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BUG - "The LEGO of Gadgets"

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wed Jan 09, 2008 11:42 AM
from the well-it-looks-neat-at-least dept.
Hardware Hacking
TheBrutalTruth writes "Bug Labs will soon be launching what Webware calls 'the LEGO of gadgets.' From their site: 'BUG is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest, letting you try out different combinations quickly and easily. With BUG and the integrated programming environment/web community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program, and share innovative devices and applications. We don't define the final products — you do.'" Looks a bit vaporous, but conceptually interesting.
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Submission: BUG - "The LEGO of gadgets" by TheBrutalTruth (890948)
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  • Looking forward to the teleporter (Score:5, Funny)

    by whyloginwhysubscribe (993688) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @11:46AM (#21970054)
    But worrying about it being vaporous...

    • Re:Looking forward to the teleporter (Score:4, Insightful)

      by splutty (43475) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @11:50AM (#21970126)
      That entirely depends on the strength of your powersupply I'm sure. But your teleporter might still find a good use as a smoke signal generator. So not to worry! The possibilities are endless.

      The concept is a great one, though. And also one that goes back a long way to all the electronics kits I used to have as a kid. What I'm wondering is mainly: How easy would it be to build custom modules that 'click into' all the other modules? And with that I mean not using the already available ones.

      That's basically what I ended up doing with those electronics kits. Little wooden blocks with my own R/C circuit on it, and connecting that into the existing block of the kit. I'm a bit doubtful about this being feasable in this sort of setup, though, since the complexity is probably way too high. A shame, really..

      Give kids more electronics kits! (Let them build their own computer with a Z80 :) Nice and cheap, and if it blows up, well, it costs $2 to get a new Z80.
      • There are kits to build a computer with a Z80? Do tell, where?
      • Coincidentally, I've been thinking about this recently. It's was a bit of a shock when I saw the idea here on Slashdot :-)

        You could easily make a 2 or 4 wire serial bus out of the 4 feet and reception points of a block, but it might be quite limited in speed. Technically though, this could be pretty simple. Most controller and DSP microcontrollers have support for some type of serial bus, and the whole system can standardize on one.

        Something like Microchip's CAN [cam.ac.uk] (controller area network) seems ideal - nodes
    • Diddo. But from what I've seen of ideas like this even if the company folds the modder community will take the general idea to heart and keep going with it. With any luck these things will revive the area of hardware hobbyists who are not just tweaking existing store bought hardware. Every hardware project I've done was either too long or minor to be very interesting.

    • Just what can it do ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Ruie (30480) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @12:26PM (#21970660) Homepage
      From the website: base module $299 (for early adopters) and 4 more modules (GPS, camera, accelerometer, screen) for $50-100 each. Buy all: $595.

      How is this different from the many embedded boards you can buy or even a PDA/phone (e.g. openmoko) ? The only new feature is fancy packaging. It does not appear you can connect more these four modules or link bases together easily.

      I wish they actually made something that let you do new things. For example, I would be delighted to shell out $299 for one of these:

      • A Spartan FPGA board with 1 GB MAC+PHY (or PHY alone). Spartan must be largest that WebKit supports, with all connections routed to nice high-speed connectors (with more than 40 usable pins !). Current best: www.digilent.com, 40 pins, USB 2.0 interface (limited to 10-20MB/sec due to the way they hooked up FX2 chip). Such a board is possible (and relatively easy) to design by an amateur - but very expensive to make as it would have to be 6 layers and require soldering BGA chips. Price can only go down when many are made at the same time. Possible hobby applications: software radio, software oscilloscope, home made projectors, photonics.
      • Same, but with connector for SPF modules instead of built-in MAC/PHY
      • Same, but capable of usable 10Gbit per second
      • 10/100 and/or 1Gbit and/or wireless board with 8 or more 1 Mhz 16bit ADC inputs and equal number of 12-16bit DAC outputs, plus digital I/O. Should be easy to design and medium hard to make - mostly because 10/100 MAC/PHYs and FPGAs do not come in convenient packaging and Digilent board (and similar) do not have enough I/O. Applications: MEMs closed loop control (make a tiny robot/device and get it to move using piezos, static electricity or plain electromagnets), sensing of electrical signals from muscles/brain, environment monitoring, ultrasound.
      • Hackers PDA: a PDA with large Hex buttons and auxiliary buttons around the screen (one can enter ASCII letters with two keypresses - beats phones and writing), with several multimeter channels (using TI chips for example), several relay controls, and multiple digital I/O ports that double as compact flash or SD slots.

      • Re:Just what can it do ? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by smellsofbikes (890263) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @02:28PM (#21972562) Journal
        >Such a board is possible (and relatively easy) to design by an amateur - but very expensive to make as it would have to be 6 layers and require soldering BGA chips.

        I have a few tips from personal experience. You can get multilayer boards built fairly inexpensively if you can justify having four made at one time: you might be looking at under $80/board for a 6-layer (although I'm not positive about that. I know you can get 4 layer done for under $60/board.)
        It's possible, although unpleasant, to reflow your own BGA's. You need a microscope with a tilt-head. Draw the BGA package outline in the layout software as a silkscreen, making sure it's at least as large as the actual package, or even better, draw several outlines of increasing size. Align the BGA visually within the closest package size, double-check by looking at the edge with bright illumination and a microscope to make sure you're basically on-pad, then gently reflow it down with a heat gun. It works best if you can preheat the board from the bottom with one heat gun on low, then do the reflow from the top with the second one.
        I'm doing this at work with microSMD, which are way, way smaller than BGA -- chips 3mm on a side with 12 bumps on the bottom. After a bit of work I have a 70% success rate. The main thing I've found is that while you're reflowing, you'll see the chip move as the capillary action of the solder pulls it into place. Very, very lightly touch the chip on one edge with a probe. If it rocks, the center isn't yet reflowed and it's pivoting on the as-of-yet-solid bumps. When the whole chip bounces like a spring on all the melted bumps, rather than rocking, then it should be good.
    • It doesn't say what it can teleport. Teleportation of a single electron has been achieved in the lab so it might be a rather unimpressive add on.
  • it would be more interesting if the parts were a bit more low level. I would like to see something like this at just the board level (and maybe therefore cheaper) with maybe an option for a few case designs that would contain the base + x modules. Or leave the case design to you (which was my first thought).
  • I can't wait until someone releases the cube with the +5,+12V Analog IO. $299 for a networked (Ethernet AND Wireless) Serial ported, USB Programmable box doesn't seem too bad.
      • Don't be so sure Hobbits are not good for this. They have small hands, but dwarfs have better welding skills...

  • Overhyped? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AKAImBatman (238306) <akaimbatman.gmail@com> on Wednesday January 09 2008, @11:51AM (#21970144) Homepage Journal
    I dunno. Looking at the device on the website, I can't help but wonder if this isn't overhyped. It appears to only have 2 generic snap-in ports on top with the rest of the ports defining a more specific interface. What that means is not so much, "You define the final product", but more along the lines of, "You can use these attachements... or not."

    It really doesn't seem all that different than your average embedded dev-kit + a USB hub. Certainly the comparison to LEGO does not hold. LEGOs are based on a key component of classical construction: The brick. Toys of its nature existed long before the LEGO was invented. The key innovation to the LEGO was the "snap-together" interface which gave the bricks a structural stability that their real-world counterpart lacked.

    What you have here is not so much a key innovation on top of existing, generic components, but rather a repackaging of components that can be found in a variety of products. Of course, there's always the possibility that I'm underestimating this design. In which case I look forward to BUG proving me wrong. :-)
    • It really doesn't seem all that different than your average embedded dev-kit + a USB hub.

      except that it has a chassis, battery and WiFi.

