
Crowdfunding the Novena Open Laptop - kevs
http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3657
======
georgemcbay
Having worked with bunnie and xobs at chumby, one thing I can vouch for is
that they intimately understand the risks and challenges of actual real-world
hardware production at scale.

The fact that they went ahead with the crowdfunding on this is a really good
indication that it will actually ship (if the goals are hit), and with a much
higher probability of being on time than your average Kickstarter hardware
project (where the people behind it usually have never had hands-on experience
with actual production runs).

~~~
sliverstorm
He's also been kicking the project around for years now, so he's probably
thought/worked through a lot of the initial hurdles.

------
tmp1298371
At 2:15 in the video, the screen behind his head flashes a loop of the string
"Y3Jvd2RzdXBwbHkuY29tL25vdmVuYS1wdXp6bGU=". When run through a Base64 decoder,
it outputs "crowdsupply.com/novena-puzzle". It would appear as though we've
got an ARG on our hands.

------
wicket
I'm always interested in open hardware but I'm a bit baffled by the choices
that are available:

Just the board: This is perhaps the most appealing option but I would want a
case with it, I'm not interested in building my own case. Why would I want a
4GB microSD with that? I'll buy my own with a decent capacity/class or even an
SSD.

All-in-One Desktop: $700 more than board for a case and LCD? The design of the
flip-top LCD doesn't make a lot of sense - you lose a lot of desk space and
the board is going to collect dust. It's not very portable due to the lack of
a battery, controller board, keyboard and mouse so I might as well just plug
it into my monitor.

Laptop: $800 more than the desktop option for a battery, controller board and
SSD. Seems a little expensive and again still not very portable. I'm not sure
you can call it a laptop without a keyboard or pointing device.

Heirloom Laptop: $3000 more than the "Laptop" for what is now actually a
laptop that includes a keyboard and pointing stick with a wooden case. Wood is
quite heavy so it's not exactly the ideal material for a portable device.

~~~
tga_d
_The first thing you’ll notice about the design is that the screen opens “the
wrong way”. This feature allows the computer to be usable as a wall-hanging
unit when the screen is closed. It also solves a major problem I had with the
original clamshell prototype – it was a real pain to access the hardware for
hacking, as it’s blocked by the keyboard mounting plate._

The point of the thing is to be easily modified, and the design facilitates
that. If you don't want regular access to the components, you can leave it
closed and treat it as more of a conventional all-in-one.

~~~
lunixbochs
You could conceivably install the LCD the other way, too.

------
pasbesoin
Thank you, bunnie, Xobs, et al., for listening to the interest that was
expressed for what was a personal project and deciding in response to expand
its scope (quite significantly), providing this momentum to open-source
hardware and systems.

(I don't know bunnie nor Xobs, but this is what I gather happened based upon
reading occasionally about the project over the past some months.)

From my perspective, bunnie provided a write-up of what he was up to, purely
for the interest of those who cared to read. There was overwhelming response.

If you care about open systems and hackability (in the classic sense), this is
_really_ worth looking into and hopefully supporting. (From my admittedly
limited perspective.)

------
ParadisoShlee
Like the Open Pandora (I still use every second day) or Openmoko
(paperweight), I'll happily put my money forward supporting open hardware.

Congratulations Bunnie/xob/others on the release of the crowdfund.

This is stage one. Community, hackability and continuous development cycles
will lead to better, more feature packed and stable devices. The CPU was a
good choice for performance/power/openness but there is nothing stopping them
from using a modular design for the SOC and people could replace them as
required.. the www.pyra-handheld.com/ is build on that idea.

I'm looking forward to the use cases for the laptop...

Side question: Is there much in the way of design that can be done to improve
the physical security to this design? or are we hoping that people simply
don't have the driveby ability to mess with this due to the fringe-ness? and
physical access is physical access.

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robbiet480
For those that didn't instantly recognize the name, this is Bunnie Huang's
open laptop he talked about previously [1]

[1]
[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?tag=novena](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?tag=novena)

------
Bluerise
I have been waiting for some time for the crowdfunding campaign.

The FreeScale i.MX6 platform is very versatile. Up to quad core 1.2GHz, SATA,
PCIe, Gigabit Ethernet (limited to 480Mbps) and lots of good documentation and
driver support.

The only issue is the graphics blob and... in this case the price tag. I hoped
I could afford it, but it looks like I can't.

Still, there are lots of other community boards based on the i.MX6 SoC. If you
don't need the laptop version or an FPGA, there are much cheaper boards out
there.

The Novena Open Laptop really is good work. I hope it'll get funded!

------
sneak
Open laptop because we're worried about state-sponsored attackers expending
multiple millions of dollars of time and resources to undertake the lowest
level of attacks upon our hardware.

Top model ships with a keyboard with a radio transceiver built in.

