external add-ons?

[Atlasz]

Attila Csipa wrote:
> On Thursday 11 January 2007 02:45, Sean Moss-Pultz wrote:
>   
>>> wifi-and-keyboard dock-like item.  I would imagine that these peripherals
>>> would be almost as popular as the phone, as they would extend its
>>> functionality quite a lot.
>>>       
>> We'll be making a few...but since we're using standard USB there should be
>> some interesting possibilities.
>>     
>
> Perhaps it would be interesting to have a sort of breakout box, with 
> audio/video connectors, builtin powered USB, maybe wifi, serial ports, card 
> reader, JTAG, etc (not saying that it should necessarily have all these at 
> the same time, just writing ideas here). It would be significantly less bulky 
> and likely cheaper than assembling these components 'by hand'. As somebody 
> mentioned, it could be in a form of docking station. Or maybe the kits you're 
> talking about already go in this direction ? :)
>   
I don't think that it's so expensive. Those chips cost almost nothing:
- A good usb/rs232 converter for ~5eur with tax.
- You can rip out the internals of a simple SD card reader for ~6,5eur
or even less.
- The wifi stuff you can yse unmodified. It's on you, which one you buy...
- Some MCU for 2-10eur where you can have SPI or whatever other fancy
stuff you want
Then get a hub chip, make some PCB and nice box for it... It can be done
and the components are not expensive. But it's not for everybody and
takes some time to make it working and look somehow at the same time.
Well, it there will be something like that on the market, I'll buy one.
If not, I'll make one and maybe publish some docs/howtos..
Attila

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