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Handhelds Hardware

Make Your Own PDA? 14

Posted by Cliff from the d-i-y dept.
orKiD asks: "Since PDAs are becoming very common in today's world, is there any possibility of a PDA clone? A lot of the computer buying boom was caused by the AT clones that came onto the market. They brought prices down, they let people customize and get exactly what they wanted. This didn't really happen with laptops, so can it, and will it happen with PDAs? If not, perhaps a PDA designed by the people, for the people? An OpenPDA? I am currently contemplating on buying a PDA, and even though many of the PalmOS PDAs are similar, each one has its advantages, and disadvantages. I want to be able to pick and choose exactly what I want in my PDA." Hmmm...interesting thought. Read on for more info...

This question sounds awfully similar to this one from iKev: "Remember the Itsy ? Well, I was browsing the Web page today, and noticed that several movies (.avi and quicktime) exist, that show off the power of this device. There's the infamous Doom in action, java apps, e-mail, and the rock'n'scroll input system. This is not vapourware, its the real deal, so why oh why doesn't Compaq go full scale with this one? Oh, I forgot, they don't cater to the geek crowd. Has anyone been able to build one of these BTW? I would fork out for it in a flash... "

Might this project be an answer to both? Gratis to Tim Lord for the info.
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Make Your Own PDA? More

Make Your Own PDA?

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  • Well, the reason why there are fewer "clone" laptops, and PDA's (although, technically Compaq, Dell, and Gateway are all IBM "clones", they're more the mainstream nowadays) is the lack of availability of generic hardware. I can go to a computer show and buy a case, board, chip, hard drive, etc, and put together my own computer. These parts can be, individually, from just about any manufacturer.

    I cant really do that with a laptop or a PDA, though. That makes it really hard to build a system if you cant manufacture all of the individual components yourself. Considering that making this stuff is pretty difficult to do on your own, and with a small budget, it's not likely that "homebrew" PDA's will be possible until the manufacturers take it upon themselves to put out the hardware.

    Now, if this were to ever happen, the possibility for a dramatically changed (and no doubt improved) market would be there. Sun has made some remendous advances in the emedded systems market with their java KVM. Anyone can download this thing and write applications for it fairly easily. I even heard rumors a few months ago of a company (I want to say Motorolla, or a subsidiary, but I'm not sure) that was putting out chips for imbedded systems where you could send them code, and they'd burn it on there for you.

    We're still a long way off, but it's nice to think of a future wherewe all have small portable/wearable systems of our own design, that can be customized to do whatever we want/need them to with just a few lines of code. Kind of makes the term "personal digital assistant" seem inappropriate in its current application.

  • As I've pointed out before, what's missing is a standard laptop case. The standard PC/104 [controlled.com] cards are small enough that they can be used for that purpose, particularly cards with the Tillamook "Mobile Pentium" processor.

    A laptop case could have mounting points for several common LCDs, popular power supply, side panels with PCMCIA slot which fits at least two PC/104 PCMCIA interfaces, mounting point for one or two popular batteries, and drive mounting points.

    Something similar would have to be done for a generic PDA design, except that you have to start from a generic very low power processor card (pick a public design?) rather than a PC/104 card.

  • It appears in my attempt to correct Dell's name, I mislead some people. The people who say dell does not contract out laptops is correct, and the people who say they do are also correct. I can't say which line, but one line of the laptops are outsourced. The other line, however, are designed and manufactured entirely by dell. I suspect similar things occur at companies like HP and Compaq.

    ---

  • the contractors that make laptops for Dell (I forget the name)

    If you could find out the name, and tell us, then you might get above the zero and get read....

