So cool. Anyone criticizing the real utility of one of these (e.g. calling it a toy) is not thinking long term. Over time a single unit could be repurposed for any number of distinct and serious usecases (home automation being the most natural fit, but many others), and this and its software are important steps toward a more robust and useful devices and less waste. Minitirized, waterproofed, secure and many more modules and "apps", standardized and mass produced. This is huge. Keep going!
A very cool toy, a very sophisticated toy, but a toy nonetheless. There were in the past, and I think still today, electronic sets that let you click together modules with magnets to make circuits. It was a very handsy, easy way to play with electronics. But, in the end, that's what it was -- play and exploration.
The beauty of the concept is the easy interchange of the parts and such, and that's it downfall when you desire to render something down in to a "production" item. And by production, I mean something you're going to handle with any frequency. The ease of composability is counter to the hardening necessity for everyday use.
I supposed you could glue the parts together, but by that time whatever you made is now made of rather expensive components. Or they could offer an alternate mechanic to "realize" systems built for the longer term.
Until then, it's a wonderful toy. And that's not a bad thing.
To me it feels more like, being the thing for home computing/automation, that the PC was for computing in general. A PC has not a clear single purpose, but is very modular and you have to spent some time to adjust it to your use-cases.
Similarly, the pockit has not that single use-case and you have to spent some time to adjust it to your use-case. However, especially with the Pockit-to-Pockit communication you can build so many cool things.
Maybe a PC is just a toy too, but IMHO it depends on how you use it.
>And by production, I mean something you're going to handle with any frequency. The ease of composability is counter to the hardening necessity for everyday use.
Let's remind ourselves that this is a highly advanced proof-of-concept. If the issue really is simply the integrity of materials, that can be improved, and should not be considered a long-term limitation of the underlying technology: which is frankly too sophisticated from a design and software perspective to be set aside as a toy.
After all, the difference between a "Fisher-Price" drill and a "De-Walt" drill is the integrity of materials and underlying software. It is arguably a toy aesthetically, but (in accord with your argument) it is a few carbon fiber pieces away from becoming a useful generalized personal computing tool, the same way a drill is a useful generalized power tool.
The problem with this idea is that it assumes we have to make trade offs: case in point, remember pre-smartphone? I had a PDA which didn't have a camera, didn't have wifi - just a hardwired connection.
Now I have sitting next to me a smartphone which has 5 cameras, GPS, wifi, bluetooth, NFC, 128GB of storage and 4G.
Basically on a mass production scale it is always going to be cheaper just to put every feature in one device and build a billion of them.
EDIT: Which is not to say the system doesn't have some possibilities - at the right price point I'd replace every light switch in my house with a plate of this, and have them remotely control relays so I could remap everything. For task-specific physical applications you might want to remap/customize to taste, there's a lot of potential.
> Basically on a mass production scale it is always going to be cheaper just to put every feature in one device and build a billion of them.
When it comes to physical widgets, there's a limit to how many you could practically have on one device. I think the real value here is that it could be open to market to allow a real diversity of physical augments allowing people to improvise devices that are unlikely to be manufactured into a single form factor, but might be perfect for their niche use case.
Why can't the widgets connect to a Raspberry Pi using USB ports? Using plain old USB ports as a connector is a downgrade in terms of aesthetics, but it's a massive upgrade in terms of reusability and versatility. All of a sudden, you can connect your sensors to laptops, PCs and Raspberry Pis alike. You can already get a webcam on eBay for $6. You could design any sensor and actuator to have a USB interface.
Don't get me wrong, like I said, USB devices would look less cute and tidy than the Pockit, and the Pockit is a great achievement, but USB devices truly are more simple and versatile.
Low friction. Lowering the entry point at which someone can fashion a device to their needs means you have a much bigger market. Approachability is exactly why iPhone succeeded where stylus driven PDAs failed. Something like Pockit makes custom hardware more approachable to a wider audience. Maybe with Pockit, R-Pi might even have its iPhone-like killer app to take it from a niche/techinical crowd into regular consumers hands?
The aesthetics is an important factor. I'd pay far more for something like Pockit than for a bunch of components hanging off a Pi with no coherent design.
You can use a 3D printer to print a case that fits all the components and makes it look however you want. You're also not restricted to having your USB devices be right next to the Pi's board. It's just more flexible.
Another thing to consider is that the connection to the blocks on the Pockit might be fragile. If you push that button/joystick too hard or bump something, it could easily disconnect.
I could. That requires me to have a 3D printer and be willing to invest the time in figuring out how to make a case. I don't, and I'm not.
Of course it's going to be more flexible, just like it's more flexible to design your own device from scratch. But I'd trade that flexibility away for more time to do things I actually want to be doing any time, and I'd be willing to pay quite a bit of money to get that kind of flexibility without having to spend as much time on it.
I just don't think the tradeoff is worth it. The Pockit will have a relatively small community, and you may be forced to use their software packages to develop for it. It may not be very robust or very versatile. Those are all real downsides, in addition to the higher cost.
What I like about platforms like this is the possibilities they open up for major players to experiment with weird form factors again. Basically the cost of software development, mostly.
I loved some of the insane designs prior to manufacturers deciding that the iPhone form factor was the way forward.
That said, Moto/Google did try something like this once, "Project Ara" which never really went much of anywhere. It led to a few modules being released for the Moto G and that was it. (IIRC)
> have them remotely control relays so I could remap everything
No need for relays – you can replace the bulbs with smart lightbulbs that can be controlled via Zigbee. Ikea smart bulbs are high quality and good value.
ZigBee is good, but can grt annoying when you have a lot of them, and you have to think about how to make the mesh resilient (my house is a nightmare for signal propagation...). It takes frustratingly long for all of mine to switch off. A Lightwave bridge would be a way to solve that without relays, though. They provide what you need to turn the lights on and off, and you could use Pockit for larger control panels.
I kind of would like to call this a toy, but by that I mean -- wow, on top of any other application he can think of, this would be an amazing educational toy for a kid who isn't quite ready for Arduino or Raspberry Pi (or who might never be, not everybody interested in STEM wants to do circuits).
