Chasing the Holy Grail.. - Hackaday.io

HDDG San Francisco Meetup, December 7, 2017

Chasing the Holy Grail.. My Search for Modular Electronics! Asaad Kaadan [email protected]

Bricks for the Digital Age!

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Outline


• Why are we here, today? • Hexabitz concept • The journey so far • What’s different about Hexabitz? • State of The Module • Examples 2

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Bio


• BSc. In electronics eng. from Univ. of Aleppo, Syria. MSc. and PhD. In electrical and computer eng. from Univ. of Oklahoma, US. • Worked with agencies like NASA, DLR and ODOT on topics related to drones, optics, wireless and optical communications, IoT and intelligent transportation systems. • Senior embedded/robotics eng. with Freefly Systems in Seattle working on stabilized gimbals and other robotics platforms for the cinema industry. 3

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Value of modularity is undeniable!

Why are we here, today?

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These two gentlemen provided us “developers” with software and hardware tools to build our own computer and smartphone software and change the world! Software is so accessible because it’s modular are reusable. The value of giving hardware developers similar tools to make modular and reusable hardware is simply tremendous .

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Hexabitz Concept

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Electronic boards (modules) with specific sizes and shapes. When assembled together, side-by-side, they create larger contagious boards. Fully modular and symmetric and can be connected in any configuration. Each module has a single functionality by design. No connectors, wires or cables. Lower size, weight and cost and higher reliability and rigidity mimicking a custom made PCBAs

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The Journey So Far


 Toying with modularity ideas seven years ago. Bumping into a wall after few prototypes. Gave up temporarily :(  Optical Wireless com. for my PhD. Explored concepts for pixilated elements and low-SWaP optics for drones.  Started seeing modularity everywhere in nature and got some inspiration. Suddenly realized this is what I’ve been looking for :)  Revealed first prototypes to close friends four months ago!  This is FIRST ever public talk about the topic and I’m so excited! 6

The journey was not straightforward!

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What’s different about Hexabitz?


1. Modularity is a fundamental concept

A,B,C,D,E

Kaadan, Asaad “Modular Optical Wireless Elements”, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Oklahoma 2016

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Modularity has a specific mathematical solution. Taking inspiration from nature and math, Hexabitz builds modular electronics boards.

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2. Formfactor is important!

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Formfactor is important to move beyond prototyping into the real world. Default mode of integration in Hexabitz is horizonal to mimic the form and functionality of custom-made PCBAs.

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3. Virtualization – or front-end/back-end architecture • Handling different module types (analog/digital, voltage level, bandwidth, etc.) requires virtualization and standardization. • The front-end is the module part (hardware and software) responsible about its unique functionality. • The back-end is the module part handling all background activities including communication, addressing and other array-related functionality. 9

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4. P2P wins over bus architecture for the sake of modularity and scalability • Fully distributed and decentralized, wired-mesh network. • High-speed 2-pin serial com. (UARTs) coupled with DMA magic.

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All electrical buses have topology and capacity limitation destroying modularity and symmetricity. We took some ideas from wireless sensor networks world. Tailgating serial ports and DMAs enable broadcasting, multicasting, routing, synchronization and neighbor discovery.

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4. P2P wins over bus-architecture for the sake of modularity and scalability

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37 modules connected with ease in a small formfactor.

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5. We’re already in the age of dust computing! • True parallel-execution and multi-tasking is a killer even if individual MCUs are small. • Think about it as a present-day form of futuristic smart PCBs! Logic blobs embedded in the PCB itself. • Current embedded code development solutions suck. Period. 12

The smart mother-board / dump daughter-board scheme which we invented back in 70s when computing was expensive is outdated.. We can, and should, put computing everywhere. Every configurable Hexabitz module has it own Cortex-M0 MCU (STM32F0). Bottleneck in current embedded code development tools designed for singleprocessor systems. We should design in a holistic approach.

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oops.. Is it the wrong audience?


• Lecturing about ditching custom hardware design for a group of hardcore hardware designers is not smart.. • I’m here because you’re the ones who can make it happen!

14 This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

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Preemptive answer:


• Modular electronics… Really?!! • Huge difference between user-facing and backend electronics. • Sorry.. No modular smart phones and smart watches!

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Thinking about Google’s Ara and similar projects? User-facing electronics (smartphones, smartwatches) must be extremely streamlined for weight, size, cost etc. and thus can NOT be modularized. Modularity adds overhead by definition. Backend electronics (washing machines, cars, elevators, roombas, etc.) are ripe for modularization! Modularity adds customization and reuse and formfactor is not extremely constrained.

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State of The Module


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Hardware roadmap! Green: prototyped and tested Blue: designed and being tested Grey: the future!

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State of The Module


Key BOS features:  Array exploration  CLI  Messaging  DMA streams  Remote Read/Write  Emulated EEPROM  Buttons/Switches  Logging  RTC & Calendar  … 17

Embedded software.

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Examples

Youtube link: https://youtu.be/DpY2Al28Cb8 Bricks for the Digital Age!

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Simple example: 12 x AC solid state relay modules

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Final words..


• Would you like to try the future :) Shoot me an email. [email protected] • What’s next for Hexabitz? • Thank you!

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