--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

On Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 7:25 PM, Jakub Kákona kaklik@mlab.cz wrote:

Hello all,

I am coming to this forum trough that page: https://www.youmagine.com/designs/libre-hardware-licensed-parametric-laptop-... Thanks very much for this great work!

:)

I am interested in EOMA68 project for several years. Althought I am currently using the ODROID boards in my projects - one example is radio meteor detection station: http://wiki.mlab.cz/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=cs:designs:rmds:rmds02d_station....

cool. that actually looks really sophisticated, and extremely tidy.

This is a typical candidate of electronic computing device which needs occasional hardware upgrade or rapid firmware and configuration change.. Therefore I looking forward for moment when we could integrate the EOMA68 cpu card in our modular system http://www.mlab.cz/ and after that in to related designs which already exists.

awesome. you probably get the whole concept, then, and are happy with the EOMA68 interfaces, and the idea of using low-cost ECs at around $1.50 to do tasks that are just out of reach of the [simple, straightforward] EOMA68 set. ironic that an entire EC is coming in at a price that's similar to what SPI-based dedicated I/O ICs come in at, but hey.

Therefore you can count on me if there were a group order of EOMA68 cards or an crowdfunding campaign.

great - that's really good to hear.

We have a long term electronics design experience and quite good contacts to other electronics manufacturers here in the Czech Republic. I would like to ask if there were some subtask which we could help with? If none, I will continue to work on related problems such as open-source battery management and effective solar charging system for portable devices.

ok, well actually there is a sub-task that i could do with your help on: i need a 15 watt *single-cell* battery charger / monitor board which is compliant with the USB-OTG Power specification up to 3A @ 5.0V and can be controlled via I2C as to which direction the power goes... *and* can take DC input at the same time. i've found the bq24193, it's the best i could yet find that will do the job. the only thing is, its I2C interface is hard-wired to 1.8v and i need 3.0 to 3.3v, so there will be some level-shifting needed there. it also will need a battery monitor (coulomb counter) - the STC3115 QFN is what i had in mind, but if you have something better please do say so.

PCB size needs to be no bigger than 32 x 85mm, 1.5mm thickness, 2 layer *ONLY*, components *ONLY* on one side, no through-hole components or connectors are allowed, and there is a severe [hard] height limit of 5.5mm so the only DC connector i could find which can handle 5A and is within that limit is the PJ-018H-SMT from CUI Inc.

also, i really loved the solar panel idea and it turns out that the PJ-018H-SMT has a 3-pin arrangement, so in theory a diode and a solar panel in series between pins 2 and 3 would provide solar power when the DC-jack is disconnected. pin 3 (to which the solar panel would be wired) would be disconnected when the DC jack is in. pin 2 is GND.

But the cooperative development will be the best solution because there are huge tasks which we need to overcome. Uniform 3D printable laptop is one of the things which could bring together the open-hardware design community. I expected it even in case of Novena laptop, but they go to the different direction focused on performance needed for hacking.

i know. i've spoken to bunnie before. he is specifically *not* interested in taking the novena to large volume manufacturing.

this laptop is designed as a mass-volume user-serviceable eco-conscious laptop which is continuously repairable and upgradeable, so that it remains out of landfill for the longest possible length of time.

l.