Super impressive, and awesome to see that you were able to use Framework Laptop hinges. Let me know if you need more. We have a ton of remaining 3.3kg ones!
Hey Nirav, super super honored that you saw this! I've always looked up to you guys for inspiration and guidance. Thank you for the offer! Although I probably won't be mass-producing open-source laptops like you (i have a framework 16!), I would love to meet you. Would that be possible?
This is the best of the internet. Connection based on interest, appreciation, and mutual respect facilitated with a high degree of good faith. Hope you folks connect fruitfully, and also appreciate that you kept some of the "sent an email" and "thanks" public. Getting to see that this happened has given me a real boost.
Byran... This is seriously impressive. You are very blessed to be so capable in so many disciplines -- design, hardware, software, storytelling. It is a massively complicated undertaking, and you executed in style. Nice work, and remember to use your formidable powers for good!
Thank you so much! For certain; goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble and knowledge without goodness is dangerous.
It was a truly difficult undertaking! I was ready to quit at so many moments, but I always think about the final mission of sharing this little piece of knowledge with the world. :)
My hat is off to you, good sir. Way off. This is an unbelievable accomplishment, doubly so given that you're still in high school (!!!), triple-so given the time you did it in, quadruple-so given that you did it all yourself, etc etc etc.
I was reading this over thinking "this guy should be working for Framework". It would be a total win-win.
If you do decide to look at framework, I can help you get your resume in front of a high level decision maker. I agree you'd make a great fit with framework.
Really amazing and impressive work. And also an excellent resource for future explorers.
One thing I didn't see mentioned in the video is the total cost of all the materials to complete one laptop not including all the experimentation cost. I'd be super curious about that.
Best 5 grand they ever spent. Byran your cross discipline knowledge is amazing. Well done!
Quick question, are your parents in technology and science or are you self taught? Always like to hear about the backgrounds that create the environment for something like this to come together.
I've met amazing people throughout my journey thus far, but no. I have no background in engineering, but my parents have always been supportive. I started falling in love with it in 9th grade with keyboards + ZMK!
Congratulations! From someone who does mixed electronics+mechanical design: this is hard. There are moments of desperation where you realize that everything depends on everything else, and there is no way to achieve all of your design goals. You then have to realize that engineering is all about compromises, and move on, compromising — but this is very difficult. It's easy to get bogged down in details and dependencies and never finish the project.
It's very impressive work and it makes me so happy to see real hacker news on HN. This is real hacking.
Thank you so, so much! You phrased it so well. The moments of desperation really hit you hard. I have uncountably many loose ends, but oh well, bad engineering :(. Honored that HN thinks I'm a hacker :)
This is really one of the best things I've seen on HN in 15 years.
The mixed presentation of plug and play components interspersed with EE problems and solution really helped make it more accessible. It also got me excited about the possibilities and made me realize that we we might already approaching another open architecture DIY boom.
I got the sense that this is a side project, but I'm sure many have noticed that it could be a legit framework-level company. Someone already mentioned the recruiters, but also you're sure to have investors knocking. Whatever you do, please keep having fun and sharing it.
Thanks! I've been considering it (or enough detailed instructions to build one) since starting the project. I need to get a working model first though ;)
We discussed wave functions, probability, fermions/bosons, did calculations for particle in a box, the Schrödinger model, and went just up to deriving the hydrogen atom. Nothing super fancy, but it was one heck of an experience!
As I've pointed out before, his concession at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35350 was both witty and graceful. It's great that he's still active here! and anyway he's done a ton of things that are a lot more important than that bit.
It's really interesting, in the UK I don't think we did (but I later studied Physics at university) - but we did have Further Maths which covered more advanced mathematics.
Also your project is incredible btw, maybe look into robotics too.
I went to a peer school that had at least a couple of math teachers with PhDs—my friends at the time who took their classes were, if I recall, nationally competitive in math olympiads.
All I did was provide him the space and time to work on the project ... his parents funded the entire project, but will get reimbursement soon. It's the great minds, and the desire to have meaningful projects that make Exeter such an awesome place. Byran is one of a kind!!!!
Some public schools in very wealthy counties will teach some basic quantum mechanics in honors/AP classes, too. All you have to do is acquire parents that can afford the shittiest neighborhood in those districts!
They did in mine in the Netherlands. Also electronics and programming (this was a long time ago so it was all pretty new); it was a special class to prep for university more than the regular curriculum does, but it was a public school and not even a very good one; just a few really good and switched on teachers (physics, math and chem).
The community college option is available to anyone who’s willing to spend a couple evenings a week taking classes, so I don’t think it’s really that out of reach. Most countries don’t offer their high school students any opportunity to study material that advanced.
Your first 3 options are mostly “be born to the right parents”. So I couldn’t tell if your remark of “it’s more possible than you’d think!” Was serious or not.
Hell I went to a really selective school. But even then, within that the top students, whom I was not one, got to do some extra stuff that would have greatly interested me and I would have been able to do. But my grades in humanities weren’t good enough to be one of the best.
In the high school in Poland I attended, I lucked into being in a class with a university TA assigned as physics teacher, and he did manage to sneak in QM - more-less the same stuff as 'Hello9999901 listed in their reply.
(He also taught us differentiation in the first semester, and basic integrals in the second, because as he said, you cannot learn physics properly without those tools. This annoyed the heck out of our math teacher; she ended up deciding that, if we're learning this anyway, we might as well learn it properly - and gave us a much heavier intro to calculus in the last months of the last year.)
The USA has some great schools. OP goes to Phillips Exeter Academy, which is an exclusive private school that ranks among the best high schools in the country.
For those that missed it, this Engineer is in _high school_.
Byran, I have been a professional engineer longer than you have been alive, I can tell you right now that I have met very, very few people that would have the motivation, skill and sticktoitivness to pull this off.
Don't underestimate the amount of knowledge you don't have to perfect things. I remember building scheduling software in PHP in high school, because I just fixed problem after problem, and I was not limited by any form of knowledge. If I'd have to do it again, I'd be perfecting the architecture, refactoring everything every other week...
There’s a real double-edged sword to this whole “becoming a ‘better’ software engineer” thing. I remember just hacking stuff together when I was younger with not a care for whether I was doing it right or not. I just wanted to make it work.
I miss that feeling. It doesn’t come around as often now, but I still feel like I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on years of online discourse about right and wrong ways to do things, and just… do them.
> I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on
While at it: the fastest way to move is free fall. If you fall at will and from a reasonable height, it's called a jump, and indeed gets you there fast. Otherwise it's called a crash, and it usually results in your limping the rest of the way.
So the approach of just hacking things together works great for small things, and the worse, the larger the scale grows.
The laptop in question, for instance, was definitely not just hacked together without any planning, even though the project seems to have fortunately escaped analysis paralysis.
tbqh, I vividly remember rolling my eyes in high school when older people would say: "don't squander the free time you have; you'll wish you had it back someday..." and while I don't outright regret doing kid stuff and squandering the free time in high school as kids do, some days those sentiments ring out more true than others; today being one of them after seeing this video.
Yeah I mean I wasn't doing things like this. I was constantly frustrated because I didn't have any resources to achieve the things I wanted. Didn't even have a half decent computer. I had some janky celeron thing that barely functioned and I couldn't even buy books about subjects I wanted to learn. To think the things I could have done if I was a well off kid.
Yeah, but TBF.. in my early teens, my "internet" consisted of a 300 baud modem hooked up to an Atari 800xl (my 2nd computer - the TI 99-4/A was "obsolete"), my "manual" was a 6502 assembly book I borrowed and typed out and a binder full of photocopied notes called "De Re Atari" that I picked up at a garage sale or something. My later teens, some of my time in was spent debugging early Watcom SQL software and working on an educational software app in FoxPro, as well as studying computer engineering (and still working on the side in FoxPro).
Yeah, that's a given. Everyone has only 24h of time per day. And everyone has different struggles.
This is an incredible achievement. And i really don't like, that your comment invited other people to jump onboard & comment in a way belittling the achievements– even if just implicitly, to make themselves feel better why a high-schooler is doing things like that.
If all that was really the main driver, HN frontpage should be flooded with projects made by high-schoolers. But it is not. It might be contributing factor.
Btw: Funnily enough, i would expect these type of excuses & self-comforting negativity from high-schoolers.
I'm not saying this in a negative way - but priorities shift in life (unfortunately).
I wish I had the time that I had back when I was in high school.
The time part doesn't have anything to do with the skills though. At that age I would have never been able to do a similar thing - at my age I would probably struggle, but with enough time at hand I might achieve half of the project.
This is what makes this whole thing exceptional: this person is very talented and is using his free time to do great things - I appreciate that.
If my initial comment sounded like I was bragging I would do it too if I had more free time, it wasn't my intention. I actually am jealous that I get to spend less time on my side projects and I envy those who can build such cool stuff.
It really depends on the person and the school they go to. I've had wayyyyy more free time in my 20s than I did in high school. With kids its a different story, but having a job and no kids is peak freedom. 8 hours of work, then I'm free. Meanwhile in high school I'd wake up at 6:30, school starts 8am and ends at 4pm, sports practice until 6pm, start homework at 7:30pm and hopefully finish by 11:30pm, then rinse and repeat. Weekends just meant more homework and very long sports events (swim meets, XC races for me). Summers were more chill but I was working full time starting from 15.
Highschool was genuinely awful. So so sleep deprived and stressed. I went to a prep school so for those who didn't, your experience may have been different.
I sometimes wonder how many talented engineers top colleges are rejecting because they were busy working on real engineering projects like this than academics and test scores.
Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them.
I almost failed the high school entry exams because I dedicated more time to soldering electronic devices and programming computers rather than writing essays about Polish literature or memorizing dates of historical battles. Same thing with the final high school exams - it was a really close call. I felt like they gave me good scores on non-STEM subjects just because I already won some prizes in electronics / physics olympiads and brought some fame to the school, so kida got away with that but... it was stressful anyways.
Man, you just triggered me. This was also me in school.
I even have a huge interest in history, but I remember my first history exam on World War 1. I was ready to answer questions on its causes, the people, how industrial war changed the nature of fighting, the new countries that formed after the war... First Question: What was the date the Serbian nationalist Gavrillo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Second Question: What was the dates each country declared war...
It also took me years to actually sit down and read JRR Tolkien as we read the Hobbit as a class book in grade 8. First question for the test: List the names of the 13 dwarves that attended the party at Bilbo's house (1 point each for a test out of 30 IIRC).
Holy crap - I have read the Hobbit many times (and LoTR a few less) and I would never have taken the time to commit 13-character names to memory - most of them simply were not that memorable.
The rhyming sets are a bit of a crutch, at least (Fili + Kili, Óin + Glóin, Bifur + Bofur + Bombur, etc). But you're right - most of the dwarves are individually forgettable. Only two are substantially characterized - Thorin the leader, and Bombur the comically fat.
Heh - exactly - the only truly easy character name that has always stuck in my mind was from "Snow Crash", I mean - who can forget "Hiro Protagonist"...?
It's true, and okay, that the academia grind is only for a subset of us. It is not the only meaningful path! I went on to gradschool by rote, and I do not push it on my high-school students or anyone else. It took me about 40 years to find a sense of purpose (having a child was the catalyst).
Sadly, the push for STEM seems motivated by capitalists wanting further control of valuable labor, so I'm really chuffed by Bryan's Show HN post- even though open-source can be leveraged by capital, it doesn't have to be. It is a non-walled-garden model, and an example of what we can do collectively. Even if the Linux kernel is largely funded by corporations, it doesn't have to be.
A concern is that a laptop is still not something my community can make with the local resources, and thus the exploitation of land, labor, and money continues.
> Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them.
This really resonates with me. I love math now, but absolutely loathed it in high school. The curriculum lacked any sort of way to apply math to real problems. I simply cannot learn things in the abstract like that. It's like learning a programming language without ever building a program.
Same. I stopped "caring" about math when we started to learn polynomials. Binomials..ok. Trinomials...ok. But then it just became repetitive when the class was just adding more terms to the functions that over the semester I ended up spending most of the class daydreaming.
I disagree; I did similar projects like this in high school (not exactly like this; his is a true achievement). I did very well grade-wise and had a high GPA but I bombed the SAT because I didn’t understand that you didn’t lose the same number of points for questions you skipped. So the ones I didn’t have time to answer I just randomly selected, which resulted in a poor score.
I found out later:
1. How SAT scoring works
2. That you shouldn’t take the last SAT of the year since then you cannot retake it
3. I probably should’ve taken the ACT instead
I wish they’d prepared us in school for this, but they were too busy training us for standardized state testing since that determined their own budget.
Could I have gotten into MIT? Unsure; back at 18 I didn’t know MIT existed and this was early Internet times. It would have been nice if my high school mentioned it as an option.
In my case at least, doing projects like this and getting good grades didn’t automatically turn into attending any college I wanted. Either way, I ended up with a great career.
Anyways, kudos to the person who made this project!
Thankfully, the SAT no longer deducts points for wrong answers. But I agree, there's a big difference between testing and doing really great work.
I'm somewhat on the other end of this, where I excelled in school, graduated valedictorian, but didn't gain any meaningful experience with projects and such and had poor leadership skills all around.
I’ve known few exemplars like this one. But at least 2. One made a flight simulator for 737 in the backyard that was used regularly by airline pilots to train. The other made a complete discrete FM stereo transmitter, mounted his own radio later. He was 16, and it was the early 90. So all from books.
Both guys brutally failed in the first year in the University. They dis not like theory, they wanted to make.
Unless you aren't fit for traditional academic learning models.
I spent most of my young adulthood working on projects (not nearly as insanely technical as this! but) similar to this. But I dropped out of high school, didn't go to college, because none of them would teach me in a way, or a pace, that fit my learning disability or mental models. Luckily I had the drive to teach myself, and built a successful two-decade career, despite my parents and teachers telling me I'd fail and become homeless.
High school kids have insane potential, and can achieve truly amazing things. But often people disregard them and don't set them up for success. So many companies could hire really great engineers, even from high school, if they could just find the motivated ones and put them in a mentorship/apprenticeship program that aligned with their interests and ways of learning.
You really don’t want to see my pre-university grades.
I was on a mission, and I can’t do two things at once. So school was about efficiency. I got great grades wherever that took low effort. That only went so far.
After graduation, nowhere I wanted to be would have looked at me.
It took me a couple years after high school to find the right university, but my personal projects paid off.
Looking back, it was a gamble. But you don’t really choose those kinds of paths.
I dunno. I only succeeded as a kid academically because of literally my IQ not because I had grit learnt from my projects. I pathologically hated being told what to do so the determination to do my own projects did not translate into anything assigned to me.
Going from how many gifted children end up underperforming because they are made to do stupid things & then getting labeled as difficult or slow: a lot more then you'd think.
Being talented and gifted is generally not appreciated, not even in academia. Many of the most talented people never finish their education because academia is more about playing the game & having the grit (or lack of backbone?) to deal with the bullshit and do what you are told.
And tbf, the best engineers I know are not necessarily the most talented ones, but those that developed the grit to push through the bs.
This is an incredible achievement! I've been working in hardware design for 10 years. I've touched on most of what was covered here across various projects in my career, but never all at once. To have the discipline and motivation to carry a project like this through to completion is seriously impressive.
Bear in mind he's "CEO" of the underwater MATE ROV team at Phillips Exeter Academy, and if you scroll down a bit, it says that Phillips Exeter Academy is giving him a high school diploma.
Hilarious that there’s a separate sub-$1000 line item for books and supplies. If it’s that expensive, you can’t just throw in some pens and pencils with the tuition?
...back in the day we had this partner who emigrated from undisclosed_balkan_country to the USA in the 90s. 20 years later his daugther in her teens gets $20k funding from the school principal, for her pet fashion project (not even STEM!). Her school is not even a top one, just a private school somewhere in major USA city.
On the contrary, even though we've had top marks in the top math school in the same country, we'd never ever hoped to get even $200 for a project. Were we good enough to build a computer - of course, it's not that hard once you get the basics, and once you've done x86 assembly in your early teens. But it was just impossible to even think about spending the money, or loosing them per se.
Exeter Philips school has quote "700 acres, 147 buildings, the world's largest high school library". And I'm sure also lots of engineering development facilities where you can actually get your hands dirty. I can imagine the progress had I found myself there by some miracle. This kid is absolute winner to be in it, but I bet his parents must have also won the lottery ticket, one way or another, cause UK education is crazy expensive.
Now, in order to not make this story super sad, let's admit that, even though we as schoolkids didn't have access to such campus and funding, by last year in school I could track music with FT2; build Linux kernel and write ASM/C/C++/Perl; operated a BBS; debugged the IE9 source with VXDs and all; took part in writing two demoscene productions, that we still proud of; and finally, but not lest being a bunch of smart kinds in their 20s we started a hosting company in 1998(or '99) which soon handled the amount of traffic which equaled that of the whole country. This all with no GPTs, no Google searches, not even forums that much back then. So of course, it matters, that you are not a dumbass, after all.
But nobody ever gave us the security to pursue dreams the way this kid does. And I'm absolutely convinced we could've put together a laptop or something along the line. I say put together, because a lot of these parts are easily available now, one click away, nothing like what it was back in the day. He's not producing the chips, neither the screen, neither putting elements together, but the chassis and kbd, and does some wiring. Of course - fascinating for a teenager to do, but you see, teenagers are not so stupid, and never were. And those in top schools are particularly bright and outpace many adults in many areas. From the images I can tell this is a school projects, so perhaps it took also a little mentoring to do it.
This always make me think about two things - it absolutely matters which school you are lucky to have gone to; and very likely all talent is lost soon after high-school, because... reasons.
yeah, it's a little bittersweet to see the adulation this is getting; I hope he has success in his academics and career, I got my first computer by dumpster diving parts.
Hits close to home. Apart from what was a family PC (terribly cheap), my main rig for a time was assembled via old junk the computer lab at school was done with but wasn't valuable enough (or fully functional) to say no when I asked if I could have it.
This is crazy. Hats off to you. My guess is you'll have recruiters knocking on your door yesterday, trying to grab you before the next one does. Whatever you do, don't let your talents go to waste (corporations can do that), and think about your long term success, not whatever they dangle in front of you for the short term. You're going places.
Tip from an experienced EE: try to avoid middle-men recruiters at all cost. Go straight to the company you want to work for. Or better yet in your case: start your own company :p
By the way, you can tune boot times further. My print server board boots in 8 seconds to Debian 12 (bootloader + kernel + userspace).
1. Make sure the bootloader (u-boot) loads the kernel as fast as possible.
- Disable automatic Ethernet/USB/other subsystems initialization (you can keep them enabled, just don't activate unless requested in the shell manually by the user)
- Tune `distro_bootcmd` command
- Make sure that MicroSD/eMMC/SSD works full-speed (with proper clocks and speed protocol)
2. Use fast decompression algorithm for the kernel and initramfs
- It's either zstd or gzip
3. Collect boot file access data and sort the files on the filesystem
- The benefit in near-linear access & read-ahead
I'm pretty sure that the current 20 seconds could be shrunk down to 14 or so.
Pinebook Pro boots in about 10s to DE and that's RK3399. Pretty sure RK3588 can boot even faster, considering the advantage of PCIe/nvme storage that can run at > 3GiB/s. Software load times stop being a constraint at those speeds.
My Orange Pi 5 Plus boots to sway+firefox already open in about 15s and a lot of it is waiting for net being online.
There are some obvious next steps for improving the polish on this, would you say you were more resource constrained, time constrained, or skill constrained?
For instance, did you put any thought into making flex PCBs to make the cable routing easier?
I also think the concept of a laptop with a removable wireless keyboard is brilliant, and I think your implementation is a lot cleaner than e.g. the Surface or the iPad's case-keyboards. If I had a laptop that did that, it would be my go-to travel machine. One less thing to cart around.
Hey! Thank you for the question. For sure, it's not a polished product and I don't mean for it to be. It works surprisingly well. (I've used it as my daily driver for school)
With college apps and school work, the time was tight. I'd say that was the most limiting. Of course, resource and skill played its role.
I did consider flex PCBs, but I didn't have the time to follow through with all the ambitions (i also wanted an FOC input sigh).
I'm honored that you think my keyboard implementation is nice! I put a lot of thought into it — truly. Oh btw the keyboard works just as well as a solo device. I've used the keyboard more than the computer in some ways. Thanks!
If you keep this idea alive (and I hope you do!), you might consider shrinking the keyboard battery and designing its docking configuration so that it automatically charges from the main battery when stored in the laptop. A 3 month keyboard battery capacity seems sort of excessive when its mechanically part of a machine that charges daily.
I think one of the limitations to the keyboard concept you have is that it complicates using the laptop base as a stand for the screen in a tablet configuration. Outside of tablets with fully detachable keyboards (e.g. the Surface or the iPad pro), I don't think anybody has a good design for that. Was a touchscreen ever a consideration for stretch goals or design for expansion?
Also loved the detachable keyboard (which has me fantasize about a detachable screen as well + external hdmi/displayport, as I hate the working positions I end up in with a laptop, so it'd be nice to be able to get a more comfortable setup in a hotel room etc. that still packages up to a laptop.
Hmmm. That's also an interesting solution to the same problem. Although honestly, the scenario where I want to have a removable keyboard, I'm likely using an external display (probably a hotel TV), and a small wireless mouse is a lot easier to transport than a keyboard (and more ergonomic than a keyboard small enough for transport) so the extra screen and trackpad are sort of lost on me.
Holy. That's an achievement very few people can claim. Wonder if HN has a "hall of fame", a worthy entry.
You did the smart thing there with the SoM (for the uninitiated: power sequencing to individual parts of an SoC and its external components is an epic hassle to get right and that's assuming you actually have proper documentation - without it it's an utter pain), but how in hell did you get the high frequency stuff working out on what was likely your first or second try? This is IMHO where your work really shines.
USB-C, DisplayPort (at 4K to boot) and PCIe at modern speeds are all but black magic to most, this isn't digital any more, this is good old analog circuitry and physics at work that most people don't even learn in university any more.
Thank you so much — yes, that was the hardest part of this entire project! I spent 2 months getting eDP working (second PCB thankfully).
I had the honor of learning high speed signaling from the best. I met some super cool people from Silicon Valley and research universities (from past work, like the MUREX Ethernet Switch). The ZMK Firmware community too!
I hardly know where to begin! This project is exceptional in every sense—a true masterpiece. Remarkably, its creator is still in high school, yet he’s already demonstrated brilliance beyond his years. The endorsements he’s received, the connections he’s begun to forge, and the incredible opportunities now within his reach are nothing short of extraordinary. As he himself put it, accomplishments like these are only possible when you believe deeply in your vision and persist relentlessly until the finish line. None of this would have been possible if he had given up before completing this remarkable work of art.
It’s posts like this, fueled by incredible community support, that make Hacker News not just great but unmatched.
With 2,000 points (and counting), this Show HN is currently ranked as the 4th-best Show HN of all time. If we exclude the #1 post (this upvotes itself)—which isn’t a true project—this post would be the 3rd-best of all time. Who knows? By tomorrow, it may surpass 2,741 points and claim the #1 spot outright.
I'll just echo the amazement and congratulations of all the other comments. I do have a question though - your post stated "The hardest class I’ve taken so far was quantum mechanics in my junior spring term." Kudos to your educational system that allowed you to take quantum mechanics as a junior in high school - it looks like it clearly provided you a framework that allowed you to excel. Without giving away your privacy, is this some sort of special program where you live, or is it a standard opportunity?
He goes to Phillips Exeter Academy, where Zuckerberg once matriculated. Students' voices are heard through the Harkness method of teaching. There is plenty of opportunity for students to grow curricularly (e.g.,dynamic chaos theory in math, senior projects, though not required ...) and extra-curricularly (e.g. competition robotics, physics, bio,chem clubs, etc ...) which may not be a norm in most public or even private schools.
This is a follow-up to my comment above (since I can no longer edit it):
> By tomorrow, it may surpass 2,741 points and claim the #1 spot outright.
Indeed! I just woke up to find that the post has got 2,742 points which officially make it the best Show HN of all time! You can see the full list here: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=show+hn
Byran, you now have probably the best C.V. you can use for any job and you should be proud of yourself.
Suggestion: It would be nice to include a price list on the article.
This project is impressive as heck, but aside from being intellectually out-of-reach for most kids, it would be financially challenging as well. Last I looked, CNC aluminum blocks were well out of the reach of 99.9% of kids (but that was decades ago; perhaps prices went down).
For people wanting to follow in those footsteps, it'd be nice to know which things cost $5, which $50, $500, or $5000. Just that kind of intuition is helpful.
it's not as expensive as it looks, if you don't count time. CNC alu and the display would be the biggest costs. other carrier board projects use 3d printing over CNC, but the display/bandwidth is kinda what makes this novel so a lower res wouldn't make sense
really hoping Byran's excellent writeup helps encourage others. SoMs have lowered the barrier to entry and birthed a ton of SBC/carrier communities, but most of their tribal knowledge is buried in discord servers
Very nice. Wish there were faster SOMs than the 3588 but maybe in a year or two.
Looks like an MIT admissions portfolio project. Don’t know if it fits the uniqueness category for it but I guess the quality of the end product makes it good enough.
Admittedly this isn’t fully open source like the Novena or the Reform but I doubt adcomms care. I just wish I was rich enough and skilled enough to be able to spend $4.5k on a neat project like this.
Thanks for your suggestions and criticism! Much appreciated. Which aspect of it (aside from the SoM, which I admittedly do not have the R&D to make in this timescale) isn't open-source? I'd love to hear your thoughts. The Novena and Reform are amazing pieces of engineering, but I believe they sacrifice the portability and looks for repairability which some people certainly prefer. I wanted to aim for something that a non-technical consumer might look and say "hmm, nice laptop!" and not think it came out of the matrix or built it myself.
So how long is the trip to Earth from your home planet? And do you plan on staying a while or are you just here for 6 months to humiliate us with your superintelligence?
Let's go! I'm so proud of you, Byran!! Imagine your teacher gets hit in the eye with a bottle cap, the contents of the drink fry your laptop, and you just build your own. This may not have been the motivation, but I'm honored at your resiliency, lol. You never cease to amaze me! Keep going!
Hey Bryan, great work and very inspiring. This has me meta curious about how a project like this is possible. Besides the support from your school, I imagine that your parents have been a big part of your success?
Is your mainboard the same as the CM3588 carrier board [1] that has been re-layout to match the form factor you wanted or did you have to make other modifications?
The part I am most interested in is the 'powertrain' and how it manages battery charging.
Thank you so much! If you'd like to discuss further, please let me know! My email is in the website. I have a Framework 16 and have tons of ideas. Never got around to it though. (I also burned a few screens, and had 3 as backup haha).
Looks good. Could be a small step to my vision for a dock dependent palm sized pc with high powered cpu connected by a single USB C with no other ports except for micro sd. And backed up by a mini battery for power stability on low watt chargers.
Bryan, thanks for publishing, this is great work. I'm curious if this this build could fit and swap a 13.3 E-ink screen with display board. Some open source hardware synergy with https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider/tree/main
I'm curious how the USB-C connectors are made to the outside of the enclosure.
What I've found is that it's a bad idea to use USB extension cables; these can introduce bit errors if e.g. you copy large amounts of data (order of terabytes). It's much better to insert a USB drive directly into a carrier board, but this is not always physically possible.
It's almost standard to have the USB-C have extra wiggle-room (around 1mm or so). Then, the housing is 1mm past the USB-C connector. That's how the casings are made so that when you stick the connector in, it's flush or nearly so.
I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
> Then, the housing is 1mm past the USB-C connector.
Yes, this is often the case but sometimes the USB-C connectors are on the same side of the board where you also need to plug in some cables that you need internally (maybe even other USB devices). Thus the option of letting an USB-C port stick out on one side of the enclosure is not always available.
> I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
Yes, and the user of your device (who doesn't see the internal cable) will assume that they can plug in their own cable, so you'll have two cables.
How about the embedded software? Probably not. This is OK as I understand this project is a huge achievemnt. Thank YOU
I've always thought it would be good for hard drive software ( embedded software on the actual drive or SSD ) to be open source.
My thinking on such a situation is such a project could start with a storage device from maybe 5 years more more ago - as in my opinion the software would be a less technological challenge. (( I mean take an existing already manufactured working storage device ( ssd or hard drive ) and replace the embedded commercial software with open source software. This would remove the technological barrier of actually constructing the hard drive hard. ))
Yup, all the software except the blobs for the SoC, display FW, and trackpad FW (since it's COTS) are open source! If I wanted to have those open-source, the entire machine would take a huge performance hit. I think of striking a balance.
The entire linux install is OSS, the keyboard is in ZMK, and the EC firmware is written in Arduino.
> Established in 1781, it is America's sixth-oldest boarding school
>...
> Exeter is one of the nation's wealthiest boarding schools, with a financial endowment of $1.6 billion as of June 2024, and houses the world's largest high school library.
>...
>Its list of notable alumni includes U.S. President Franklin Pierce, U.S. Senator Daniel Webster, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and three winners of the Nobel Prize.
This is really cool ! Kudos for getting this started. I wonder if initiatives such as one laptop per child could have been effective with this kind of approach. Eitherway I hope this project goes along way as I could see its application not only at home but also in developing nations.
Congratulations, this is awesome. I worked on medical devices where I did both hardware and software and it is really hard. I wish you the best and I really hope you'll continue to use your skills for good and open products.
This is one of the coolest, most inspiring projects I've seen anywhere - wow! Seeing you and nrp connect here in the comments was so cool; just the start, I'm sure.
---
It was neat to read through the progress log (1), which begins,
> "It was around 1AM. I wrote up the mission goal (2) and went to sleep at 2AM. The start",
and ends:
> "With the YouTube video and blog post almost done, I hope this isn’t the last of anyon_e. But rather, the start of a trailblazing journey."
This project is the epitome of MUREX Electrical's mission statement, "attempt the impossible":
It's "impossible", a non-MUREX Robotics Electrical member might say. However, we accept it as the process. In the end, we will have achieved something others might have called "impossible". But the achievement only comes through endless, motivated attempts at the impossible. (3)
I clicked through dreading that it's got a Raspberry Pi at its core, but no, RK3588 (same as MNT is using now)! Very nice. Ultra kudos for making it truly open source. Great work!! <3
Thank you! Yup, Raspberry Pi's great an all, but the RK3588's performance is king (and RPi would've also saved me many nights of head-banging at the software).
My vocabulary hasn't got appropriate compliments - so I'd just say congratulations to the author, you've got serious talent, hard earned skills, and great mentors.
Just commenting so I can't come back later and claim I wasn't stealing lots of ideas from the author for my own project; the hinge problem, keycaps, the mainboard designed on KiCAD, are all interesting.
It looks like https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next and the anyon_e use the same SoC and similar parts (e.g. Cherry MX ULP switches). I wonder how much of that is they're the only parts that would be put in such laptops?
Obviously super cool and kudos like everyone else in here.
Feel like you could make a pared down version of this with commodity parts outside of the chassis if you aren't going for a flagship competitor. I guess you could also just buy a $20 chromebook, too. Maybe...you could fit a nice rockchip SOM inside a chromebook??
Most of the older LED display have standard 30 pin or 40 pin connection. Lacking standard is keyboard connectors. Most standard are battery and fans.
Maybe laptop should have two layers or parts.One for Motherboard and memory and another for connectors, fans, power supply, battery etc. Then we can have more standard even if a little thicker.
I was impressed this is open source, then impressed it was done by one person, then impressed it only took 6 months, and eventually somehow impressed again that it was a _high schooler_. My mind is blown. Kudos for managing to do something insane like this. Very inspirational.
Hanging around 5 grand. Unfortunately the R&D process was rough! The R&D BOM is linked below, feel free to take a look. If you were to build it, I'd estimate it costing around 1500 dollars (or less).
Yeah. My "budget" for similar scale project (sw, fw, hw, enclosure co-design) in high school 24 years ago was about $200. I'd have loved to have these kinds of resources/lab tools access. I even made [private, so that tool makers did not patch the holes/obfuscate] cracks for Eagle, HI-TECH C compilers and Solid Edge, to have some nice SW tools to work with, without arbitrary limits.
But I sure had plenty of time, and it was fun to always be learning something new. Simpler times when it was out of reach to have anything done for me, like prototype PCBs and let alone assembly. :)
These days are absolutely crazy in comaprison, with all the ready-made SBCs or SBC modules, and free software, and like $4 PCB prototyping services and CNC machining, 3D printing, $15 powerful FPGAs, $7 fully Linux capable 1GHz Cortex-A7 tiny computer modules for bread-boards, and cheap components from China... Still remember going to a shop buying single unit amounts of SMD resistors and capacitors over the counter. Now I can get 4000 unit SMD sample book for a few $ and never think about it again. Even my 2000 self would be able to afford it without much trouble. It's kind of a force multiplier easily available even for high-schoolers.
Not to take anything away from this amazing achievement, but if you want a similar open-source laptop, also based on an RK3588, that will actually be manufactured and sold, check out the MNT Reform Next: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next
Maybe, depending on reception! I geared it so it could be manufactured at a semi-small scale. Unfortunately, I don't have the capacity to make them myself :(. Thank you for the interest!
This is amazing, love the ESP32 watchdog controller. Had a question about the keyboard - would it make sense for the keyboard to be hardwired to the laptop via USB-C and detachable to have one battery source?
Extremely impressive work! I'll keep an eye on this, building my own laptop sounds like fun, provided I can get all the parts for reasonable prices here in Germany
Truly appreciate it. I spent many weeks afterwards documenting the steps as thoroughly as I could. My email's on the site if anyone needs to reach out, as well. :)
I played Minecraft (epic gaming) with friends for a few hours, no problem! The massive heat capacity of the copper + heatpipe + active fan is good enough.
It might be a stupidly specific question, but may I ask what is the screen resolution and how many FPS you got? I am asking because I've been considering buying an Orange PI with RK3588 for gaming purposes.
The project is outstanding but the fact that you've documented everything AND did a video about it speaks volumes about what you'll achieve if you keep at it
So if you want to install windows on this, do you have to add some secure bios feature? Is it possible to have access to that without big license fees?
I've long been disappointed that we've never really gotten standard laptops, in the way that there are ATX standard desktops.
The laptop form factor hasn't really changed in decades. It's a rectangle with a screen in the lid and a keyboard in the base. Below the keyboard is a battery and a system board. The battery has to be replaced when it wears out and the system board when it becomes obsolete, but then why aren't they both fungible parts? If you take any arbitrary ATX PC from many years ago, you can replace the system board/CPU/memory/storage with modern ones and carry on using the same chassis, screen, power supply and keyboard provided they meet the required specs for the new parts (and they often do).
So why can't I do this with the average laptop, instead of having to replace $200-$300 worth of perfectly good parts or more each time I want an upgrade?
I think my laptops have been split between mechanical and hardware EOL. I don't think the mechanicals would ever go for two lifetimes. But I actually take mine around places and am a little clumsy.
Mechanical what? The keys? There are people who have had the same keyboard for 30 years. You don't have to design things to be disposable junk.
That's even part of the advantage. If you want a higher quality chassis made of rubber-padded metal that can survive being dropped off a table then you'd only have to buy it once.
Because you don't pay that much for something to be durable if the durability will just be defeated by obsolescence. Whereas if you could upgrade it to later generation processors, clumsy people would save themselves a lot of trouble to buy the chassis once.
I guess we're talking from a completely different range within spectrum of laptop computing. Hinges, shells, flex cables, power ports, etc. all tend not last longer than hardware end of relevance for me unless it's one of rugged ones, but my use case is to throw into a bag and strategically yeet onto another luggage kinds.
came here to shit on this project, that there was no way it was open source down to the ME, like a raptor or framework computer. absolutely required IMO to be considered open source.
i didn't find any firwmware in the repo (didn't look exhaustively) but I did find that the SoC this is based on is supported by https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 .
AFAICT the azoteq trackpad has proprietary firmware, so if that's true then i won't call this laptop fully open source. but from a practical perspective, i am much less worried about that then the boot path.
There was a very old ThinkPad design that allowed the keyboard to take more space than the width of the laptop, but that was also bad old non-split layout
But at least not wasting existing left/ right side space and having a gap in the middle instead would be a nice start
Or maybe even get to the best of the portable/non-portable worlds: since the keyboard is wireless, you could detach 2 halves of the keyboard and place them on a desk at ergonomic shoulder distance
And this would allow you to also ergonomically position the laptop itself for a better screen position - vertical, just like your desktop monitor
Thank you so much! The story behind the laptop was quite interesting — my friends and I were going to an athletics event far away, and he brought up the idea that I should make a laptop for my senior project as a joke (our school offers 1 free class for a "project", graciously funded by the school). I said "hell yeah." That's pretty much how this came to be, college didn't play much of a role imho. And best of luck studying physics!
This seems to list some components multiple times in a versioned way, did I get it right that this is rather a whole list of components you've bought while working on this project rather than the final list of the components needed to assemble the notebook you've built?
Anyone know the amount of RAM available for the laptop?
Personally I'm a bit disappointed that it's based on Rockchip.
If someone can come up with low cost open source laptop with RPi compute module 5 with 16GB RAM I think it will selling like hot cakes given the software and hardware eco-system that exist round RPi [1]. It just that the compute module has yet to come with 16GB RAM unlike the normal RPi 5 but it will probably just around the corner [2].
> Personally I'm a bit disappointed that it's based on Rockchip.
Why would you?
You mentioned Raspberry where, compared to the competition, you pay more for the name while they deliver even the same capabilities or more bang for the buck...
Don't get me wrong. Huge Raspi fan here. I have 3 models laying around here, because they are the easiest to purchase. But the competition is not to be overlooked.
Also, aren't the compute modules strandarized or compatible? So it should be interchangeable, no?
Because it's the eco-system for software, hardware, firmware, drivers, books, documentation, blogs, papers, training modules, etc. It's the same reasons Nvidia thriving for ML/AI while the rest are playing catch up.
Good evening sir Bryan, a 15 year old with you...
Can you teach me how you made the PC, please... Last year I was able to create a mobile application running on a smartphone.. this year I planned on creating a mobile phone and a PC... Please can you teach me....
I don't know anything about designing PCB's tho..
I'm honestly rather envious. I guess my 'sour grape' is that the lack of funds and opportunity for me to do this is what lead me to go into software and then on into Machine Learning which I do think turned out for the best. Making electronics like this, while still difficult, is far easier than it used to be and I do enjoy it as a hobby in a way that I probably would not have as a career.
It is no doubt an incredible achievement. I don't like the 'anyone can do this' when that clearly isn't true - it comes across as a humble brag and seems to be a strong part of hustle culture. I would much prefer 'anyone with a decent amount of money and a high enough intelligence can do this', or 'this is now far easier to do than it has ever been'.
I do like the idea of MIT being a beacon to the best and brightest and I do think that the lack of a level playing field means that many otherwise talented people miss out on that opportunity. Perhaps what I would really like is for the world to have more MITs but I don't know if that is possible and I worry that attempts to do this would undermine the quality of MIT. So perhaps I should be content that MIT exists as is and that some people get to go there even if I did not - we all benefit from the fruits of their labor. My university was a top tier university renowned for harsh grading and I was still rather disappointed by the quality of my peers and I worry that the quality at universities in general has since declined further.
Cheap and high quality small batch electronics and hardware fabrication is rapidly changing the world in a way that I think few people understand. It used to be that you had to have a decent size company to do this kind of stuff and that company needed capital investment, layers of management etc. So the cost of bringing a widget into the world was really expensive, risky, and took a long time. The only way to make that money back was to do things in bulk and sell a lot of them which meant you had to be sure there was a sufficient target market. These days a single person can design and fabricate a single item for comparatively very little. And if they want to make it accessible to the rest of the world there is no need to build a factory, just upload the plans. If it's a popular design in all likelihood someone in China will produce it in bulk at commodity prices. The speed of commodification has become so fast that it's practically instant. There is a bit of a phenomena going on at the moment with 'high tech overproduction' where it is claimed that China is intentionally over producing high tech goods to undermine Western markets - it's my view that they're ahead of us on the commodification curve. As manufacturing also manufactures the manufacturing tools the commodification process is a self reinforcing cycle.
I am envious too. When I was young, even younger than Bryan's age, I had grown a strong interest in electronics. But I was limited by a lot of things:
1. Breadboards are the best thing I can use, to create a PCB, I can only rely on manually soldering connections on a general-purpose PCB (the kind of PCB with many holes). And I had never heard of EDA at that time (~2008-12ish)
2. Being raised in a family where my parents never went to college, they can't give me any help and advice in study, let alone the funding. It took me 2 years of begging to convince my parents to buy me a computer, which already costs them 2 months of wages.
3. In the small town in middle west China where I grown up, I searched every corner of the library, only to find 2 or 3 books that are related to electronics, and I spent all my time after school studying them. I can't find anyone who are also interested in the same things I was doing, I was all on my own.
What happened then?
1. I studied hard on the only books I found, and learned about C51 microcontrollers, and that introduced me to the world of programming
2. I took a selective examination and went to one of the most prestigious high school in the capital of the province (Changsha, Hunan), and because of my intests in programming, I took part in olymptics in informatics, which is competitive algorithmic contest, and got the entrance to one of the best universities of China
3. After graduation and 5 years of working as a professional programmer, I was finally able to give myself a good environment for what I loved as a kid, something people like Bryan would already have when they were born. I bought myself 3d printing machines, and learned EDA and found JLC, PCBWays are so helpful.
I really wish I could have all these when I was young, but I think I'll give myself all the things my parents can't, and make myself a kid again, to learn and to play.
> A highly integrated, high end, open source laptop.
Not sure what’s meant by “high end” here. Performance is a rather important aspect, and the RK3588 this uses will make it slower than almost every laptop on the market. Practically all are twice as fast (both single- and multi-core), most are 3–5× multi-core, and the best approach 7× (paired with 2.5× single-core).
Looking at Lenovo India, they sell three laptops that are slower multi-core and maybe slower single-core (running Celeron N4020 or Athlon Silver 7120U); after that, they’re all at least twice as fast, in both single- and multi-core benchmarks.
From <https://www.byran.ee/posts/creation>: “In many aspects, the Rockchip RK3588 is the fastest consumer-procurable chip on the market.” As someone not involved in these spaces, this was my vague impression, but it still ends up disappointing if you simply can’t get good performance for a project like this because only bigger companies can buy the better-performance things. It’s an extremely impressive project, but unfortunately will be rendered not viable for many—probably most—people for this one reason. That makes me sad. I wish they’d sell us the good stuff.
I suspect that utmost performance was not the main focus of the project. Nevertheless, the complexity of the project would not be different if a different CoM was to be adopted. Even creating a custom CoM doesn't seem that much more complicated, as the daughter board is as complicated since it already needs to handle high-frequency traces as well. Super impressive project!
Dude this is great, you not only build a cool thing, but also you know how to preach about it! Very proud, hope you do great things. Don't let the spark die.
Hopefully this new hardware development framework you just released can help me avoid being spied on by the National Security Agency's Tailored Access Operations gang and other scary creatures. True, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. But I intend to build a billion dollar company that can fit entirely on a laptop (AI models are my employees). I don't want the pesky U.S. government or other bad hackers being privy to my advanced technology and corporate secrets.
Thank you for your service to the free and open source principle. Richard Stallman and Eric Steven Raymond would be proud.
Super impressive, and awesome to see that you were able to use Framework Laptop hinges. Let me know if you need more. We have a ton of remaining 3.3kg ones!
Hey Nirav, super super honored that you saw this! I've always looked up to you guys for inspiration and guidance. Thank you for the offer! Although I probably won't be mass-producing open-source laptops like you (i have a framework 16!), I would love to meet you. Would that be possible?
Just sent you an email.
Thank you!
This is the best of the internet. Connection based on interest, appreciation, and mutual respect facilitated with a high degree of good faith. Hope you folks connect fruitfully, and also appreciate that you kept some of the "sent an email" and "thanks" public. Getting to see that this happened has given me a real boost.
It really is.
Can I just say that the fact HN can facilitate this sort of meetup is just, wonderful.
truly wonderful
it made my day, I can sleep now. nn
This is a great example of why people should not be afraid to be bold.
Hi Nirav, any plans to start Framework in India?
Byran... This is seriously impressive. You are very blessed to be so capable in so many disciplines -- design, hardware, software, storytelling. It is a massively complicated undertaking, and you executed in style. Nice work, and remember to use your formidable powers for good!
Thank you so much! For certain; goodness without knowledge is weak and feeble and knowledge without goodness is dangerous.
It was a truly difficult undertaking! I was ready to quit at so many moments, but I always think about the final mission of sharing this little piece of knowledge with the world. :)
My hat is off to you, good sir. Way off. This is an unbelievable accomplishment, doubly so given that you're still in high school (!!!), triple-so given the time you did it in, quadruple-so given that you did it all yourself, etc etc etc.
I was reading this over thinking "this guy should be working for Framework". It would be a total win-win.
Thank you so much! I'm currently working for Keychron!
If you do decide to look at framework, I can help you get your resume in front of a high level decision maker. I agree you'd make a great fit with framework.
Woah! That would be amazing! I sent you an email just now. Thank you so much for this opportunity!!
Really amazing and impressive work. And also an excellent resource for future explorers.
One thing I didn't see mentioned in the video is the total cost of all the materials to complete one laptop not including all the experimentation cost. I'd be super curious about that.
I have the R&D BOM in a link below [1]
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17arbJvPqW6koqEJwAzne...
Thanks.
Thank you! For anyone else looking for the top line number, it's $4,673.81. Really nice work. I wish you much success in life.
I have yet to finish processing reimbursement. LOL. His parents pre-paid for this project.
Best 5 grand they ever spent. Byran your cross discipline knowledge is amazing. Well done!
Quick question, are your parents in technology and science or are you self taught? Always like to hear about the backgrounds that create the environment for something like this to come together.
I've met amazing people throughout my journey thus far, but no. I have no background in engineering, but my parents have always been supportive. I started falling in love with it in 9th grade with keyboards + ZMK!
Others: don’t downvote this, it seems legit. See their other comments.
"NOTE: THIS IS R&D total cost. The DIY price should be less than $1500"
Thank you for this.
Great work! I am also interested in what tools you needed to do the work. Could you elaborate on that?
Congratulations! From someone who does mixed electronics+mechanical design: this is hard. There are moments of desperation where you realize that everything depends on everything else, and there is no way to achieve all of your design goals. You then have to realize that engineering is all about compromises, and move on, compromising — but this is very difficult. It's easy to get bogged down in details and dependencies and never finish the project.
It's very impressive work and it makes me so happy to see real hacker news on HN. This is real hacking.
Thank you so, so much! You phrased it so well. The moments of desperation really hit you hard. I have uncountably many loose ends, but oh well, bad engineering :(. Honored that HN thinks I'm a hacker :)
This is really one of the best things I've seen on HN in 15 years.
The mixed presentation of plug and play components interspersed with EE problems and solution really helped make it more accessible. It also got me excited about the possibilities and made me realize that we we might already approaching another open architecture DIY boom.
I got the sense that this is a side project, but I'm sure many have noticed that it could be a legit framework-level company. Someone already mentioned the recruiters, but also you're sure to have investors knocking. Whatever you do, please keep having fun and sharing it.
Okay, I'll help him humble brag:
Bryan is in his last year of high school.
</end>
Keep building!
This is incredible work for anyone, let alone a high schooler. Seriously impressive!
I hope this turns into something I can buy (maybe a diy kit), in the future!
Thanks! I've been considering it (or enough detailed instructions to build one) since starting the project. I need to get a working model first though ;)
We are going full circle, Woz will be proud.
You study quantum mechanics in High School in the USA?
We discussed wave functions, probability, fermions/bosons, did calculations for particle in a box, the Schrödinger model, and went just up to deriving the hydrogen atom. Nothing super fancy, but it was one heck of an experience!
But did you win the Putnam?
For those who don't know, stackghost is referencing this classic moment on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079
I wonder how @sanj feels about their moment of fame (they’re still active on HN).
As I've pointed out before, his concession at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35350 was both witty and graceful. It's great that he's still active here! and anyway he's done a ton of things that are a lot more important than that bit.
I hope that’s in the highlights :)
It's really interesting, in the UK I don't think we did (but I later studied Physics at university) - but we did have Further Maths which covered more advanced mathematics.
Also your project is incredible btw, maybe look into robotics too.
> in the UK I don't think we did
Perhaps you didn't go to a high school quite like this one: https://exeter.edu/admissions/financial-aid/tuition-costs/
> High school quantum theory
> Nothing super fancy
Yeah, that's college level stuff, it's pretty fancy for high school, you go to a nice place :)
Some do- He thanks Phillips Exeter at the bottom of the project page, which is a very fancy private highschool, probably the best in the US.
I went to a peer school that had at least a couple of math teachers with PhDs—my friends at the time who took their classes were, if I recall, nationally competitive in math olympiads.
It's more possible than you'd think! The options are basically:
- Go to a fancy private school like Phillips Exeter
- Really luck out and get into a great public STEM magnet school
- Homeschool and take private classes / have very smart parents
All I did was provide him the space and time to work on the project ... his parents funded the entire project, but will get reimbursement soon. It's the great minds, and the desire to have meaningful projects that make Exeter such an awesome place. Byran is one of a kind!!!!
Oh, or:
- Concurrently enroll at a community college (a really great option that I think every country should have)
I tested out of high school and went to community college instead, one of the best decisions of my life.
Some public schools in very wealthy counties will teach some basic quantum mechanics in honors/AP classes, too. All you have to do is acquire parents that can afford the shittiest neighborhood in those districts!
They did in mine in the Netherlands. Also electronics and programming (this was a long time ago so it was all pretty new); it was a special class to prep for university more than the regular curriculum does, but it was a public school and not even a very good one; just a few really good and switched on teachers (physics, math and chem).
Can't tell if this is sarcasm.
The community college option is available to anyone who’s willing to spend a couple evenings a week taking classes, so I don’t think it’s really that out of reach. Most countries don’t offer their high school students any opportunity to study material that advanced.
Your first 3 options are mostly “be born to the right parents”. So I couldn’t tell if your remark of “it’s more possible than you’d think!” Was serious or not.
Hell I went to a really selective school. But even then, within that the top students, whom I was not one, got to do some extra stuff that would have greatly interested me and I would have been able to do. But my grades in humanities weren’t good enough to be one of the best.
Community college course options often won't include quantum mechanics.
In the high school in Poland I attended, I lucked into being in a class with a university TA assigned as physics teacher, and he did manage to sneak in QM - more-less the same stuff as 'Hello9999901 listed in their reply.
(He also taught us differentiation in the first semester, and basic integrals in the second, because as he said, you cannot learn physics properly without those tools. This annoyed the heck out of our math teacher; she ended up deciding that, if we're learning this anyway, we might as well learn it properly - and gave us a much heavier intro to calculus in the last months of the last year.)
The USA has some great schools. OP goes to Phillips Exeter Academy, which is an exclusive private school that ranks among the best high schools in the country.
Not all high schools but the US has some schools which allow you to take very advanced material / even get a head start on your college credits.
We had a cursory introduction at least about 15 years ago in Germany, it's not that far off.
You don’t study basics of QM in your high schools?
