[Arm-netbook] Two Questions: MEB/Card/Case and VGA Proto

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday, November 4, 2013 21:09:52 Arokux X wrote:
> To tell the truth the EOMA project looses its "openness" in my
> opinion. It was first advertised to be an OSHW project. Then
> schematics of the EOMA68-A20 got closed. Then motivation for the
> pricing disappeared. I wonder what will happen next.

i hope to help fix that. well, not all on my own, but with the help of everyone 
here. so:

* the upcoming MEB will be open hardware. it will sport the open hardware logo 
right on the PCB and we will host the layouts online for your enjoyment / 
forking / playing with. they currently exist in a git repository and i use 
kicad with them.

* coinciding with the MEB launch, a new website will be rolled out that can be 
used (or ignored :) by the community here. it will start out simple and 
contain various useful bits of information along with forums to get us all 
started ... and from there we will expand it together

* we will promote weekly videos posted showing different project concepts. we 
will create these videos as needed, but would love to promote community 
content as well / instead

* we will be hosting project files / schematics / etc in an online warehouse 
open to everyone.

* we will be providing opportunities for people to create custom devices and 
even work with people to productize their ideas where there is desire to do 
so. we will be offering a full range of coordination services including 
casework, PCB customization, boxing, branding, shipping. that work will be 
taken on by people and companies who are in the EOMA68 community and we will 
strongly encourage releasing the results as open hardware. to aid in this, we 
have a fledgling partner network that will be unveiled on launch that will be 
open (and gratis) to join for anyone with the desire and the skill set.


i’ll also address the elephant in the room regarding the new MEB hardware 
here:

	 the MEBv2 has been done largely behind the scenes.

why? well, so far the EOMA68 community has done lots of tinkering but quite 
honestly produced very, very little in the way actual “i can hold it in my 
hand” devices. this has led some to lose some faith in the community focus. 
personally, i’m a 100% believer in community .. but i also recognize it needs 
coordination. note: not imposed direction or leadership, but coordination.

i have been lurking in the outskirts of the EOMA68 world since last december; 
so while i’m not a newcomer to EOMA68, i am a newcomer to the community.

in recognition of the above, i decided to create a low-key, concerted and 
highly organized effort to create an MEB type product. this meant a small team 
working tightly together, and since this community lacks any sort of template 
for doing that the possibility of making a quality device in a short period of 
time by throwing schematics and ideas around on this list looked like a very 
low-odds-of-success type proposition.

trust me, it was hard enough to get something done in 6 weeks as we:

* made decisions like “usb2 or usb3”, “gig or just 10/100 ethernet”
* 2-layer or 4-layer board
* created the branding elements (logo, name, colors, etc)
* had to do multiple prototype runs to prove the schematics

as i hope you can appreciate, the above things are completely ripe for 
bikeshedding discussions. just look at how difficult the relatively simple 
EEPROM layout discussion has been for reference.

Chris and I have been financing this effort out of our own pockets. between 
prototyping and branding, I’ve personally spent a thousands on this already. 
by the time all is done with production, a sum of money that could buy a small 
house in many developed nations will have been spent. i hope you can 
appreciate in light of that why i opted for a reliable method rather than toss 
this to the EOMA68 community which has yet to demonstrate its ability to 
produce such results.

my hope is that with this project behind us, we’ll be able to take the 
processes we used successfully and apply them in an open community context 
such that people in the wider community can replicate our successes and even, 
one hopes, improve on them.

the MEBv2 project has involved people from the existing EOMA68 community, such 
as Chris and Luke (and people you may not yet know very well, such as David), 
as well as myself. this is not the first EOMA68 relevant processes i’ve helped 
finance or been involved with, even if it is the first you may have heard of. so 
this is not an attempt to ‘hijack’ the EOMA68 community, but an exercise in 
creating a reproducable process that can produce success.

this community is in need of process that can be used to create amazing things 
together, and i hope that post-launch we can translate the processes used to 
make the MEBv2 a reality into the open community here to the benefit of all.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo