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He's still in high school. This is genuinely incredible stuff.
When I was in high school my crowning achievement was making a flash animation with some rudimentary AS2 scripts.
This... I mean, Christ, how many adults could do this? This genuinely top tier stuff.
He made the keyboard removable, usable wirelessly and fully mechanical. How does one possess these skills?
And the budget isn't insane either.
During dev he blew through 5 grand (high for an individual, but nothing compared to some startups)
For production, apparently building one of these yourself with the materials he's provided would cost $1500 -- again, really not that astronomical
This is really shining a lens on some companies charging $2000 for mid-tier laptop with half these features.
I'm... quite excited that we're entering a new era of hardware, which would put an end to these needless hardware companies
This is a highly impressive project, not just for a high school senior, but it should be stressed that this is nowhere near as powerful as a similarly priced modern laptop. This is a legendary school project, impressive enough to open doors to universities and lay the foundation for a successful career in the computer industry, but not really something you should try and build yourself if you're looking for a laptop in this price range.
A Geekbench 5 single-core score of 492 and a multi-core score of 2019 points are about comparable to a Macbook Pro from fifteen years ago. There is a small NPU present on the chip, which the old Macbook doesn't have, but if that's not important to your use case (which is very likely), then this device is not suitable for anything but the most basic tasks and will feel sluggish with any current software. There's a reason the video barely shows the device in use, because it just wouldn't be very pleasant to look at.
True, but I think that tech disparity (of say 15 years) between hobby-grade and consumer-grade hardware is closing, and that the disparity itself becomes less meaningful when you're still able to do most things with older hardware.
Hell, my smartphone is 8 years old and runs a light modern OS which still enables me to use modern apps with ease.
This kid showed what was possible with just 6 months and 5 thousand dollars with today's hobbyist chips.
I tremble with excitement when I think of what the next kid tomorrow might do.
1500$ because you don't have bulk parts, otherwise it could go down by a significant amount.
However, the 5k doesn't include all the hours of engineering, which costs a lot more than the hardware.
With that said, you are absolutely right that we get dog shit computers for the price. The amount of hours I've spent in my life reducing the cost for a board is insane. And bear in mind that this wasn't for high volume production neither where hardware cost reductions have a big impact.
I hope that this guy go on to do his own thing and doesn't get gobbled by the corporate machine (or become the corporate machine).
There are a lot of open source mechanical keyboards out there and with a bit of elbow grease, anyone that is a little bit tech savvy can figure out how to link all the information together and do something with that.
However, the thing that stands out to me is the integration of all the parts.
Integration between hardware and firmware is a bitch, and add to that the mechanical integration as well. This dude hopefully has a bright future ahed of him, because he certainly has the chops.
I think the difference here is that you can access so many parts through online shopping but also access a lot of knowledge.
Its more possible for a nerd to puzzle the things together. Im not saying its easy, but compared to back in the days, your Motivation would be low to even attempt such interesting routes, because back then everything was more expensive and hard to find.
Read the blog: https://www.byran.ee/posts/creation
Why si the blog's site so slow?
The page probably gets currently much more traffic than usual.
Reminds me a bit of the MNT Reform: https://shop.mntre.com/products/mnt-reform
Huh, it uses the same Rockchip SoC - but they are dishonestly claiming that it's "very fast". Not a good look.
Quote from blog
In many aspects, the Rockchip RK3588 is the fastest consumer-procurable chip on the market.
SystemOnChip I would guess in this case. It ain't no slouch.
This statement simply isn't correct. I can procure much faster chips as a consumer, even at the low end. This isn't the fastest single board computer either, not by a long shot. Like I said in another comment, it's only about as fast as a 2010 Macbook Pro. That's not "very fast" by any metric.
I'm using a Core i3-N305 based single-board computer (Odroid H4) for my Plex server and it performs easily twice as well at just 3W more - while being x86 and fully compatible with any relevant OS without having to modify boot loaders and drivers or worry about incompatibilities. Reducing its power draw to the 12W of this chip would still easily outperform the Rockchip and would allow for a smaller heat sink. Best of all, MSRP is nearly the same compared to the CM3588 with the RK3588 (admittedly without RAM). You'd have to do something to the rear IO to make it slim enough for use in a laptop project, but that's trivial on a project like this.
Here is the author's blog post: https://www.byran.ee/posts/creation/
Very interesting stuff. I'm waiting for the deep dive on the various issues with great interest.