Tired of The Man holding you down on the tablet front with his oppressive App Stores, his tyrannical carrier constraints, and other outrageous insults to your civil liberties? Well now you can break free of this stranglehold, thanks to a company called Liquidware and its open source, DIY tablet starter kit. The premise is simple:
Liquidware provides a touchscreen OLED display (4.3-inch, 480 x 272, resistive touch), the BeagleBoard guts (a single-board computer driven by a 720MHz ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3530 CPU, with 2GB of NAND and an SD card slot), and the BeagleJuice battery module, along with an SD card pre-loaded with Angstrom Linux. You put all the pieces together and then just basically go nuts, designing your own application marketplace, infrastructure for direct-to-consumer video and audio sales, and a revolutionary and magical user interface that blurs the lines between waking life and a hallucinatory dream-state where anything is possible, and the only limitation is yourself. Check the Moscone Center's booking information below to see scheduling availability for your developer conference, and hit the source link to offer up your $393.61 to Liquidware.
posted June 18th 2010 2:29PM
@Ducman69 Did Josh insinuate that?
@Dshark Perhaps I misread it by the iPad mention in the title and the article.
@Dshark
He did insinuate that people who are opposed to Apple's policies are some how strange, which is more than a little insulting.
@MioTheGreat
For people with degrees in electrical engineering? Hell no lol... I barely have a two year college degree and I would love to get my hands on this and see what I could do by added a different screen and finding the casing.
This is for people who are tech minded... Its like playing with advanced legos... Anyone who can build a basic computer can do this so long as they arent afraid of it not looking like a cookie cutter assembly
I LOVE the idea, but then reality hits and you see that this thing has quite the underwhelming specs.... mainly that screen size and rez.
This is where the beauty of mass production comes into play - Something like an EVO, or upcoming Droid X and other cell phones have more features, better hardware and are capable of doing a hell of a lot more things, for not much more money.... after all, how much do one of these unlocked phone go for... ~$500 or so.
and for Only $100 More You could have an iPad with a Larger screen.. and Not need to Build it Yourself
@ThinkpaxX200s It's all about that man though, man. The Man.
Hmm.. i love the idea of this here... but I don't know if it's been executed properly.
For now, I'm just gonna hold out for a 2nd generation iPad, however... I will stay tuned here, because I like where this is going...
Thumbs up for innovation.
I C WUT U DID THAR Engadget. Very clever: very clever.
speaking of a hallucinatory dream-state where anything is possible.... http://zombo.com
Why wouldn't someone just lock themselves into a contract for 2 years and get a huge screen phone?
If it was a DIY tablet with a 9 or 10" screen, that makes more sense. But at 4.3", you could get an EVO, HD2, or upcoming Droid X - and if you're on AT&T you could just get an iPad (unless it's the money issues you're worrying about).
Sounds cool, but at 4.3" at that resolution (plus it's resistive) kinda sucks.
@pekosROB
Google is your friend.. Shop around for different kits... Shop for for a different screen size and type if you want. You can have a lot of fun building one of these and making it your own if you want to put in the effort.
4.3in? or you could by an Evo
Fail...
ummm.... NO
I'd sooner buy this than an iPhone or an iPad. Not quite one to worship at the Altar of Jobs, myself.
@microlith
Then go buy one. Or do you just like to post that you'd rather buy anything besides an iPad and not actually be in the market to buy anything at all?
@jmaine
Actually I was mocking the ridiculous first sentence that implies people who don't like locked down devices are somehow "hippies" or whatnot.
And I have plans to get a Beagleboard, this combo kit is quite tempting, especially since it would let my N900 stay unmodified for the duration.
Who needs Foxconn assembly line workers when I can make one myself,.. same as I did for my PC. Nice.
Joshua, this is a work of unadulterated genius.
I've stolen it to make me look cool. Cheers.
"You put all the pieces together and then just basically go nuts, designing your own application marketplace, infrastructure for direct-to-consumer video and audio sales, and a revolutionary and magical user interface that blurs the lines between waking life and a hallucinatory dream-state where anything is possible, and the only limitation is yourself."
Awesome.
DtD
This article needs to go in the Engadget style guide as the epitome of engadgetedness. The opening sentence and the droolingly hot one that begins with, "you put all the pieces together" are pure hyperbolic nirvana. Can't teach that jedi master ninja laser focused creative chaos; either you has or not has. Joshua Topolsky _has_.
a genuinely funny piece, well done
Thanks for this post. This looks like some serious fun. It's nice to see a company that is building hardware for radicals to prototype with. It would be cool to have an upgrade option for a POWERVR SGX Series5XT / Cortex A8 soc. In a dream world Pixel Qi would work with these guys.
Anyways - Thanks.
But the iPad isn't a tablet computer...
Yeah, I went there.
This has got to be a joke - 4.3in? That's ridiculous for a tablet even if it is OLED.
Finally Beagle found its use. Unfortunately, it's overpriced.