I think @roughly provided a good balance of practicality + optimism in their answer.
My thoughts: Not immediately, but yes, eventually. Humans have an innate willingness and desire to tinker+make things. Those qualities have gone into hibernation due to the vast array of mass-manufactured, off-the-shelf devices in the last decade. But many (have and will) come to realize that the satisfaction ceiling is so much higher when you build something yourself, getting your hands dirty, and looking at the product of your efforts.
Just that reason is enough to give rebirth to the experimental/inventive attitude that pervaded the 20th century. But there's also the fact that a personalized something can allow you to do stuff that a typical consumer product couldn't.
Pockit just aims to enable and accelerate the above realization for hardware, the way that libraries and frameworks have done for the programming world.
The project has taken so much focus that I haven't had the time nor skill to heavily improve the website's CSS/aesthetics. Or if you mean just the content, any suggestions for what I could consider adding now (besides the existent timeline posts)? I'd love for the site to not feel 'empty'!
Hey HN, Solder_Man here. I am the guy behind Pockit. Thrilled to see this modularization effort has the support (and useful criticism) of so many deep thinkers in this thread.
First, a clarification: Since people have brought up the topic of "hard to believe one guy handled all aspects", I want to state that while this is my concept and my project (and I've devoted nearly every waking hour since 2020 to it), I'm no jack of all trades.
In the last two years, for example, I've gotten occasional but much-needed help (and knowledge) from two freelancing developers for some aspects that I don't have expertise with, including Linux intricacies, DMA-based firmware programming, UI design details, and some other subtleties. A more experienced PCB designer (colleague from past) has also helped me, particularly with the recent 6-layer PCB layouts. Plus, an assistant in the past has aided with the soldering of some tightly packed boards.
Last but not least, my SO has contributed graphics + Adobe Premiere effort for my videos; her equally important contribution was being a frequent listener, and sometimes a much-needed boundary, to my evolving thoughts through this project's journey.
As the project evolves to its next phase, I do hope to get more people into primary development of this modular ecosystem, in the form of both team members and eventually custom Block designers from the community, once I organize and release the necessary files + documentation for everyone to work with.
I'm perhaps late to the party, but I'll try to answer as many questions as I can on this thread now, including hopefully the ones posted several hours ago!
My engineer-mind hesitates to state a number until I finalize the BOM and get tooling quotes, etc. At that point, I'll put up the pricing, etc. on the website and mailing list.
But keeping Pockit's cost down is important in order for the concept to gain a wide community of passionate builders, so just know that I've been and am keeping affordability in mind, starting with even the design choices.
As u/moistbar also pointed out, the number of pins of the Broadcom CPU, and of the STM32 microcontroller, would provide a constraint. If more positions was important, I could easily have put a bunch of IO-expanders or multiplexers.
However, the board was designed with compactness as a priority -- "pocket"-sized and all that -- so as to be portable and flexibly deployable.
The solution for "space" is quite fun: You can chain multiple Pockit boards side by side, through the same style of Bridge-connector that allows expansion to the Display Block in the linked video here.
With this, a huge (but not unlimited) workspace is possible. Frankly, aside from the most spatially demanding application I've tested (a synth/looper setup), I've never needed more than 3 chained together.
> 5 HDMI output blocks
I didn't see the need for something like this. There are obviously compromises in every design, and I suppose this is one of them, if you think it's actually valuable. Though an HDMI splitter block would technically solve this issue too.
Two features ensure (and encourage) the block placement at the correct orientation.
- layout of the 4 magnets' polarities at each position (and complementary layout on each Block).
- plastic protrusions within the casing (with mating features on each Block).
Just an interesting note: The latter also serve to provide a bi-axial constraint on a Block after attachment, to prevent easy detachment. Together with the (neodymium) magnets, they create a very strong hold, important for Blocks like the Soil moisture sensor demo'ed in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwnpbNNyzdQ&list=UU49EYw900L...
As I mentioned in a deeply embedded comment somewhere on Reddit, wait for the upgraded-PCB version demo coming up in the next week, you're going to love it if you're a fan of the CM4's more powerful Broadcom CPU.
Note: Obviously, this too won't solve the issue of hardware universal-standards; nothing ever will. People just have the tendency to never get along. We are all great at being OK-enough with each other though.
> megapockit with a huge backplane and a big modular keyboard
Look at that... the human mind is phenomenal.
We're not all ultra-skilled, detail-oriented electrical engineers. So why does every person have to go through (a tiring rite of passage of) wiring, soldering, debugging, coding from scratch -- instead of using the same creative mind and effort to come up with ideas, and actually play with their implementation?
I'm not primarily a developer, but it's easy to see how much the software world mushroomed through DRY, modularity, etc. In some ways, Pockit is an effort to do the same for electronics prototyping.
Only high-bandwidth signal groups (such as HDMI) have the limitation of being usable at only one (or a few) positions. Technically these too can be given more/complete placement freedom, but at the cost of a higher PCB layer count, or exceptional noise-immune routing skill, which I presently don't have. I plan to hire a layout expert to assist with the DFM eventually.
The current PCB routing is done such that about 90% of blocks can be interfaced at almost/all positions. (I'll make a more formal statement later after verifying this number.)
This was in fact a foundational aspect of the design -- "How can the classic breadboard be made (a lot) more powerful at the cost of as little flexibility as possible?"
Used to be just me. But two amazing people assisting me now (one of them full-time); immediately took this decision upon recognizing the significant community interest from Reddit, et al.
The trackpad is one of my favorite recent Blocks. It's a great instance of circuit scalability. I use standard projected-capacitive-touch with a sensing IC that reads a rectangular grid of electrodes -- but they are all printed on the PCB, thus adding no significant cost whether small or big, sparse or dense.
The difficult part was two things:
- optimizing SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) at the sensing stage of the code
- and converting the input data to actual action-coordinates (relative) that are submitted as emulated-input to the OS.
Software filtering helped with the former. For the latter, I started with and customized an algorithm documented in an a manufacturer's application-note document (I think it was Microchip or Azoteq).
"Play" sounds about right. I've enjoyed the exponential multiplier in prototyping+design speed I've gained as each new block was made.
"Mass produced" -- no mass-production plans yet, however... will be ordering and assembling at least a small-batch of boards for early-testers/adopters. Stay tuned through the website if you want to get on the list, depending on your use-case and experimental willingness.
Thanks @Aissen.
Didn't know whether the project's unfinished state was worthy of it, but happy to see this appear on my favorite minimalistic website : - )
I'll answer the existing comments, and welcome any new questions, whether deeply technical or completely casual. (After all, the project's goal lies at the intersection of these two!)
My thoughts: Not immediately, but yes, eventually. Humans have an innate willingness and desire to tinker+make things. Those qualities have gone into hibernation due to the vast array of mass-manufactured, off-the-shelf devices in the last decade. But many (have and will) come to realize that the satisfaction ceiling is so much higher when you build something yourself, getting your hands dirty, and looking at the product of your efforts.
Just that reason is enough to give rebirth to the experimental/inventive attitude that pervaded the 20th century. But there's also the fact that a personalized something can allow you to do stuff that a typical consumer product couldn't.
Pockit just aims to enable and accelerate the above realization for hardware, the way that libraries and frameworks have done for the programming world.