    And I could get a decent laptop with a shiny 'COMPUTER' badge as well... ;-)

    Mash

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~

  • I think the Morphy One would do. But most of the documintation is in japanese. http://www2.morphyone.org/ English press release: http://www2.morphyone.org/release/rel19991115.shtm l
  • I'd like to hear of this vendor as well.
    I've spent the better part of the past five years working with some seriously custom equipment and I have yet to hear of a company that does custom jobs like that...

    the one company i've used for custom portable devices is BSI who are at http://www.industrial-portable.com . Although they dont do uber-custom spec builds on portables, they do build to spec provided they, as a sales dude put it, 'get the parts into the case'

    I'd like to hear who this company is as well, it would save me ALOT of soldering...

    chris
  • Great idea in this place.
  • "He got a hold of the contractors that make laptops for Dell (I forget the name), "

    What? I hate to tell you this, but dell (and compaq for that matter) do not contract out their laptops (or servers). They are design here in Round Rock, Texas. I don't know where you got your information, but I'm sorry to say it is very incorrect. Certain things like the planar are contracted out for construction, but the planar, case, etc is all design here and by Dell.

    ---

  • Proprietary Digital Assistant... or as Bart Simpson would say:

    Piss Damn Ass

  • your average pda doesn't have individual components. theres a mainboard, the memory, the display, maybe a few buttons, and a clip for the stylus.

    that's different from the inside of a pc case. you won't see zif sockets in diy pdas. no room.

    also consider that pdas (good ones) are going to be small enough that you need percision tools to get them together.

    i'm skeptical that diy pdas will ever happen, though i wound not mind being proven wrong. now, back to putting a mp3 player in my car...


  • heya folks, although this IS slashdot, and flaming is inevitable, check out this url:
    http://www.fringeweb.com/laptops.html#Indexes

    have fun stormin da castle!

    chris
  • That English press release estimated availability in February 2000. Their manufacturing company page was updated in June, but it's not in English (nor even American). Can anyone who knows English, Japanese and HTML send them translations of their pages so the rest of us can know what's going on? [Sorry, I'm busy learning Romance languages...]
  • I found this link. The site opened today... Imagine that!
  • Finally, this discussion comes to light without me having to ask it. I've been thinking about trying this for about 2 or 3 months, the problem I have is that my design seems rather novel, and I havn't seen any of the small boards/systems (like LART [tudelft.nl], TINI [ibutton.com], TIQIT [tiqit.com], uCLinux [uclinux.com]) that would support it hardware-wise, let alone getting the software working for it. Most of the following rant is nothing more than a pipe dream, but if you know of something to make this dream a reality, by God post it.

    I envision a bifold device, about the size of a deck of cards, with rounded edges. The device flips open (either spring loaded to a set angle ala Psion, or with a friction clutch holding it at any angle), and both inside faces are LCDs with digitizers on them. The side that you hold in your hand is the input area,which can be changed to fit the application (for example, all buttons for a calculator app, or a few buttons with a writing area for a notepad app). The top half is the display area.

    Two displays/digitizers may seem like a waste, but an infinitely configurable input area seems like it might be just the kind of thing to make this badboy very easy and fast to use. The other nice thing about two halves is that you get about twice the screen real estate, as well as a measure of screen protection. Additionally, the bottom half in the hand, with the top half above, allows you to write while resting your writing hand against the holding hand, which would make input more natural (i.e., just moving the wrist, as opposed to the whole arm I envision this system using Quikwriting [nyu.edu] as the primary input method, but implemetning other software would also be necessary, especially the stuff with the input area and receiving input. I could imagine that a writing area with four general buttons would be the default, and a special call would be executed to change this, that way, only programs that need to have a different input method would have it. Other programs could act as if they were receiveing input from a keyboard.

    I already have the case design in my head (at least the design for individual manufacture). The problem I've run into is the lack of suitable hardware. Some of the devices listed above are small enough, but do not include any way (that I can see) of having a configurable input area that is separate from the display screen.

    I am a Mechanical and Biomedical engineer by training, so most of the aspects of specialized hardware implementation are beyond me, and I have been looking into using pre-built boards and stuffing them into a novel case (which my training does let me specialize). So I ask you, fellow /.ers, "what do you think?" Am I a deranged loon, or does an idea like this have some merit (if not, I'll still want to build one for myself)? Can anyone offer me guidance for hardware and even some software? Anyone want to help build one?

    --Copyright, 2000 by WhyCause (just in case something pans out)

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