      You can either go the gumstix route and roll your own, which seems painful and actually ends up being quite expensive, or you can try to hack existing portable music players, which, (at least until recently [slashdot.org]), wasn't really panning out.

      Although the platform isn't very interesting at this point because of the lack of peripherals, the price is actually pretty good.

      I'm interes
      • How is it good?
        for $300 you can buy two OLPC computers which include the keyboard and display, a cool meshing wi-fi bridge etc ...

        AIK

  • Didn't we already do this... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by INeededALogin (771371) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @11:52AM (#21970166) Journal
    Its called "Whitebox PC" [wikipedia.org]. Seriously... peripherals: camera, keyboard, mouse, trackball, gps, harddrives, infared, etc...

    Seems like nothing more than the recreation of a PC with non-standard interconnects.

  • Oh Crap... (Score:4, Funny)

    by dfn5 (524972) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @11:54AM (#21970190) Journal
    This must be the real cause of the replicator problem in our galaxy. They started out as Plastic Lego's until they worked their way up in some strange Katamari fashion to Asgard alloy technology.

  • Only 4 ports? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Thelasko (1196535) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @12:06PM (#21970378) Journal
    This thing only has 4 ports? Is there some other add on that splits one of the ports in to 3 or 4 more ports? I also don't think an accelerometer is worthy of taking up one of those precious ports all to itself. I think this is a step in a nice direction, but I don't think it lives up to it's potential, or is valuable to the average non-geek consumer.
    • they should have put pass through ports on anything that doen't need a surface for a screen ir lens or whatever. Then you could just pile another thing on top of the accelerometer.

  • Whatever happened to LEGO of electronics? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by autophile (640621) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @12:20PM (#21970580)

    I remember about 30 years ago, there was this set with these little clear plastic cubes. Each cube contained a discrete component: a resistor, transistor, wire, whatever. You could fit the cubes together to make a circuit. I don't remember what that was, or whatever happened to it.

    Maybe it was German. I remember my dad used to bring me home a lot of Philips electronics kits from his business trips to Europe.

    --Rob

    • And they were absolutely terrible since the contacts corroded, the components were poorly soldered to the contacts and other contact issues that actually required the user to sort of twist and squeak the ensemble to get anything useful out of it...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by AVryhof (142320)
      It seems like this [amazon.com] ?

      I bought one of these for my Nephew this last Christmas... not sure if he's lost all of the parts yet or not...
    • I do remember something like you are talking about. Wasn't quite 30 years ago for me, closer to 20. Out of the set you could build a variety of different things based on the instructions or come up with something unique. Much like I did with legos.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They were called Denshi Block, japanese, and the contacts did not corrode. The Phillips were the ones whose contacts went bust.

      • Blo(c)ktroni(x|cs) (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Animaether (411575) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @01:48PM (#21971872) Journal
        yeah, I don't recall how it was spelled (I know I have a box of them here somewhere, but they're behind all kinds of other youth memory crap), and I don't know if they were the Philips equivalents - but they appear similar to the Denshi Block stuff and they were good fun (no corroded bits that I ever encountered).

        Both, at least, allowed anybody to build simple to reasonably-complex electronic devices without the need for either A. soldering or B. pushing the components into little metal strips of a 'base board', leading to all kinds of problems, especially at younger ages.

        The major down side that I ran into was that whatever you built - it ended up rather big. The blocks where maybe 2cm on each side for the simple components (a speaker would be 3x3x1 block in size, etc.).
    • Sounds a bit like Capsela [wikipedia.org], though that was plastic bubbles, and mostly mechanical components (motors etc.) Fischertechnik [wikipedia.org] had some electronic modules, but again was more aimed at robotics than generic electronic circuit construction.
  • I thought Lego Mindstorm was, you know, that Lego of gadgets.
  • I don't see a motor control module listed. This might be cool for building robots. It already has the vision system and will soon have audio for saying "Death to all organics".
  • It seems a bit unfair to accuse a product of being vapor when they've announced pre-order and approximate dispatch dates [buglabs.net] and demonstrated working devices [engadget.com]. Sure it doesn't guarantee they'll be able to follow through but they have done plenty to suggest that intend to.

