Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Printable Version +- HP Forums (https://archived.hpcalc.org/museumforum) +-- Forum: HP Museum Forums (https://archived.hpcalc.org/museumforum/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Old HP Forum Archives (https://archived.hpcalc.org/museumforum/forum-2.html) +--- Thread: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? (/thread-196069.html) |
Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - snaggs - 09-18-2011 I had a grandeouse idea the other night. Theres at least a thousand people who would buy a calculator built like they used to. Maybe the answer is just that, like they used to.. Amongst the people here we have programmers, electrical engineers and Im sure we have some senior engineers who long ago became project managers. Given the large catalogues of pre-produced IC's etc, is it not possible we could put together a "built like a battleship" piece of hardware, that coders like myself, and Paul etc could build on. Start with a well thought out design which is extendable, and dont try everything all at once. First release build something with 34C feature list. It might only have trig functions etc, but each one lovelingy slaved over in 128bit precision (i learnt these algorithms in scientific computing 15 years ago, theyre in books). Then, just grow it over time. There is still a company that bought the rights to IBM's old clickety clack keyboards, surely their are other companies that can ma,e nice buttons. There may even be an off-the-shelf generic peice of hardware thats used for remote data collection that fits the bill amd can be hijacked. I know the wp34s software is good, but stickers on a OK keyboard dont do it justice. The hard bit is the nice package + keys, then the coders cam take over. The nut processor was reerse engineered and remade by one guy, who thought that would be possible? Im not sure its as mad as it sounds, its how HP started, two guys in a shed, expecting only low volume. Daniel.
Given the crazy prices on TAS, and the dema
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Massimo Gnerucci (Italy) - 09-18-2011 Wow! That's a novelty here... Edited: 18 Sept 2011, 10:17 a.m.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - bill platt - 09-18-2011 I recognize the Hugh of this proposal.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Mike Morrow - 09-18-2011 Is English your first language?
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - David Ramsey - 09-18-2011 Yeah, too bad the project appears to be dead (project home page gives a 404)...
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Mark Hardman - 09-18-2011 That's not bad English—it’s a bad pun!
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Massimo Gnerucci (Italy) - 09-18-2011
Quote: Yeah, old news...
I'll leave the explanation of failure to someone more involved than me in this project. Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Michael Kussmaul - 09-18-2011 You could start a project at www.kickstarter.com - but for that you already need to formalize your project a bit and put a price-tag there. I guess the "platform" needs to be quite open, as key-to-function mapping might change, so perhaps using exchangeable keys. Or allow to place plastic labels inside crystal-clear keys? I also would like to see a calculator with an e-ink or other hires display (aka retina-display on the iPhone), it does not need to be large, but those low-res LCD dot-matrix displays as found on the HPs are quite outdated technology. E.g. one could then place three lines (smaller-font) or two lines (larger-font) text on them, etc.
I would buy such an calculator instantly :-)
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - nick lidakis - 09-18-2011 I really like this idea. Someone mentioned E-ink displays. One can order, from E-Ink, development samples here: http://store.nexternal.com/eink/8-x-7-p19.aspx
8x7 segmented display: Nice thing is, power is only used when refreshing the E-Ink.
If this really gets going I'm willing to donate for development. Edited: 18 Sept 2011, 1:28 p.m.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - uhmgawa - 09-18-2011 Quote: Welcome to the club.
Quote:
Which is a woefully insufficient number to merely break even
Quote:
You perhaps are missing the point.
The above issues have substantial up-front tooling/engineering
If you've found some other way to recover the above up-front Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Walter B - 09-18-2011 Well, OpenRPN is dead for long. Great ideas, nice texts, promising drawings, little action hardware-wise, poor coordination. IIRC there were no more than some five regular project team members, but IMHO it eventually died due to suboptimal project and team management. Though the originator of OpenRPN was able to write English correctly, at least. Good luck!
"Those who don't learn from history are condemmned to experience it once more" (unknown author).
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Howard Owen - 09-18-2011
Quote:George Santayana Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Hugh Evans - 09-18-2011 Guilty as charged, OpenRPN was my crazy idea and there were many reasons why it never panned out. The physical manufacturing challenges are becoming much more manageable... In fact, I even have ready access to a couple of CNC machines. Team size never reached the critical mass needed to reach fruition. I also simply didn't have enough free time to manage anywhere near my potential. In my mind, WP-34s has fulfilled many of the ideals (in a different embodiment) of the OpenRPN project. Both Walter and Pauli were instrumental to that project, and I'm not at all surprised that when opportunity presented itself they accomplished what they have. I do have the original site fully backed up, and will talk to one of my cohorts to see if we can at least put it back up for reference. If I ever choose to resurrect OpenRPN, it would be more hardware centered. Every time I found someone to help with electronic design, it fizzled out quickly for one reason of another. I order to avoid production and tooling costs, imagine the potential held by giving a machine such as the 30b a new set of guts. Even a modern 12C with rebuilt electronics could be a lot of fun. One more thing: bringing back a project like OpenRPN can't come through a simple announcement. Something tangible must accompany the announcement. I think a working circuit board/development kit would be about right. I'm at a good point in my life again to consider such an endeavor. But it would, in my eyes be more of an extension of WP-34s. There are ways existing products can be improved, and we have reasonable hardware to work with as a starting point.