HOF HN post.
Care to explain?
I think the message means that this post is worthy of a Hall of Fame on HackerNews.
^
For those that missed it, this Engineer is in _high school_.
Byran, I have been a professional engineer longer than you have been alive, I can tell you right now that I have met very, very few people that would have the motivation, skill and sticktoitivness to pull this off.
And the time. Don't underestimate the amount of free time people have when they're in high school (vs when you have a family / intense job).
Having said that, even with unlimited time this is such an awesome achievement and really shows the dedication. Well done!
Don't underestimate the amount of knowledge you don't have to perfect things. I remember building scheduling software in PHP in high school, because I just fixed problem after problem, and I was not limited by any form of knowledge. If I'd have to do it again, I'd be perfecting the architecture, refactoring everything every other week...
There’s a real double-edged sword to this whole “becoming a ‘better’ software engineer” thing. I remember just hacking stuff together when I was younger with not a care for whether I was doing it right or not. I just wanted to make it work.
I miss that feeling. It doesn’t come around as often now, but I still feel like I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on years of online discourse about right and wrong ways to do things, and just… do them.
> I move fastest when I can shut off the part of my brain that’s been trained on
While at it: the fastest way to move is free fall. If you fall at will and from a reasonable height, it's called a jump, and indeed gets you there fast. Otherwise it's called a crash, and it usually results in your limping the rest of the way.
So the approach of just hacking things together works great for small things, and the worse, the larger the scale grows.
The laptop in question, for instance, was definitely not just hacked together without any planning, even though the project seems to have fortunately escaped analysis paralysis.
tbqh, I vividly remember rolling my eyes in high school when older people would say: "don't squander the free time you have; you'll wish you had it back someday..." and while I don't outright regret doing kid stuff and squandering the free time in high school as kids do, some days those sentiments ring out more true than others; today being one of them after seeing this video.
Good job, kid
Yeah I did some crazy things when I was in school. Had so much time.
And energy... I do miss those days.
...and money, apparently? How do you pay for all this in high school?
Supportive parents. Bless
Yeah I mean I wasn't doing things like this. I was constantly frustrated because I didn't have any resources to achieve the things I wanted. Didn't even have a half decent computer. I had some janky celeron thing that barely functioned and I couldn't even buy books about subjects I wanted to learn. To think the things I could have done if I was a well off kid.
We all had time... Almost none of us built a laptop
Yeah, but TBF.. in my early teens, my "internet" consisted of a 300 baud modem hooked up to an Atari 800xl (my 2nd computer - the TI 99-4/A was "obsolete"), my "manual" was a 6502 assembly book I borrowed and typed out and a binder full of photocopied notes called "De Re Atari" that I picked up at a garage sale or something. My later teens, some of my time in was spent debugging early Watcom SQL software and working on an educational software app in FoxPro, as well as studying computer engineering (and still working on the side in FoxPro).
Yeah, that's a given. Everyone has only 24h of time per day. And everyone has different struggles.
This is an incredible achievement. And i really don't like, that your comment invited other people to jump onboard & comment in a way belittling the achievements– even if just implicitly, to make themselves feel better why a high-schooler is doing things like that.
If all that was really the main driver, HN frontpage should be flooded with projects made by high-schoolers. But it is not. It might be contributing factor.
Btw: Funnily enough, i would expect these type of excuses & self-comforting negativity from high-schoolers.
I'm not saying this in a negative way - but priorities shift in life (unfortunately).
I wish I had the time that I had back when I was in high school. The time part doesn't have anything to do with the skills though. At that age I would have never been able to do a similar thing - at my age I would probably struggle, but with enough time at hand I might achieve half of the project.
This is what makes this whole thing exceptional: this person is very talented and is using his free time to do great things - I appreciate that.
If my initial comment sounded like I was bragging I would do it too if I had more free time, it wasn't my intention. I actually am jealous that I get to spend less time on my side projects and I envy those who can build such cool stuff.
It really depends on the person and the school they go to. I've had wayyyyy more free time in my 20s than I did in high school. With kids its a different story, but having a job and no kids is peak freedom. 8 hours of work, then I'm free. Meanwhile in high school I'd wake up at 6:30, school starts 8am and ends at 4pm, sports practice until 6pm, start homework at 7:30pm and hopefully finish by 11:30pm, then rinse and repeat. Weekends just meant more homework and very long sports events (swim meets, XC races for me). Summers were more chill but I was working full time starting from 15.
Highschool was genuinely awful. So so sleep deprived and stressed. I went to a prep school so for those who didn't, your experience may have been different.
And money for parts and tools :-) Also many in high school (at least here i Denmark) have jobs after school.
Regarding both time and money, I suppose, the parents of the poster deserve kudos: it's a serious amount of patience and trust.
I sometimes wonder how many talented engineers top colleges are rejecting because they were busy working on real engineering projects like this than academics and test scores.
Probably not a lot, kids who have the grit to work on projects like this are the ones most likely to succeed academically
Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them. I almost failed the high school entry exams because I dedicated more time to soldering electronic devices and programming computers rather than writing essays about Polish literature or memorizing dates of historical battles. Same thing with the final high school exams - it was a really close call. I felt like they gave me good scores on non-STEM subjects just because I already won some prizes in electronics / physics olympiads and brought some fame to the school, so kida got away with that but... it was stressful anyways.
Man, you just triggered me. This was also me in school.
I even have a huge interest in history, but I remember my first history exam on World War 1. I was ready to answer questions on its causes, the people, how industrial war changed the nature of fighting, the new countries that formed after the war... First Question: What was the date the Serbian nationalist Gavrillo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Second Question: What was the dates each country declared war...
It also took me years to actually sit down and read JRR Tolkien as we read the Hobbit as a class book in grade 8. First question for the test: List the names of the 13 dwarves that attended the party at Bilbo's house (1 point each for a test out of 30 IIRC).
Holy crap - I have read the Hobbit many times (and LoTR a few less) and I would never have taken the time to commit 13-character names to memory - most of them simply were not that memorable.
The rhyming sets are a bit of a crutch, at least (Fili + Kili, Óin + Glóin, Bifur + Bofur + Bombur, etc). But you're right - most of the dwarves are individually forgettable. Only two are substantially characterized - Thorin the leader, and Bombur the comically fat.
Heh - exactly - the only truly easy character name that has always stuck in my mind was from "Snow Crash", I mean - who can forget "Hiro Protagonist"...?
You hit it right on the head, I think.
Even at my own university, I struggle to maintain a 3.0 GPA while at the same time actively tutoring students for the very courses I'm failing.
The issue isn't knowledge or competency, it's a mix of work ethic and tolerance for menial busywork.
I think some of us just aren't made for the academia grind...
It's true, and okay, that the academia grind is only for a subset of us. It is not the only meaningful path! I went on to gradschool by rote, and I do not push it on my high-school students or anyone else. It took me about 40 years to find a sense of purpose (having a child was the catalyst). Sadly, the push for STEM seems motivated by capitalists wanting further control of valuable labor, so I'm really chuffed by Bryan's Show HN post- even though open-source can be leveraged by capital, it doesn't have to be. It is a non-walled-garden model, and an example of what we can do collectively. Even if the Linux kernel is largely funded by corporations, it doesn't have to be.
A concern is that a laptop is still not something my community can make with the local resources, and thus the exploitation of land, labor, and money continues.
What would a fair-trade laptop cost?
> Unless they are forced to learn things that are uninteresting to them.
This really resonates with me. I love math now, but absolutely loathed it in high school. The curriculum lacked any sort of way to apply math to real problems. I simply cannot learn things in the abstract like that. It's like learning a programming language without ever building a program.
Same. I stopped "caring" about math when we started to learn polynomials. Binomials..ok. Trinomials...ok. But then it just became repetitive when the class was just adding more terms to the functions that over the semester I ended up spending most of the class daydreaming.
I disagree; I did similar projects like this in high school (not exactly like this; his is a true achievement). I did very well grade-wise and had a high GPA but I bombed the SAT because I didn’t understand that you didn’t lose the same number of points for questions you skipped. So the ones I didn’t have time to answer I just randomly selected, which resulted in a poor score.
I found out later:
1. How SAT scoring works 2. That you shouldn’t take the last SAT of the year since then you cannot retake it 3. I probably should’ve taken the ACT instead
I wish they’d prepared us in school for this, but they were too busy training us for standardized state testing since that determined their own budget.
Could I have gotten into MIT? Unsure; back at 18 I didn’t know MIT existed and this was early Internet times. It would have been nice if my high school mentioned it as an option.
In my case at least, doing projects like this and getting good grades didn’t automatically turn into attending any college I wanted. Either way, I ended up with a great career.
Anyways, kudos to the person who made this project!
Thankfully, the SAT no longer deducts points for wrong answers. But I agree, there's a big difference between testing and doing really great work.
I'm somewhat on the other end of this, where I excelled in school, graduated valedictorian, but didn't gain any meaningful experience with projects and such and had poor leadership skills all around.
I’ve known few exemplars like this one. But at least 2. One made a flight simulator for 737 in the backyard that was used regularly by airline pilots to train. The other made a complete discrete FM stereo transmitter, mounted his own radio later. He was 16, and it was the early 90. So all from books.
Both guys brutally failed in the first year in the University. They dis not like theory, they wanted to make.
So… i dunno. 2 reference points there.
Unless you aren't fit for traditional academic learning models.
I spent most of my young adulthood working on projects (not nearly as insanely technical as this! but) similar to this. But I dropped out of high school, didn't go to college, because none of them would teach me in a way, or a pace, that fit my learning disability or mental models. Luckily I had the drive to teach myself, and built a successful two-decade career, despite my parents and teachers telling me I'd fail and become homeless.
High school kids have insane potential, and can achieve truly amazing things. But often people disregard them and don't set them up for success. So many companies could hire really great engineers, even from high school, if they could just find the motivated ones and put them in a mentorship/apprenticeship program that aligned with their interests and ways of learning.
You really don’t want to see my pre-university grades.
I was on a mission, and I can’t do two things at once. So school was about efficiency. I got great grades wherever that took low effort. That only went so far.
After graduation, nowhere I wanted to be would have looked at me.
It took me a couple years after high school to find the right university, but my personal projects paid off.
Looking back, it was a gamble. But you don’t really choose those kinds of paths.
I dunno. I only succeeded as a kid academically because of literally my IQ not because I had grit learnt from my projects. I pathologically hated being told what to do so the determination to do my own projects did not translate into anything assigned to me.