    Maybe we really have got to the stage where a cool-sounding concept and a pretty website is an indicator of an imaginary product... But a little research before publically labelling a young company a vapor vendor might be nice.

  • All i want is a generic LOW COST I/O board, with driver support for everything from a little Palm PDA to a Linux server. just hook it up to a USB port, or wherever, and read from certain 'registers' to know the voltage of a input-pin, or write to a register to open or close a opto-coupled relais, or even better to set a resistance (so that you could dim a light, or make a motor go slower). but it should be completely fool-proof, in the sense that i can hook up 220V or 1.5V to the ports, and nothing 'bad' ha
  • When I was a young proto-geek, the Radio Shack 1001 Electronic Projects kit was the "Lego of Electronics," and it actually taught you something about, you know, Ohm's Law and Boolean Logic, and that junk.

    The closest thing I can find on Google now is the modern version [radioshack.com], which looks pretty darn close.

    /we had to build our on Leyden jars, too
    //uphill, both ways

  • Back in the 80's and early 90's McDonnell Douglas's Computer System Corporation manufactured a computer composed of individual pieces that latched together. Each piece provided a port and performed an unique function such as a floppy, a hard drive, etc.

    So if you wanted a hard drive simply snap it on the end of what was called the "brick". latch on a floppy or an async port or video module etc.

    The more devices attached then the longer the brick became.

    It ran DOS and the other details about it are too hazy to

  • Dupe? (Score:3, Informative)

    by SigILL (6475) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @01:57PM (#21972008) Homepage
    Didn't we already do this one [slashdot.org]?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AndGodSed (968378)
      Build a stand alone device that you can attach to a shipping container that logs messages according to motion, to detect when it is offloaded for instance, reports the GPS location (to track if it is misplaced), records video of everyone who tampers (motion sensor again) and customs officers can plug in the screen to check the logs/video on site.

      And I bet that is not even the best idea, and more components are to follow...
    • Wait for second quarter when you can add a teleporter module.
    • buy a couple of thousand of each, voila you have thousands of devices. Marketing at its best :)

    • Re:Not to be captain buzzkill, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Lijemo (740145) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @12:03PM (#21970336)

      why is this better than a gadget that has all that stuff already in it?

      If you have to ask, then you're not the target audience =^)

    • Re:Not to be captain buzzkill, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by _KiTA_ (241027) on Wednesday January 09 2008, @12:14PM (#21970498) Homepage
      why is this better than a gadget that has all that stuff already in it?

      The same reason LEGO is better than a toy that's already made.

      (If we have to explain it, you wouldn't get it.)
    • If you buy two GPS units, you can make plug them in and make a device that can determine its own orientation like a compass.

      You can buy two camera units and make a stereoscopic camera. If you include the accelerometer, you'd get enough information to create 3D object files by swiping the camera across a scene.

      I hope they make a module containing its own CPU that you could stack up on the base to arbitrary heights and build a massively parallel computer. This is like my plan to build a RAID controller out of
      • > You can buy two camera units and make a stereoscopic camera. If you include the accelerometer, you'd get enough
        > information to create 3D object files by swiping the camera across a scene.

        you make that sound so easy!
      • Would this be an easier, more functional way to make the cheap android referenced in this [slashdot.org] story?

    • why is this better than a gadget that has all that stuff already in it?
      You obviously never played with Legos(TM) (or Meccano® / Fisher-Technik(TM)) before...
    • BugLabs has created an environment where you can jump immediately to building YOUR application after picking x, y, and z components. That's pretty neat - hot-plug, start up, stop, the general runtime has been completely written for you. All you need to do is write the application piece.
      Sounds like a pretty good description of the majority of the hobbyist market for Microchip PICs, Atmel, Lego Mindstorms, and even the OpenCores code repository. Anything you want to do you can get code to do for you, and you

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