This should be more than sufficient to start some flaming, but if anyone is interested in doing something crazy, let me know.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Hugh Evans - 09-18-2011 Feel free to contact me if you want to talk about such madness, because I've been down this road. If you are interested in resurrecting OpenRPN, I'm not opposed to it in any way. The last crazy thought I had on the topic was to build a case that would enclose an iPhone and use physical keys with snapdomes that could interact with the touchscreen. This is one of this less crazy concepts I have. Rapid prototyping is a much more viable option than 6 or 7 years ago, and I have access to CNC equipment.
Shoot me an email and let's talk.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Garth Wilson - 09-18-2011 1. Off-the-shelf LCDs are in the $5-$10 range even in singles. Custom LCDs, when we looked into them in the late 1980's, were a couple thousand dollars to tool up for. 2. We just this year looked into a custom enclosure requiring molds to be made, with a lot of complex curves-- not a simple design at all. The quote was $50,000. 3. Along with #1 above, we looked into a set of double-shot keys similar to the HP-71's. NRE was a few thousand-- I don't remember exactly, but it was under $5,000. 4. We made a lexan panel with dead-front annunciators in 1994 and the tool-up was $2,000. All together, it's well under $100,000, and the custom case takes most of it. For low volumes, if you can be satisfied with an off-the-shelf case from a company like PacTec and get them custom machined, the per-piece cost will be much higher but there will be almost no up-front cost.
I've designed and brought many electronic products to market myself (but not calculators). See my post at message #10 at http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/hpmuseum/archv015.cgi?read=79592 to get an idea of how cheaply it can be done. If the calc is developed by a bunch of enthusiasts who don't expect to get paid, it gets even less expensive. This is not that difficult! It seemed pretty clear to me that the reason OpenRPN failed was because of all the nay-saying and discouragement that came from those who insisted that it couldn't be done and kept expecting prototypes to come out as quickly as some of the consumer-market products have to like cell phones and iPods which last only a short time and are out of date before they're introduced if you don't do a blitzkrieg development schedule. This is different. We're hanging onto favorites that are decades old. What's the problem if it takes two or three years for an OpenRPN calc to go from concept to first hardware? If someone takes up the project again, let's give them our encouragement (and help if we have something to offer). Those taking up the project will probably be working on it in the evenings and when they don't have to mow the lawn. It's not their livelihood, so we can't complain.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Lyuka - 09-18-2011 What Santayana actually said is
Quote: It's slight difference, though, last few digits/words are important to us :-)
e.g. in RADian mode, It's a trigonometric bug not related to the range deduction.
Lyuka Edited: 18 Sept 2011, 5:38 p.m.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Howard Owen - 09-18-2011 There are actually multiple versions of that aphorism floating around, as I discovered today preparing the above post. The quote comes from "The Life of Reason," Volume I, Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - uhmgawa - 09-18-2011 Quote:
You can certainly find lcd modules in surplus for that
The last point may be workable as the lower
In any case if substantial resources are expended
Quote:
I wouldn't assume too much from that data point given the
I sent a quote request out last week for custom/semi-custom
Quote: Was the 55K up-front simply NRE or was some production volume included in this cost?
Quote:
I investigated UV resistant polyester recently and IIRC the tooling
Quote:
I wasn't even considering use of such utility enclosures.
CNC milling may also be feasible for limited production
Quote:
To be clear, I'm certainly not discouraging the effort.
But if we're looking at a design which can compare functionally
I'm not saying it can't be done, but rather substantial
[edited for clarity] Edited: 19 Sept 2011, 8:54 a.m. after one or more responses were posted
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Marcus von Cube, Germany - 09-19-2011 OpenRPN will get a mention in my WP 34S history presentation at HHC. It was a pity not to have had access to the original designs when I prepared it but Walter has helped me out with one of the proposed keyboards. In fact, WP 34S has inherited some code from OpenRPN.
I would love to see and help with another project in line with WP 34S.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Paul Dale - 09-19-2011 Quote: More code than the presentation says :-)
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - DaveJ - 09-19-2011 Quote:
Sorry, I don't see how changing the electronics in the existing already open products would be of much benefit? (I'm not up on the 30B repurposing project, so I'm only guessing they have plenty of resources, but it's likely I'm wrong...)
Quote: Sorry, but I have to disagree strongly on that one, a prototype board would not accomplish or prove anything. A PCB with a processor, a bunch of switches, and a display hacked up to work is bordering on trivial. It is in fact a common practical project in microcontroller classes. I really think people want/need to see attempts at actual housings and keyswitch designs. I know that's the "hard part", but that's kinda the point...
Dave.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - DaveJ - 09-19-2011 Quote:
Try the Sharp Memory LCD's:
Quote: They do, but if you are clever about the design and physical implementation, the hurdles can be quite small indeed. My uWatch Mk2 calc watch project I'm working on looks to be do-able for under $1000 in development costs, complete with fully custom case. And for that price you get half a dozen of them as a bonus.
Dave.
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - uhmgawa - 09-19-2011 Quote:
None of their standard product offerings appear to be of
Note AFAICT there appears to be a mix of reflective and
Re: Can we make'em like Bill and David? An open RPN? - Paul Dale - 09-19-2011 Quote: Yes and no.
The most pressing limitation is the display. The next is the shortage of non-volatile RAM.
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