Going from how many gifted children end up underperforming because they are made to do stupid things & then getting labeled as difficult or slow: a lot more then you'd think.
Being talented and gifted is generally not appreciated, not even in academia. Many of the most talented people never finish their education because academia is more about playing the game & having the grit (or lack of backbone?) to deal with the bullshit and do what you are told.
And tbf, the best engineers I know are not necessarily the most talented ones, but those that developed the grit to push through the bs.
This is an incredible achievement! I've been working in hardware design for 10 years. I've touched on most of what was covered here across various projects in my career, but never all at once. To have the discipline and motivation to carry a project like this through to completion is seriously impressive.
This guy is in high school yet has been CEO and what not according to his LinkedIn?
What makes you think he is in high school
He is a high school senior right now. He is one of my closes classmates and really devoted to such projects. It's mind blowing
Bear in mind he's "CEO" of the underwater MATE ROV team at Phillips Exeter Academy, and if you scroll down a bit, it says that Phillips Exeter Academy is giving him a high school diploma.
Thanks. That makes more sense!
The words "senior project". Which, fair enough, might mean different things in different parts of the world.
Not just any high school. https://exeter.edu/
Same high school as Zuck.
Yeah... Just checked and disclaimer I'm not trying to diminish OP's achievement which is huge but ... https://exeter.edu/admissions/financial-aid/tuition-costs/
Hilarious that there’s a separate sub-$1000 line item for books and supplies. If it’s that expensive, you can’t just throw in some pens and pencils with the tuition?
Yeah lol I was surprised it wasn't included in the 60k$/year tuition.
Also I must say, if I had that much money to spend in my future children education I totally would.
Possibly a tax thing?
...back in the day we had this partner who emigrated from undisclosed_balkan_country to the USA in the 90s. 20 years later his daugther in her teens gets $20k funding from the school principal, for her pet fashion project (not even STEM!). Her school is not even a top one, just a private school somewhere in major USA city.
On the contrary, even though we've had top marks in the top math school in the same country, we'd never ever hoped to get even $200 for a project. Were we good enough to build a computer - of course, it's not that hard once you get the basics, and once you've done x86 assembly in your early teens. But it was just impossible to even think about spending the money, or loosing them per se.
Exeter Philips school has quote "700 acres, 147 buildings, the world's largest high school library". And I'm sure also lots of engineering development facilities where you can actually get your hands dirty. I can imagine the progress had I found myself there by some miracle. This kid is absolute winner to be in it, but I bet his parents must have also won the lottery ticket, one way or another, cause UK education is crazy expensive.
Now, in order to not make this story super sad, let's admit that, even though we as schoolkids didn't have access to such campus and funding, by last year in school I could track music with FT2; build Linux kernel and write ASM/C/C++/Perl; operated a BBS; debugged the IE9 source with VXDs and all; took part in writing two demoscene productions, that we still proud of; and finally, but not lest being a bunch of smart kinds in their 20s we started a hosting company in 1998(or '99) which soon handled the amount of traffic which equaled that of the whole country. This all with no GPTs, no Google searches, not even forums that much back then. So of course, it matters, that you are not a dumbass, after all.
But nobody ever gave us the security to pursue dreams the way this kid does. And I'm absolutely convinced we could've put together a laptop or something along the line. I say put together, because a lot of these parts are easily available now, one click away, nothing like what it was back in the day. He's not producing the chips, neither the screen, neither putting elements together, but the chassis and kbd, and does some wiring. Of course - fascinating for a teenager to do, but you see, teenagers are not so stupid, and never were. And those in top schools are particularly bright and outpace many adults in many areas. From the images I can tell this is a school projects, so perhaps it took also a little mentoring to do it.
This always make me think about two things - it absolutely matters which school you are lucky to have gone to; and very likely all talent is lost soon after high-school, because... reasons.
yeah, it's a little bittersweet to see the adulation this is getting; I hope he has success in his academics and career, I got my first computer by dumpster diving parts.
Hits close to home. Apart from what was a family PC (terribly cheap), my main rig for a time was assembled via old junk the computer lab at school was done with but wasn't valuable enough (or fully functional) to say no when I asked if I could have it.
This is crazy. Hats off to you. My guess is you'll have recruiters knocking on your door yesterday, trying to grab you before the next one does. Whatever you do, don't let your talents go to waste (corporations can do that), and think about your long term success, not whatever they dangle in front of you for the short term. You're going places.
Thank you so much for the heartfelt advice! I'll keep that close to heart :)
Tip from an experienced EE: try to avoid middle-men recruiters at all cost. Go straight to the company you want to work for. Or better yet in your case: start your own company :p
By the way, you can tune boot times further. My print server board boots in 8 seconds to Debian 12 (bootloader + kernel + userspace).
I'm pretty sure that the current 20 seconds could be shrunk down to 14 or so.Pinebook Pro boots in about 10s to DE and that's RK3399. Pretty sure RK3588 can boot even faster, considering the advantage of PCIe/nvme storage that can run at > 3GiB/s. Software load times stop being a constraint at those speeds.
My Orange Pi 5 Plus boots to sway+firefox already open in about 15s and a lot of it is waiting for net being online.
This is one of those special HN posts that demonstrates outsized excellence on the author's behalf. Watched the video and I'm very impressed.
Truly appreciate it thank you so much!! I poured my life and soul into this haha.
You sure did!
This is really cool!
There are some obvious next steps for improving the polish on this, would you say you were more resource constrained, time constrained, or skill constrained?
For instance, did you put any thought into making flex PCBs to make the cable routing easier?
I also think the concept of a laptop with a removable wireless keyboard is brilliant, and I think your implementation is a lot cleaner than e.g. the Surface or the iPad's case-keyboards. If I had a laptop that did that, it would be my go-to travel machine. One less thing to cart around.
Hey! Thank you for the question. For sure, it's not a polished product and I don't mean for it to be. It works surprisingly well. (I've used it as my daily driver for school) With college apps and school work, the time was tight. I'd say that was the most limiting. Of course, resource and skill played its role. I did consider flex PCBs, but I didn't have the time to follow through with all the ambitions (i also wanted an FOC input sigh).
I'm honored that you think my keyboard implementation is nice! I put a lot of thought into it — truly. Oh btw the keyboard works just as well as a solo device. I've used the keyboard more than the computer in some ways. Thanks!
If you keep this idea alive (and I hope you do!), you might consider shrinking the keyboard battery and designing its docking configuration so that it automatically charges from the main battery when stored in the laptop. A 3 month keyboard battery capacity seems sort of excessive when its mechanically part of a machine that charges daily.
I think one of the limitations to the keyboard concept you have is that it complicates using the laptop base as a stand for the screen in a tablet configuration. Outside of tablets with fully detachable keyboards (e.g. the Surface or the iPad pro), I don't think anybody has a good design for that. Was a touchscreen ever a consideration for stretch goals or design for expansion?
Also loved the detachable keyboard (which has me fantasize about a detachable screen as well + external hdmi/displayport, as I hate the working positions I end up in with a laptop, so it'd be nice to be able to get a more comfortable setup in a hotel room etc. that still packages up to a laptop.
Regarding a laptop with a removable wireless keyboard, ZenBook Duo has that, although the touchpad is removed with the keyboard.
It also has two screens and its own stand, I use it as my travel machine.
Hmmm. That's also an interesting solution to the same problem. Although honestly, the scenario where I want to have a removable keyboard, I'm likely using an external display (probably a hotel TV), and a small wireless mouse is a lot easier to transport than a keyboard (and more ergonomic than a keyboard small enough for transport) so the extra screen and trackpad are sort of lost on me.
Holy. That's an achievement very few people can claim. Wonder if HN has a "hall of fame", a worthy entry.
You did the smart thing there with the SoM (for the uninitiated: power sequencing to individual parts of an SoC and its external components is an epic hassle to get right and that's assuming you actually have proper documentation - without it it's an utter pain), but how in hell did you get the high frequency stuff working out on what was likely your first or second try? This is IMHO where your work really shines.
USB-C, DisplayPort (at 4K to boot) and PCIe at modern speeds are all but black magic to most, this isn't digital any more, this is good old analog circuitry and physics at work that most people don't even learn in university any more.
Thank you so much — yes, that was the hardest part of this entire project! I spent 2 months getting eDP working (second PCB thankfully).
I had the honor of learning high speed signaling from the best. I met some super cool people from Silicon Valley and research universities (from past work, like the MUREX Ethernet Switch). The ZMK Firmware community too!
> from past work, like the MUREX Ethernet Switch
Just looked it up... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40694254 for those who want a direct link.
Jesus. Wish I had had even a fraction your talent at that age. Most impressive.
I truly appreciate your encouragement. I can only imagine how successful you are! Thank you!
I hardly know where to begin! This project is exceptional in every sense—a true masterpiece. Remarkably, its creator is still in high school, yet he’s already demonstrated brilliance beyond his years. The endorsements he’s received, the connections he’s begun to forge, and the incredible opportunities now within his reach are nothing short of extraordinary. As he himself put it, accomplishments like these are only possible when you believe deeply in your vision and persist relentlessly until the finish line. None of this would have been possible if he had given up before completing this remarkable work of art.
It’s posts like this, fueled by incredible community support, that make Hacker News not just great but unmatched.
With 2,000 points (and counting), this Show HN is currently ranked as the 4th-best Show HN of all time. If we exclude the #1 post (this upvotes itself)—which isn’t a true project—this post would be the 3rd-best of all time. Who knows? By tomorrow, it may surpass 2,741 points and claim the #1 spot outright.
Outstanding work, Bryan. All the best.
Thank you redbell! It truly means a lot. I'm incredibly grateful of the reception and the support from everyone. HN <3
I'll just echo the amazement and congratulations of all the other comments. I do have a question though - your post stated "The hardest class I’ve taken so far was quantum mechanics in my junior spring term." Kudos to your educational system that allowed you to take quantum mechanics as a junior in high school - it looks like it clearly provided you a framework that allowed you to excel. Without giving away your privacy, is this some sort of special program where you live, or is it a standard opportunity?
Again, just gobsmacked by this entire project.
He goes to Phillips Exeter Academy, where Zuckerberg once matriculated. Students' voices are heard through the Harkness method of teaching. There is plenty of opportunity for students to grow curricularly (e.g.,dynamic chaos theory in math, senior projects, though not required ...) and extra-curricularly (e.g. competition robotics, physics, bio,chem clubs, etc ...) which may not be a norm in most public or even private schools.