~~~
dfc
Defending against an APT is not the only use case for the machine. More
importantly you singled out the top of the line model for your complaint. For
that much money it better come with keyboard. Worried about APT? Save
thousands and build your own ergodox to use with the novena.

------
InclinedPlane
I'm happy to see some sane crowdfunding pricing on these reward tiers. So many
projects have their reward pricing set similar to retail prices. That's fine
if you've already done all the R&D work on the project and there's little
risk, but if you actually need net funding from the project then you need a
significant overhead on every reward.

That said, I hope this is successful, these guys are consummate hardware
hackers, it'll be neat to see what happens when they ship a project on this
scale that ends up in a lot of people's hands.

~~~
jff
They sure made it sound liked the crowdfunded prices were _cheaper_ than
retail: "We are offering four variations, and at the conclusion of the Crowd
Supply campaign on May 18, all the prices listed below will go up by 10%"

~~~
InclinedPlane
I read that as the post-campaign follow-on pre-orders which tend to be fairly
standard these days.

------
bmslieght
The boards are a little out of my price range at the moment. But definitely
wanted to support this project, so I have backed "Buy us a Beer" at $5.

------
mitosis
Love at first sight. The only thing left is deciding whether to buy the
desktop or the laptop version.

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2close4comfort
This is GREAT to see Novena make it to this step. A truly awesome amount of
work by bunnie and xobs it exciting see them make this far!

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perlpimp
this guy is pretty awesome, might be just the hack candy one might like to
have if one is into hardware hacking.

TL;DR: here is the video from a conference where bunnie and his friend hacked
flash card controller, so you can see the qualities that the laptop will
possess.

[http://youtu.be/r3GDPwIuRKI](http://youtu.be/r3GDPwIuRKI)

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bbarn
Why use (and advertise) "High Modulus Epoxy" as the bonding agent for the wood
version? High Modulus means stiff, and unbending - i.e., crack instead of
bend, and in bonding wood to aluminum, a lower modulus resin would be better
for this case, as it would flex when stressed and not cause a snap-off
delamination?

~~~
jff
Two possibilities:

1\. The guy who designed the wood version is experienced in bonding wood to
aluminium and has good reason for using high modulus epoxy.

2\. "High Modulus" sounds really good, let's say that! Nobody wants "low
modulus epoxy", whatever that is!

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zmanian
What are the use cases for the FPGA realistically? Then only piece of easily
downloaded and installed code is a SHA based crytocoin miner.

~~~
storborg
Just to toss out a few ideas: software defined radio, high-throughput DSP
(like audio processing or machine vision), MITMing of fast protocols, packet
inspection, CPU emulation.

~~~
zmanian
I found [http://opencores.org/projects](http://opencores.org/projects) nothing
is a killer app right now.

At work I use an FPGA as async real time controller. Not sure what utility
that would have if not connected to specialized hardware.

------
axx
A little off-topic, but they gave a nice talk about SD Card exploitation at
the 30C3 in germany:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPEzLNh5YIo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPEzLNh5YIo)

~~~
jmpe
Not really off-topic: at 42:00 the setup shows a Novena prototype. They used a
binder as case.

------
badataccounting
Great idea really I wish them success!! but why are they using the keyboard
from a Thinkpad.They are the most infuriating keyboards ever as the fn key is
on the bottom left side with Ctrl one key in one. Even Lenovo's come with a
switch in the BIOS to undo this. Before anyone says this is the actual format
of the qwerty keyboard the overwhelming majority of people are used to it with
Ctrl on the bottom left so just leave it

~~~
mitosis
I'm not so sure the majority of developers / hackers (the target market for
this device) are used to Ctrl on the bottom left. I know several (myself
included) who remap their keyboard so it sits left of "A".

------
muyuu
Very curious about the capabilities of that FPGA in combination with the rest
of the hardware, and the high-speed expansion port.

------
mmastrac
Oh yeah. I've had my eye on this for ages. It comes with an FPGA!

~~~
dang
If Matt says it's good, then it's good.

------
fest
Somebody please make a device which is more accessible (pricewise), and can be
used to prototype/interface with common digital protocols (i2c, uart's, spi,
CAN, ethernet, USB).

I'd imagine it could be a mashup of SBC (Beagle, Olimex's LIME, heck, even
RaspberryPi) and Bus Pirate. Add a screen and battery, and call it a day.

I don't think a device like this should have the fastest CPU and plenty of RAM
(that wouldn't hurt of course).

------
ibotty
i'd really like to get the main board _and_ the battery board, but no display
(wrong size) and no case (wrong size). i'd like to use a modded thinkpad
x-series case (and keyboard) and install a better display and board!

------
jff
Some interesting choices, some incredibly disappointing.

