[lanewinfield]

As far as I can tell, this is a single individual that has done all of this work. I am floored at the design and intricacy of this project.

Really, truly blown away. I'm sure there are plenty of edge cases to correct for but I haven't gotten so excited by a demo in a long time. I've obviously signed up to learn more.

[Solder_Man]

Hey HN, Solder_Man here. I am the guy behind Pockit. Thrilled to see this modularization effort has the support (and useful criticism) of so many deep thinkers in this thread.

First, a clarification: Since people have brought up the topic of "hard to believe one guy handled all aspects", I want to state that while this is my concept and my project (and I've devoted nearly every waking hour since 2020 to it), I'm no jack of all trades.

In the last two years, for example, I've gotten occasional but much-needed help (and knowledge) from two freelancing developers for some aspects that I don't have expertise with, including Linux intricacies, DMA-based firmware programming, UI design details, and some other subtleties. A more experienced PCB designer (colleague from past) has also helped me, particularly with the recent 6-layer PCB layouts. Plus, an assistant in the past has aided with the soldering of some tightly packed boards.

Last but not least, my SO has contributed graphics + Adobe Premiere effort for my videos; her equally important contribution was being a frequent listener, and sometimes a much-needed boundary, to my evolving thoughts through this project's journey.

As the project evolves to its next phase, I do hope to get more people into primary development of this modular ecosystem, in the form of both team members and eventually custom Block designers from the community, once I organize and release the necessary files + documentation for everyone to work with.

I'm perhaps late to the party, but I'll try to answer as many questions as I can on this thread now, including hopefully the ones posted several hours ago!

[dillondoyle]

I was going to add even the video editing, that swipe edit to remove things from desk was super well done. Amazing all around.

[neilpanchal]

If you need help with getting it manufactured in volume (Molds, DFM, QA, Management), I can help / put you in touch with people that make Teenage Engineering products in Malaysia.

Contact in the HN profile.

[lanewinfield]

Appreciate the disclosure of other people on it. But, to be honest, even if the 5 additional people you listed were on the project full time, I'd still be impressed. Well done.

[SaulJLH]

I need this, "I gots to has this!", but... There's only a newsletter, where do we preorder or do a deposit?

[fxtentacle]

Yeah, I also thought that. Put a "pay $50 to pre-order a prototype" box somewhere. At the very least, it'll give you enough budget to negotiate on eye level with production partners.

[allisdust]

Are you doing this full time? Or is it a part time adventure.

How are you planning to commercialise this?

Awesome and Inspiring work!

[natpalmer1776]

Your work is truly inspiring, keep it up!

[dhc02]

The UI of the dashboard alone would be an impressive feat for a single person.

The algorithm that chooses the most likely/useful application for infinite possible combinations of modules would be an impressive feat for a single person.

The multidisciplinary coding required to get all of these pieces to work together in a hot-swap way would be an impressive feat for a single person.

The design and implementation of a single physical connection interface that can adapt or carry all these different protocols (USB, HDMI, etc) would be an impressive feat for a single person.

Not to mention the PCB design, 3D enclosure design, machine learning proficiency, aesthetic product design chops, and on and on.

All together, this is unbelievable. This is 0.01% level stuff. Mozart, Musk, Melville. Somewhere in that neighborhood.

[ketzo]

I mean, even the editing of the demo video itself is incredibly slick. This dude is out of control.

[hackernewds]

How do we know it is all 1 person?

[vosper]

You got downvoted, but a comment elsewhere from the person confirms it was his wife who edited the videos.

[Maraguy]

The UI got me too. I'm still dumbfounded at how amazing this really is.

[kumarvvr]

I am floored by the design.

However, the most complex and costly part is the PCB and circuit design. The PCBs used in the blocks are absolutely awesome.

Thanks to 3D printers that are cheap, the casing and other plastic materials are easy to make.

All that being said, this has very low chance of becoming a real world product. Real world is messy, dirty, wet and an absolutely shitty place for snap on electronics.

What would work, is better connector technology. It is obvious that even with all this simplification, this will still be a hobbyist product, rather than a serious mass market product.

[pharke]

I don't see why the contacts on the demonstrated devices would be any more vulnerable to the real world than the port on an iPhone. I'm not sure these devices would be mass market since some skill is required to understand and use the software but they would absolutely have a good run at serving the same size market as 3D printers. They could even work hand in hand with 3D printers by providing the 'brains' for prototyped projects.

[morcheeba]

Besides the wiping, these connectors are missing two other features: ESD protection and connection-sequencing.

Most user-facing connectors have a metal shield around them connected to frame ground. The idea is that any ESD shock goes safely through this first instead of to a sensitive data line.

Connection-sequencing ensures that the ground and power is connected before data lines are. If you look inside a cable-side USB connector, you'll see that the inner two wires (data) are recessed a little so that the power connectors go first. A device that is connected without power can (through its ESD protection circuit) attempt to draw power from data lines... this can cause damage because most data lines can't supply the current to power the entire device.

[riskable]

You don't know if they ESD protection or not. There are loads of tiny little ESD protection ICs/diodes that can handle many inputs. Just put them very close to the connectors and you should be good to go from an ESD perspective. You don't need a metal shield around everything to protect against ESD.

Every USB device connected to your PC right now probably has a little ESD protection IC in it. Usually sitting right next to the USB connector (as close as possible).

[stormbrew]

I think you could effectively connection sequence this interface? Though it'd be electronic sequencing rather than a physical one like on usb ports, you could make it so that a particular non-symmetrical set of pins need to be in a certain position before power is delivered through any power pins. Assuming there are multiple grounds, it could be continuity through all the ground pins that would allow power to flow.

