We manged to get a booth at this years FOSDEM and went there with Turris and Bird. It was a blast, but let’s talk about that some other time. I want to share my thoughts about one really interesting project I re-discovered there.
What is it?
Yes, as the title suggest, I’m going to write about Mecha Comet. For those who don’t know, let’s introduce the project. It is open source Linux device, let’s call it PDA. It has a touch display, it is battery powered, it is not a phone and it runs Linux. Not Android, but a real GNU/Linux. In this case Fedora. This by itself makes the device interesting. But there is yet another cool feature. Extensibility.
The first thing you would notice are swappable front modules. You can snap on qwerty keyboard! That was the first thing that got me interested even from afar. Before I even learned about open-source background of the device. But the qwerty keyboard is not the only thing you can snap on. There are other modules. Kind of gamepad if you want to use the device as a travel game console. And there is a stripboard module the lets you create your own extensions. Because there is bunch of buses connected to magnetically attached front modules. There is USB host, I2C, UART, SPI, some AD converter pins, some GPIOs and of course power. Reminds me of the first Jolla with it’s other half. Just much more usable, as you have more pins and thus more buses and you have the universal one as well 😉
But that is not the end to the extensibility. The device has mini HDMI port, so you can connect an external display. It also has two USB-C ports that are USB host. And one USB-C that is OTG, supports PD in, but also PD out. That sounds great and you probably can already think about multiple use-cases. Like you travel computer. Use it on-the-go with qwerty keyboard and attach docking station at home/work. But there is more. Inside, there is M.2 2242 slot with B key (modem). So you can extend it with modem that wouldn’t stick out. Or you can use adapter to E key and put 2230 NVME inside. There is also uSD card slot if you are fine with slower storage and want to keep you M.2 free. Doesn’t it sound cool?
It is on Kickstarter right now and I already ordered mine. One of the options that you get to choose is whether yours will be i.MX8 based and you will get it sooner, or if it will be i.MX95 based and you will get it later. Although I can’t wait to get mine, I opted for i.MX95.
Story/history?
There was a Mecha meetup in Brussels during FOSDEM and I had a chance to participate. It was organized by Mecha and they had various prototypes with them. And they also took them apart, so we got to see the insides 😀 But they also told us the story behind Mecha Comet.
What is the story? They used to do kind of consulting. They were solving problems. And they were deploying SBCs. Namely Raspberry Pi. But there was a problem. It’s easy to hack up something with those SBCs, but if it has to go to production, it is a different story. You need a case. Most of the time you need a display to show that it’s working. Having battery backup and some sensors is also really helpful. Now put that into one nice box and make sure that you can still extend it if you need something more. And as they were gradually designing such a device, that would help them with their job, they realized that it could be actually much more than just theirs goto hardware platform. It could help everyone! And that is how Mecha Comet was born!
This is how I remember the story. The original story might have been slightly different, but I hope that I got the guts of it right. I really enjoyed the evening. I remember their passion for open-source, discussing the UX (they develop not only the hardware, but software as well). We talked about ups and downs of developing hardware.
And we saw some of the prototypes. I admit, I really liked one of the first prototypes when I saw it online on some CES pictures. It had RJ45 and USB-A connectors. How cool was that. RJ45 was added there actually to help with the speed of development at some point 😀 But over the time, as production was getting closer, the design won and to make it thinner and smaller, RJ45 had to go. And USB-A were replaced with USB-C.
Now it is less geeky, but it is still a great device. And a lot of thoughts went into repairability and making sure it will last.
My use case?
I’ll be honest. I want it, but don’t have a clear use case that I need it for. It was one of the options I was considering when I was selecting a new phone. As I wrote previously, I already tried a setup with smart device and dumb phone and it was a surprisingly pleasant experience.
With the original design, I was thinking about using it as a terminal on the go. Being able to connect to routers or servers whenever I needed. To go to DC to fix my server with just Comet in my pocket. To test our routers without need to wake up a notebook and search for USB-C to RJ45 adapter. Well, I can still do all that. I just need to still carry some adapters around.
But maybe I’ll get back to gaming. The gamepad extension looks nice and there are great games that I don’t have the time to try, but maybe I’ll find some time while commuting 🤷
No matter the use case, I’m sure it will be awesome. And although it comes with Fedora out of the box, I’ll probably end up with mine running openSUSE.
What about you?
If you are as excited as I am, there is less than two weeks to get yours on Kickstarter, so don’t wait up 😉