A9 core rather than the virtualization-ready A15? (I'd rather have a 64-bit
ARM but those are still a ways out)

Edit: and let's not hear about how closed A15 is blah blah. At the end of the
day, something is closed. Did Freescale give you silicon masks? Guess it's not
totally open after all.

Single SO-DIMM means max 8GB of RAM, but of course since you're running a
32-bit chip you'll be restricted past 4GB anyway.

100 Mbit Ethernet in the Year Of Our Lord Two Thousand Fourteen? Edit: Several
people have pointed out that, thankfully, the 100Mbit port is a secondary
port, while the main one is Gbit. This is actually pretty cool.

The case is actually kind of cool, but you can't really call it a laptop if
your footprint is normal laptop size + a separate keyboard. Nobody's lap is
that big. I think it could be pretty usable for work while on travel but you
can't use it on an airplane tray table.

And then the pricing. Oh my the pricing. $700 for a case and a screen. Another
$700 for an RC car battery and an SSD. Not even Apple marks up SSDs and
batteries that much.

I would really love to get the laptop spec one for $800-1000--you know, the
price of a great desktop PC plus a monitor. Sure, the ARM processor is going
to be disappointingly sluggish and I'll be beating my head against the 4GB
memory ceiling within an hour, but it looks really damn cool and the screen
size is acceptable.

Kickstarter-type things are often done as "backers pay more for a unit, but
they get it first and they're willing to pay because they believe in the
product". However, the prices will go UP by 10% after this campaign is over!
So the $2000 "laptop" will now cost $2200, despite the reduction in component
cost due to time and scaling.

Edit: oh, and apparently the case, which I think is one of the cooler parts of
this project, doesn't seem to be open? So I can't pay a fabricator $200 to
make one, then slap a $400 A15 board in there. The totally open laptop, ladies
and gentlemen!

~~~
akiselev
I know Bunnie as an incredible hardware engineer with a lot of experience
across the entire process of getting a product from design to manufacture. I'm
sure the decisions were made for very good reason.

Freescale has extensive open source board support packages for several flavors
of Linux and Android. With the exception of the TI's OMAP5, all of the A15
implementations I know of are under lock and NDA and even though Bunnie could
source them, the documentation and software support packages would not be as
easy and would require working closely with the manufacture to get them. I
have no idea about OMAP5 as I haven't even seen one in production. Most mobile
ARM processors AFAIK do not support gigabit ethernet yet, save a few Marvell
SoCs (less for mobile and more for other embedded).

Smartphones designed with modern ARM processors require teams of 2 dozen
engineers working their asses off for months to make a single revision, and
this is when they're partners with the chip manufacturers (ala Google, Apple,
or Samsung). Bunnie is working with a much smaller team and with different
constraints.

Any board like this is going to be expensive to manufacture and assemble. Even
if he were to do a run of 100 units at a time, the overhead of assembly and
part purchases in such low quantities are likely to run $100+ a unit. Combine
with the extra support costs of including an FPGA in there, and it's not
unreasonable to charge so much for such a niche, low quantity product.

Edit: Also Freescale is on the low end of the high end ARM market and they
know it. I wouldn't be surprise if Bunnie got some extra help from them during
integration.

~~~
lunixbochs
I think the OpenPandora project has confirmed the OMAP5's availability and has
samples.

[http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15560-soc-back-and-
forth...](http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15560-soc-back-and-forth/)

[http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15747-news-from-the-
embe...](http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/15747-news-from-the-embedded-
world/)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Except for TI is kinda 'checked out' of the Linux support business sadly.

~~~
pantalaimon
Are they expecting their SoCs to run Windows instead?

~~~
Sanddancer
No. They seem to be focusing more on the RTOSes, like VxWorks and QNX. There's
more to OSes than just Linux and Windows.

------
contulluipeste
"Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale quad-core ARM architecture computer"

That's a disappointing choice! Why not something more like LEON or OpenRISC?

------
johansch
How about finishing some projects before starting new ones?

I'm thinking of e.g. NeTV

[http://www.adafruit.com/products/609](http://www.adafruit.com/products/609)
[http://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Main_Page)

~~~
X-Cubed
What's unfinished about the NeTV? You can buy the kit and download the source
code and do want you want with it.

------
akkartik
It is totally understandable -- and totally disappointing -- that this custom
work of art in hardware comes with regular, bloated, unhackable linux. One can
dream..

~~~
kogir
I feel like you must have (accidentally?) withheld context. Since everything
is open, you can presumably produce drivers for QNX, FreeBSD, or another OS of
your choice. I'm sure you can also boot bare-metal into embedded firmware of
your own design.

~~~
smorrow
Linux can not be completely understood by one man or even a team of them, and
by the time you do figure out what you need to edit, the whole thing will have
churned.

Linux is a complex operating system, and it takes a genius to understand the
complexity.

