Beagle MID
 

Surprised no one mentioned this here. (I didn't catch this article on the forum search, so unless the underlying device was discussed somewhere, I didn't find it)

Beagle Board based DIY MID. Yeah, it's ugly ... but if you focus on that, you're missing the point. Someone has made a MID with the Beagle Board. Upon which Mer could run...

It'd be interesting to see what DIY things could be done to refine it. There are various USB thumb keyboard products out there that could be cannibalized into a slide-out keyboard for it, things like that.

Personally, I'd go to 7" screen size, and try to make something like a 5-row keyboard version of the Samsung Q1 Ultra (which only has a 4 row keyboard), or a smaller version of the PepperPad. Not the pocketable device that many here want, but could be interesting.

Anyone else have thoughts about it?

(oh, and, it was also on engadget yesterday, as well)

Re: Beagle MID
 

only thing missing is someone taking it upon themselves to mass producing the parts needed beyond the beagleboard.

Re: Beagle MID
 

The Pandora guys might be interested :-)

Re: Beagle MID
 

Maybe I'm missing something but I suppose this one doesn't have battery, or even possibility to add one? It needs to be plugged into a charger all the time, thus not exactly very usable as a MID... :rolleyes:

Re: Beagle MID
 

from what i understand, the custom daughterboard handles the battery...

Re: Beagle MID
 

You're correct... I didn't look the detailed report before posting... :o

Re: Beagle MID
 

I think this is a great step forward. It just goes to show that with some creative thinking you can come up with great products that a lot of people want. Or ones that are truly useful. :D

Re: Beagle MID
 

To me, the most important part is the idea that mobile devices are becoming less and less of a "big players only" market. We don't have to wait for Nokia to deliver our next NIT. We don't have to fret over the end-of-life of the Zaurus or Clie or whatever. It's like open source, only for the devices themselves.

Re: Beagle MID
 

Next we need someone to figure out how to fit a beagleboard into an old N770 or N800.

Anyone....anyone?

Re: Beagle MID
 

Not gonna happen. :)

Re: Beagle MID
 

"If all else fails, hit it with a big hammer."
http://www.murphys-laws.com

Re: Beagle MID
 

Actually, it could. One of the big problems with motherboard is that once they're in the wild, anyone with enough technical knowhow can copy them.

For one, all the chips are marked, as are the circuitry extras such as diodes, caps, etc. And a computer can copy the wiring traces on the board pretty easily too. So once you have that information, aside from the actual rom info on the chips, you could simply build your own beagle board on a new wafer and make it work. :)

Re: Beagle MID
 

The question was, can you take a Beagle Board and stuff it in an N800 or 770 case, and the answer to that is no (the guy who built the prototype being discussed in this thread investigated that possibility).

The Beagle Board specs are open, and there are already several clones, so it'd be relatively simple to build your own. This isn't the proposal at hand, though, and the idea is pretty pointless. By the time you put together a board that'll fit into an N800 case, you might as well just buy an RX-51.

Re: Beagle MID
 

haha. Very true. I guess my point was that you could clone it if you wanted to. The question then is, how many people actually care enough to even bother.

Re: Beagle MID
 

actually...that wasn't the question I asked. And when you answered "no", I seriously think you forgot the utility of duct tape. :p

...I was joking people.

But since you mentioned it, I wonder if it would be more feasible to be trying to shove some version of the beagleboard into an RX-34 or trying to purchase a RX-51. I'd argue that you'd be much more likely to accomplish the first at this point in time.

Re: Beagle MID
 

Ya know, now that you mention it, I wonder whatever happened to that DIY internet tablet that Gizmodo, or whichever of the tech blogs it was, was building a while back.

Re: Beagle MID
 

that's the crunchpad, from techcrunch. engadget had some pictures of it today.

Re: Beagle MID
 

It's an internet tablet only in the sense that it's a tablet and does only Internet access ; otherwise it's big, Atom-powered and not that portable : larger than a MID, more a couch-surfing device or a mobile terminal to keep around at home.

The fun thing is that this vaporware device sparks a lot of argument along the lines that nowadays it is justified and worthwhile to have a 300$ device that does only one thing (Internet), even if it is a 12", Atom, Linux device.

Makes me smile when I think of the raging debates held here in the past about the functionality of the NITs being too limited... :-)

Re: Beagle MID
 

there will always be arguments, people are different that way.

the trick is to sort the blowhards from the legitimate ones...

Re: Beagle MID
 

It's actually a VIA Nano, but, yes, it's sucky x86.

Re: Beagle MID
 

The first protos used VIA, yes, but this week's latest news has them moving to Atoms :

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/10/m...l-wont-sell-u/

Re: Beagle MID
 

Ah, even worse (at least the Nano is a mildly interesting chip).

Re: Beagle MID
 

Quite. That other proto using the TI chip, the TouchBook, is a lot more intriguing.

Not sure whether either will actually make it to market though, and fairly sure they won't meet their current projected price if they do. Pandora-land all over again ?...

Re: Beagle MID
 

They're moving to Atom!? Bah. That's stupid. The Nano is ten times the chip that Atom is and has a much better performance to battery life ratio. Atom sucks for battery life, and will kill your battery in cold blooded murder.

Re: Beagle MID
 

I find this project interesting, only because if a mid is possible than a netbook would be possible.
It could be like the touchpad except customizable. any one thinks its possible?

Re: Beagle MID
 

Isn't the touchbook already customizeable enough?

Though, yeah, I want to see more homebrew MIDs and some homebrew tablets and netbooks.