Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

Hello Old Friends... and new ones!

You may remember I did the Indigo Reborn project a couple of years ago. In case you haven't seen it, it's this one: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16724795&hilit=indigo+reborn&start=75#p7349612

That project got me thinking about rapid prototyping technologies, how to build custom cases, custom systems and so on. And soon, thinking turned to doing.

So here's my Kickstarter which went live just a few days ago: The Darkmatter, 3D printed, Laser-cut, Xbox Laptop!

http://kck.st/15WvpJx

I wanted to share it with you guys and see what your thoughts are. It hit Engadget and a number of other blogs, so it seems to have struck a chord with some folks. The vision is to take Darkmatter to a point where it becomes a completely Open Laptop framework. We're already looking at retrofitting Beagles, Pandas, NUCs, Raspberry Pis and more into this framework. However, to get there, we want to get this Kickstarter off the ground.

If you guys are interested in stuff like this and can back us, I would greatly appreciate it. If you can't, that's cool too... but do spread the word amongst friends, hackers and makers who might be interested.

THANKS!!!

Backed and spread the word on Twitter - I hope it takes off. It's a really neat idea.

I like it, might even get one. I use connect360, works much better than wmc. But:

Adrenaline, thank you so much Appreciate it!

guardian452 Thanks for the support! I haven't used connect360, but just looked it up. Sounds pretty cool!

It's an Apple I

www.latimes.com/business/technology/la- ... 0683.story

They look nice. But why the Kickstarter ? Why not just sell them ? That whole commuuuuunity thing is sort of ... repulsive

Everything has to be social(ist) these days, don'tcha know? Facebook, twitter it does it all!!! It also works as a kitchen appliance.

R.

You do realize you're saying that to a resident of the largest socialist country in the world... don'tcha?

They will be sold. That's essentially what the Kickstarter is doing; taking pre-orders. Right now, however, the process seems to be going very slow. If there's not enough interest to get 25 systems pre-ordered over a month...

And I'm sorry some of my friends here find the community aspect to be repulsive, but if you've interacted with folks at the Maker Faire, for example, you do actually get a sense of community. It's a very approachable lot and generally willing to help each other out. I saw some of that at the past few Faires I've been to.

It's not *quite* socialist The reality is that a lot of folks don't want to go through the hassle of buying their own 3D printer, learning how to use it, getting access to a laser cutter, ordering custom PCBs (for the Xduino360 board that's inside the laptop), building everything up, including soldering SMT components and then putting everything together. All the plans are indeed available to do this, but very, very few would want to do it this way.

Some successful (capitalist!) businesses use open products to arrive at a pretty healthy annual income statement

As for us, the idea is to evolve this into an Open Laptop - something capable of housing myriad types of boards, and in some cases, multiple boards in a single system. The problem is getting enough interest going to make it a viable enterprise and secure at least a minimum number of pre-orders via the Kickstarter campaign. We've had people contact us about PS3 versions, Xbox + x86 versions and on and on. But I learned a long time ago that asking whether something is possible doesn't mean people will exchange US $ to obtain that thing they are asking about. If we can't get the Kickstarter funded, that would say something... So the first order of business is to get across the finish line.

Our leaders meet with the Chinese communist party leaders and embarrass them as to how far to the left our radical nut jobs are.

The largest socialist country, I beg to differ. This country is finished.


R.

Wreck : we're not socialists. We're Communists ! better hide the women and children !

And wot the 'ell appened to Ozztralia, Pymble ? you guys went from "Now this is a knife !" to "omigosh, that man said an insensitive word. He must be imprisoned for the rest of his life. Think of the chiiiiildren !" in like twenty years. Wow.


I hear Woz and Jobs had the same problem ...


Did community, when the moon was in the seventh house and jupiter aligned with mars .... The computers look good tho, hope you do well.

Thanks for the good wishes

When I read the headline, I hoped for a SGI laptop. :-/

Why not? Let's see where we get with this Kickstarter... we are pretty close now and still 7 days to go. But basically the idea behind Darkmatter is to do an open laptop framework that can be adapted to anything. Here is where we stand right now:

70 backers
$18,714 pledged of $25,000 goal
7 days to go

And BTW, on the SGI side I have an AWESOME (at least in my mind ) project in the works. I literally get butterflies in my stomach when I think about that one... once again it has to do with my love for the Indigo, but a different spin to my earlier IRIS Indigo Reborn project.