enough battery to allow them to function for more than a few minutes.
Glasses form factor have space for about .9watt hours now, and ~2 in 4 years time (assuming current trends) Assuming a 14 hour day, that means that your have 140mwhr to spend every hour. A not very bright light on your glasses is about 30mw, a decently bright one is 90mw. Processing imagery on that kind of budget requires custom silicon, and a huge bunch of optimisations.
If you are keeping inside the LEGO level of complexity, almost. But just as with code, if the project is complex you need a real engineer herding the cats. That said, it certainly can extend the reach of an effort, and is a huge help doing board reviews and data sheet analysis, etc. but the real engineering decisions are very very hit and miss, just like with code.
All the people that I know in tech and not in tech, don't do that, even if presented with the option they're too busy to also get into this endeavour that still requires a lot of expertise. I stopped reading there
> Here's the catch. To put a decent interface on a seven-dollar board today, you still need C++, a board SDK... None of that looks anything like building for the web, so the way most people build interfaces stops at the edge of the device.
I won't submit to data sniffing from corporation,
so "personalized" hardware won't make it into this
area here.
By the way, this is not new either. In the 1990s
Microsoft tried to convince people how great it is
if their fridge gives data to MS so MS can order
needed food etc..
Fast forward some decades - many don't want to yield
any more data to private entities, no matter which
alleged "benefit" this would bring.
I feel like the article ignores the elephant in the room — production costs.
Producing PCBs (say, 5 or 10 units) is pretty expensive, and components are also costly on such a small scale. Combining these two requires additional money or time. Beyond that, you need to consider that you probably won't get it right the first time, and every attempt multiplies the cost.
It'll be a deal-breaker for many people — the risk is just too high.
I recently grabbed a cheap e-reader and installed a fork of the firmware so I could use it as a dumb terminal for an agent. Hackable firmware lets you totally change a product
Instead of staring down at their phones in social situations people can pretend to pay attention wile looking at a screen. Can't wait for zombie stairs.
32 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 80.1 ms ] threadFor the most people, the risks outweigh the desire for tinkering. Personalization will grow right at the vendor offering, not in the hands of customer. People don't even have the time to cook their own recipes. People have their own chores to worry about. I'm talking about bulk of the customer base, not the geeks.
I think so. There will be a short period, like now, where many will attempt to build their own products and the five good ideas out of five thousand will be incorporated into products built by those who know what they’re doing.
An absolutely technophobic friend asked me what agentic AI was today. I think Charlie Munger said “When even your barber is talking about it, sell and run”
You're lucky if you're in a region where these open-hardware companies sell their wares, even though many of them will go under in the current market.
It's not that I don't like your point of view. It's that I can't stand AI slop.
I had Claude design an entire 4 layer rp2040 based PCB from scratch and PCBWay build it. It worked on the first go, other than some silkscreen overlapped, which doesn't hurt anything. That was before Fable.
Then I had it design a case for the new pcb to 3d print. Also worked the first go, but with minor cosmetic issues.
People have yet to even BEGIN to appreciate what these things can do with the right harness.
But that was a few months ago, getting high hope with fable and seeing killed before I could even try it for that project killed all my motivations.
Would I be on the right track if I guessed there's a DSL for designing PCBs that would help enforce functional correctness?
Can you elaborate on this? What did you use to "design" it?
Im thinking of getting a 3d printer and would love to explore this intersection a bit more.
I tried building a health device few years ago and got completely lost in how to setup camera and touch display with a raspberry PI. Would imagine, with AI running in a command line, it would be much easier.
I had an esp32-box-3 lying around from a lapsed "voice agent" project from a year or two ago. Had a baby. Baby moved to another room, sleep trained. Baby either: 1. wakes up a few times a night, babbles for a bit, goes back to sleep OR 2. baby wakes up and fusses for N (=10) minutes, at which point parents need to go in and settle (that's the sleep training routine we use).
In either case, we do NOT want to wake up every time the baby does. Baby can go back to sleep easily, we adults have a harder time. A few rounds with Claude and the esp32 is now our new baby monitor. It tracks cry/fuss duration and publishes an audio stream (via a web UI or direct with, say, VLC). The audio only comes through AFTER N minutes of fussing have elapsed. It also posts notifications (to ntfy) after 30s and N minutes. My log says baby often wakes up 1-2 times a night and resettles almost immediately. We only wake up if the audio comes through, after N (10) minutes.
Also during the day it's really handy to be notified when baby has woken up from her nap. Let's us be out of the house, or in a distant room, and still keep track of what's going on.
It's fun to keep improving and adding features to this. Never would have had the time/energy to get this done without a coding agent. I ordered a set of 10 more of the esp32-box-3s to give them out to my friends (well, some are for other projects... so much potential).
(EDIT: Yes, I know this isn't AI designing hardware, but even writing code for embedded off the shelf stuff feels like a huge new potential.)
There's a whole continuum from "Buy an off the shelf unit" to "here's a barebones case you can slide ready made switches and caps into" to "mix and match custom PCBs and cases" to designing your own PCBs and/or cases. There are pretty clear pipelines and even some levels of tooling for "draw up the layout you want and get a bunch of files you can send to production houses"
Takeaway 1: A lot of this is grounded in economic realities. I did the full bespoke route (custom PCB, custom 3-D printed case) and figured it probably cost me about $500 all inclusive to get what I wanted, and that's honestly a lot of money for a keyboard.
AI won't solve any of the economic problems. They can't fix "the minimum PCB order is N units, so now you have a drawer full of spares you paid for". They can't make the expensive part you needed cheaper, especially if you're an individual buying quantity of 1/5/10 instead of an OEM buying reels and containers-full. They can't change the fact that a case for a large widget will be expensive to mill/3-D print/mould/etc.
Takeaway 2: Customers may have surprisingly limited imagination for bespoke gear. There are galleries (and even coffee-table books) full of exotic keyboards. But Micro Center is full of $50 interchangeable "tenkeyless with RGB lighting" boards; throwing on a random set of "custom" keycaps, and that's enough for a large part of the audience.
Will these customers want or benefit from more tools, or will it just give them rope to hang themselves on and give them an excuse to bail out of the purchase entirely? Even if you can provide them a gallery of vetted turnkey choices, there might be more choice paralysis than actual benefit.
Takeaway 3: Hardware is forever (relative to software). You have a lot of small firms and group-buy products that disappeared and now the owners can't get an exact replacement or repairs. Conversely, Unicomp can gut and rebuild a 1986 Model M with new innards in large part because they've been selling the same basic design since a 386DX/16 cost as much as a Toyota Tercel.
If your AI spawns a galaxy of 1-of-1 bespoke products, who services and supports them? That seems like it's only going to appeal to the enthusiast-hacker type who can keep them alive themselves, who is least likely to need AI help designing them. Design for disposability isn't a great look for anything but incredibly low-cost, limited-usecase items.
With hardware you get extra safety risks of fires and shocks, so let's see
The reason why AR glasses are not a thing yes is because there isn't a big enough battery to allow them to function for more than a few minutes.
Glasses form factor have space for about .9watt hours now, and ~2 in 4 years time (assuming current trends) Assuming a 14 hour day, that means that your have 140mwhr to spend every hour. A not very bright light on your glasses is about 30mw, a decently bright one is 90mw. Processing imagery on that kind of budget requires custom silicon, and a huge bunch of optimisations.
If you are keeping inside the LEGO level of complexity, almost. But just as with code, if the project is complex you need a real engineer herding the cats. That said, it certainly can extend the reach of an effort, and is a huge help doing board reviews and data sheet analysis, etc. but the real engineering decisions are very very hit and miss, just like with code.
All the people that I know in tech and not in tech, don't do that, even if presented with the option they're too busy to also get into this endeavour that still requires a lot of expertise. I stopped reading there
So they put a web browser in the device?
By the way, this is not new either. In the 1990s Microsoft tried to convince people how great it is if their fridge gives data to MS so MS can order needed food etc..
Fast forward some decades - many don't want to yield any more data to private entities, no matter which alleged "benefit" this would bring.
Producing PCBs (say, 5 or 10 units) is pretty expensive, and components are also costly on such a small scale. Combining these two requires additional money or time. Beyond that, you need to consider that you probably won't get it right the first time, and every attempt multiplies the cost.
It'll be a deal-breaker for many people — the risk is just too high.