And since the snap-in boards are all rigid you don't really need to worry about the possibility that contact will be made in like.. a rolling way. Either the pins are on the board or they're not.

But I'm not an EE, just a hobbyist, so maybe there's something I've missed there and what I'm thinking is way more complicated than I think.

[coryrc]

Connectors are usually built so there is a small amount of "wiping" as they seat, which will scrape off oxides or dirt. They will also have just the right amount pressure to balance longevity versus contact resistance. The pockit connectors may not balance these factors well (depends on what's making contact from the modules - I couldn't find the details readily). Regardless they won't have wiping, which isn't mandatory but is the cheapest way to keep connections reliable.

So likely they won't have nearly the cycle life of USB-C but do they really need to?

[pharke]

If wiping is the main problem you could just wipe them with a cloth or some other device. They are exposed and highly visible after all.

[ricardobeat]

The way to that cyberpunk world that lives in collective imagination is to make electronics work in messy, dirty, wet environments, not try to shield them from it.

[roughly]

Hey can we use like solarpunk or something instead for our collective imaginations? We’ve been kicking the tires on this cyberpunk thing for the last decade or two and it turns out they wrote that shit as a dystopia, so, it’d be good if we could like collectively Not build that part together.

[rileyphone]

I came across this yesterday:

> Merveilles seems aligned with the ideals of Solarpunk while internally expecting the world of Cyberpunk, it is neither a utopian or dystopian vision, but a way of straddling both contingencies.

https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/merveilles.html

[roughly]

Oh man, thank you for that - so good in so many ways. I’ll definitely be following up on this later, I like what they’re doing.

Two things stick out for critique to me -

> Merveilles seems aligned with the ideals of Solarpunk while internally expecting the world of Cyberpunk, it is neither a utopian or dystopian vision, but a way of straddling both contingencies.

I get this, and in a way, I think it’s how I’m operating already, but man, it’s an art movement - don’t give the dystopia space in the room, it’s already got plenty everywhere else.

> The Merveilles visual aesthetic restricts color palettes to black and white, vector or pixel art, with at most a single accent color (usually a sea-foam aqua). Industrial design is minimalist, geometric black-forged metals, natural wood.

My visual aesthetic these days is “all of the above.” For the love of god, colors exist - trillions of them! Take two! Hell, take three or four! They’re cheap! And shapes - my god, man, the shapes you can make! You ever see the temple carvings in Nepal? So many shapes! Take a walk through a forest, and just look at all the shapes! Look at trees, man - the opposite of simple!

[stonogo]

It's an art movement -- don't give the colors space in the room, they've already got plenty everywhere else.

(this was intended as a gentle ribbing, not actual criticism. I found the contrast between exclusion and inclusion interesting :)

[wrycoder]

Hundred Rabbits is very cool. It will be interesting to see what they talk about at their Libreplanent presentation 20Mar:

https://www.fsf.org/news/artist-collective-hundred-rabbits-t...

[pigeons]

https://git.sr.ht/~rabbits/libreplanet2022/tree/master/item/...

[user_7832]

Hobbyist isn't necessarily bad though. Look at where boards like the raspberry pi/Arduino were and look at where they are now. There was an image floating around a few weeks back of a major screen at a train station that had crashed... with the raspberry pi logo at the top. It will take time, sure, but it could become much bigger than one might expect.

[Animats]

Connector reliability and mechanical strength is a big problem here. If the baseplate had screw holes with threaded inserts, so you could screw everything down, it would hold together better. Also, the animation looks cool, but there is no power source, and no external connections.

Google tried this in 2015. It was called Project Ara.[1] A similar click-together system, with the same problems. Plus the problem that there's no good reason to make a phone that way. Google acquired that from Phonebloks and killed it.[2]

It's not a bad idea if you solve the mechanical problems and have the components produced in sufficient quantity to be very cheap. A little bigger, a lot more rugged, with a good wire management solution, and you'd have something useful.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/project-ara-everything-we-k...

[2] https://www.onearmy.earth/project/phonebloks

[franciscop]

> the animation looks cool, but there is no power source

It is briefly explained at 4:04 that the initial 4 mins it's running on a 3300 battery, and then he swaps it to USB charging.

[JoBrad]

Depending on how inexpensive these things will be, I can see myself basically putting together a few of these throughout my house, with some framing, and probably never touching them again for a year or more. However having a few kits for my kids and I to play with is more likely. In the latter case, we’ll do exactly what we did whenever playing with game cartridges: blow them off, wipe them, and try again. I think it’s part of the fun, really.

[philliphaydon]

1 person? Man it's an absolutely incredible feat. I'm also blown away, and I want to play around with it. I would love to try and automate parts of the house and such.

[renonce]

Pockit is just one of the small parts needed to automate parts of your house. All your devices have to cooperate smoothly and this will require a standardized IoT API from manufacturers.

[stavros]

That exists, eg Zigbee or Z-Wave. I have Zigbee (it's an open standard) and I love it.

Having the home automation communications be a message queue instead of a general-purpose communication protocol is so much better.

[vidarh]

And he has a ZigBee module

[philliphaydon]

Sure but you could 3d print parts to automate traditional things and build on top of pockit. That’s what I like.

[Lorin]

He posted this a day or two ago on Reddit and I echoed the same sentiment. The test suite must be nuts (assuming there is one)!

As solo founder this is really motivational - I hope my upcoming project garners even half the interest once launched! So many hats.

[seanw444]

Wow. One person. That's insane. This is a really cool project. I just signed up as well. Color me impressed.

[jsnodlin]

Anil Reddy is an absolute genius.

[symstym]

But remember, there's no such thing as a 10x engineer! /s