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Comment What's Different About 3D Printing is.... (Score 1) 380

that anyone can do it. It doesn't require skills in operating a lathe, mill, grinder or other machine or hand tools. Anyone that can download a 3D file can then just press print and they will have an object. A sharp pointy object or printed parts that might be assembled into a firearm.

This the point people tend to miss when they compare 3D printing to a home workshop. The workshop requires skills developed over time and practice to fabricate something as complex as a firearm. Not everyone is capable of doing this. Unfortunately it is a minority these days. A 3D printer in the near future on the other hand will only require the operator to master downloading a 3D model and pressing the print button.

Comment Re:Material costs - material generally (Score 3, Interesting) 199

The prices of Photopolymers used in SLA type 3D printers has dropped to below the cost of PLA and ABS used in FDM printers and continues to drop. Photopolymers are dropping to under $10/kg in high volumes, so the costs of the materials are becoming less of an issue.

It's true that there are several open hardware printer projects for FDM type printers that focus mainly on printing with one material at a time such as
RepRap or Open Source Photopolymer DLP 3D Printers such as LemonCurry

3D printers are also printing with more than one material and are already printing multilayer printed circuit boards with only fluids. Much of the development work in 3D printers recently has been from open hardwave projects vs the industry since many of the old patents have now expired.

Comment AMD G and Z Series in eoma68 Also ~$100 + coreboot (Score 2) 194

There are also eoma68 cards in the works using the AMD Fusion APU's that will only use open source firmware so you won't have to settle for EFI or a closed BIOS as you have to with Intel.

1ghz Dual-Core CPU with AMD Radeon HD 6250 GPU,
http://rhombus-tech.net./amd_g_series/

AMD APUs for Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets
http://www.amd.com/US/PRODUCTS/NOTEBOOK/APU/Pages/tablet.aspx#3

AMD Embedded G-Series Platform
http://www.amd.com/us/products/embedded/processors/Pages/g-series.aspx
http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/49282_G-Series_platform_brief.pdf

Comment Re:Raspberry Pi already obsolete (Score 1) 135

I'm not sure where you get your info from about Rhombus but your either misinformed or just plain making it up. The market is mostly high volume OEM's that understand the advntage that Linux, low cost with the full performance they need for their products and markets. These OEM's are already lined up and working with the designs. They are also interested in the low costs due to volume pricing. The complete cards are lower cost than most OEM's are quoted pricing for just the SOC's and DDR3.

There is also an AMD G-Series EOMA68 card as well for about 1/3 the price of the $300 Atom module you mention that can run window$ as well. The AMD G-Series APU card will run circles around the Atom modules in performance as well plus offer 1-2 second boot times from power-on to login prompt since Intel has little to no coreboot support for their chipsets.

  It's not for OEM's that live on hype and brainwashed customers that jump at the marketing gimmicks that lead them to believe they need to spend $800 for a near worthless tablet in order to be a good consumer.

Comment Re:Sounds good. (Score 1) 135

A 10 year old child will plug the EOMA68 card into the EOMA68 slot in their device such as a netbook, set-top-box etc with the IO board already inside. This should also work for most 9, 7 or even 5 year old children depending on the development of their motor skills.

EOMA68 cards will also come pre-installed in products with integral IO boards.

There is also a Developer IO board and Developer EOMA68 card for people that like to dabble with hardware.

Linux can come pre-installed on the Flash in the EOMA68 card or on a SD-card a plugged into the EOMA68 SD card slot opposite the edge with the 68 pin connector.

Let me know if you need any further info or help with expansion board designs for the Pi. The Pi and the eoma68 cards aren't a competition. They are different types of products that have some overlapping applications.

Comment Re:Raspberry Pi already obsolete (Score 2) 135

Well you could power them via USB-otg and plug a keyboard into them directly using a USB wallplug power supply for ~$1.

But an I/O board itself for something like a desktop PC would only require a simple PCB ~$1, with TV encoder $0.50ea, RCA jack $0.15, RJ45 jack $0.50 and some passives $1 plus a power supply $2. So under $6 so far.

Add a SATA connector $0.20ea (if you want a HD), and some extra USB connectors for another $1 and larger power supply and you're still under $10 including a somple case.

Fell free to ask me for quotes and reference designs for any types of similar products.

Comment Re:Raspberry Pi already obsolete (Score 1) 135

The EOMA68 cards are not PCMCIA cards! They just happed to have the same footprint. The EOMA68 cards are the motherboard for devices like netbooks, laptops, set-top-boxes, carPC's etc etc. They don't plug into a PCMCIA slot as an accessory. They are the CPU, RAM, Flash, Ethernet, USB, SATA, SPI etc. etc. Controller/Host for the device they are plugged into.

The EOMA68 cards are COM "computer on modules" to allow OEM's to get to market faster without having to design a motherboard or develop Linux drivers. The OEM's just add a $3-$10 dollar I/O board with connectors with a simple 32bit ARM Cortex-M3 for $1 micro as an EC (embedded controller) such as an ST STM32. The main cost for the I/O boards are the connectors.

Comment Linuxcnc + RTAI (Score 4, Interesting) 65

Much of this is already in LinuxCNC
http://www.linuxcnc.org/

It's mostly used by developers to control CNC machines but it also includes support for non-Cartesian motion systems provided via custom kinematics modules. Available architectures include hexapods (Stewart platforms and similar concepts) and systems with rotary joints to provide motion such as PUMA or SCARA robots.

http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/man/man9/kins.9.html
http://linuxcnc.org/docs/html/motion_kinematics.html

We've use it to control some pretty complex robotic systems.

Comment Another Reason to Use GPL Software vs Android (Score 1, Interesting) 97

Didn't people see this coming? Google chose Apache 2.0 for their reasons and goals for Android

http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html

"We've simply decided that ASL2.0 is the right license for our goals."

The tablet bubble is already bursting but maybe bodhilinux or similar will be used for some future consumer applicances to avoid these probelms?
http://bodhilinux.com/

Comment Re:It will morph into Conformity Monitoring (Score 1) 182

Public school has already been that way for decades. There is no monitoring of how the teachers arrive at a students grade. It's heavily dependent on how much they like the student or how well the student conforms to their ideas of what should be rewarded. They don't even return graded work any longer since it might be used by next years class to "cheat".

Comment Re:Warning ! (Score 1) 196

Don't be fooled and give them credit just for saying so. If they really wanted it copied in China they would release gerbers and the drill tool files. If they don't care then they could also post the schematic source files and the pcb layout files. This would save somebody the work of having to do it all over again. But as you notice there are no such publicly posted files.

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