This is a follow-up to my comment above (since I can no longer edit it):
> By tomorrow, it may surpass 2,741 points and claim the #1 spot outright.
Indeed! I just woke up to find that the post has got 2,742 points which officially make it the best Show HN of all time! You can see the full list here: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=show+hn
Byran, you now have probably the best C.V. you can use for any job and you should be proud of yourself.
Congratulations!
Thank you so so much!! I’m shocked and incredibly grateful. HN <3
Just for amusement purposes (and in no way to diminish this amazing success), the most-upvoted Show HN remains:
Show HN: This up votes itself - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902 - March 2012 (82 comments)
But that one had the unfair advantage of, er, upvoting itself. Also, it was meta, so the upvoters were on crack (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
Byran's has reached #2, which makes it the most-upvoted in 13 years!
Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t get into MIT, and then I see people like this exist
I’m pretty sure it’d take me 7 hard years of studying electronics / hardware / linux to get his level
Impressive!
Suggestion: It would be nice to include a price list on the article.
This project is impressive as heck, but aside from being intellectually out-of-reach for most kids, it would be financially challenging as well. Last I looked, CNC aluminum blocks were well out of the reach of 99.9% of kids (but that was decades ago; perhaps prices went down).
For people wanting to follow in those footsteps, it'd be nice to know which things cost $5, which $50, $500, or $5000. Just that kind of intuition is helpful.
Looks like the cnc milling was done by a shop - jlccnc.com
So there's probably a price there, but it's probably well under $1k
Price list would be cool to have
it's not as expensive as it looks, if you don't count time. CNC alu and the display would be the biggest costs. other carrier board projects use 3d printing over CNC, but the display/bandwidth is kinda what makes this novel so a lower res wouldn't make sense
really hoping Byran's excellent writeup helps encourage others. SoMs have lowered the barrier to entry and birthed a ton of SBC/carrier communities, but most of their tribal knowledge is buried in discord servers
Always fun to read an article like this, for humility's sake.
Wow! And I'm guessing if he attempts a 2nd edition, it'll probably be even thinner, lighter, and faster!
Oh my god! Jeff — huge fan and subscriber!! Thank you for your words of encouragement :). Your videos have been a huge source of inspiration for me.
Very nice. Wish there were faster SOMs than the 3588 but maybe in a year or two.
Looks like an MIT admissions portfolio project. Don’t know if it fits the uniqueness category for it but I guess the quality of the end product makes it good enough.
Admittedly this isn’t fully open source like the Novena or the Reform but I doubt adcomms care. I just wish I was rich enough and skilled enough to be able to spend $4.5k on a neat project like this.
Thanks for your suggestions and criticism! Much appreciated. Which aspect of it (aside from the SoM, which I admittedly do not have the R&D to make in this timescale) isn't open-source? I'd love to hear your thoughts. The Novena and Reform are amazing pieces of engineering, but I believe they sacrifice the portability and looks for repairability which some people certainly prefer. I wanted to aim for something that a non-technical consumer might look and say "hmm, nice laptop!" and not think it came out of the matrix or built it myself.
In terms of college, still waiting :)
Just skimmed the YouTube video and I'm blown away as well ... anytime my ego needs to get checked, I just scroll through HN posts. Truly impressive
Thanks to the work of the community the RK3588 is also on the right track regarding mainline support, severly reducing the fear of turning into unmaintained kernel hell. https://gitlab.collabora.com/hardware-enablement/rockchip-35...
So how long is the trip to Earth from your home planet? And do you plan on staying a while or are you just here for 6 months to humiliate us with your superintelligence?
Sick! Finally someone posting something that puts the “hacker” in HN.
Love the parts research you did.
Thank you so much!
This may be the coolest thing I’ve seen this year. Wait, it’s January? This may be the coolest thing I’ve seen this year and last.
And possibly the year before.
Well, well done. Good luck to you!
Thank you so much for your kind words!
Let's go! I'm so proud of you, Byran!! Imagine your teacher gets hit in the eye with a bottle cap, the contents of the drink fry your laptop, and you just build your own. This may not have been the motivation, but I'm honored at your resiliency, lol. You never cease to amaze me! Keep going!
Hey Bryan, great work and very inspiring. This has me meta curious about how a project like this is possible. Besides the support from your school, I imagine that your parents have been a big part of your success?
Is your mainboard the same as the CM3588 carrier board [1] that has been re-layout to match the form factor you wanted or did you have to make other modifications?
The part I am most interested in is the 'powertrain' and how it manages battery charging.
[1] https://wiki.friendlyelec.com/wiki/index.php/CM3588_NAS_Kit#...
I actually spent quite some time trying to build a custom driver for a custom screen for my Framework 13, only to burn the screen driver.
Very impressed by what you have done here. Kudos to you on achieving designing and building a whole laptop!
Thank you so much! If you'd like to discuss further, please let me know! My email is in the website. I have a Framework 16 and have tons of ideas. Never got around to it though. (I also burned a few screens, and had 3 as backup haha).
Looks good. Could be a small step to my vision for a dock dependent palm sized pc with high powered cpu connected by a single USB C with no other ports except for micro sd. And backed up by a mini battery for power stability on low watt chargers.
Thanks! Have you taken a look at the Khadas Mind [1]? Super similar to what you're talking about with the handheld PC.
[1]: https://www.khadas.com/product-page/mind
Wow. Precisely what I have been looking for. This is great. And mind 2 is even better.
A huge congratulations to Bryan, a wonderful achievement and a remarkable result! Keep it up Bryan!
It's lovely to see HN so nice and friendly, keep it up guys!
Bryan, thanks for publishing, this is great work. I'm curious if this this build could fit and swap a 13.3 E-ink screen with display board. Some open source hardware synergy with https://github.com/Modos-Labs/Glider/tree/main
I'm curious how the USB-C connectors are made to the outside of the enclosure.
What I've found is that it's a bad idea to use USB extension cables; these can introduce bit errors if e.g. you copy large amounts of data (order of terabytes). It's much better to insert a USB drive directly into a carrier board, but this is not always physically possible.
It's almost standard to have the USB-C have extra wiggle-room (around 1mm or so). Then, the housing is 1mm past the USB-C connector. That's how the casings are made so that when you stick the connector in, it's flush or nearly so.
I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
> Then, the housing is 1mm past the USB-C connector.
Yes, this is often the case but sometimes the USB-C connectors are on the same side of the board where you also need to plug in some cables that you need internally (maybe even other USB devices). Thus the option of letting an USB-C port stick out on one side of the enclosure is not always available.
> I agree with USB extension cables concerns too! The error would increase depending on the quality (impedance, power, etc.)
Yes, and the user of your device (who doesn't see the internal cable) will assume that they can plug in their own cable, so you'll have two cables.
How much of the laptop is open Source.
How about the embedded software? Probably not. This is OK as I understand this project is a huge achievemnt. Thank YOU
I've always thought it would be good for hard drive software ( embedded software on the actual drive or SSD ) to be open source. My thinking on such a situation is such a project could start with a storage device from maybe 5 years more more ago - as in my opinion the software would be a less technological challenge. (( I mean take an existing already manufactured working storage device ( ssd or hard drive ) and replace the embedded commercial software with open source software. This would remove the technological barrier of actually constructing the hard drive hard. ))
Yup, all the software except the blobs for the SoC, display FW, and trackpad FW (since it's COTS) are open source! If I wanted to have those open-source, the entire machine would take a huge performance hit. I think of striking a balance.
The entire linux install is OSS, the keyboard is in ZMK, and the EC firmware is written in Arduino.
Which high school is teaching quantum mechanics for juniors? Is this like a crazy private school?
> Established in 1781, it is America's sixth-oldest boarding school
>...
> Exeter is one of the nation's wealthiest boarding schools, with a financial endowment of $1.6 billion as of June 2024, and houses the world's largest high school library.
>...
>Its list of notable alumni includes U.S. President Franklin Pierce, U.S. Senator Daniel Webster, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and three winners of the Nobel Prize.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Exeter_Academy
Thanks, makes sense.
This is fantastic! I hope to follow in your footsteps as soon as a decent RISC-V board can supplant that RK3588.
I'd love to see one; hope to see that day come!!
This is really cool ! Kudos for getting this started. I wonder if initiatives such as one laptop per child could have been effective with this kind of approach. Eitherway I hope this project goes along way as I could see its application not only at home but also in developing nations.
Hey you didn’t mine the rare earth minerals! This ain’t really from scratch!
Just joking, incredibly impressive!
Congratulations, this is awesome. I worked on medical devices where I did both hardware and software and it is really hard. I wish you the best and I really hope you'll continue to use your skills for good and open products.
Building the laptop is impressive given his age. I would be hard pressed to duplicate this feat even with the time and money to allocate to it.
Honestly though, I think the maturity shown in his write-up impressed me even more.
Inspirational.
This is one of the coolest, most inspiring projects I've seen anywhere - wow! Seeing you and nrp connect here in the comments was so cool; just the start, I'm sure.
---
It was neat to read through the progress log (1), which begins,
> "It was around 1AM. I wrote up the mission goal (2) and went to sleep at 2AM. The start",
and ends:
> "With the YouTube video and blog post almost done, I hope this isn’t the last of anyon_e. But rather, the start of a trailblazing journey."
This project is the epitome of MUREX Electrical's mission statement, "attempt the impossible":
1: https://www.byran.ee/progress2: https://www.byran.ee/posts/mission, which links to (3)
3: https://github.com/murexrobotics/electrical?tab=readme-ov-fi...
Man!! This is sooo impressive. I did a little research on making my own motherboard (not even for a laptop) and didn’t get anywhere nearly as far.
I just want to throw money at you! We need an open source laptop!!
Thank you!! After schooling is done :)
I clicked through dreading that it's got a Raspberry Pi at its core, but no, RK3588 (same as MNT is using now)! Very nice. Ultra kudos for making it truly open source. Great work!! <3
Thank you! Yup, Raspberry Pi's great an all, but the RK3588's performance is king (and RPi would've also saved me many nights of head-banging at the software).
The name comes from Standard Model in Particle Physics. Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek's talk is really interesting.
Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djb0T9COjD4
Article by Wilczek on Anyons
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24936902
My vocabulary hasn't got appropriate compliments - so I'd just say congratulations to the author, you've got serious talent, hard earned skills, and great mentors.
Just commenting so I can't come back later and claim I wasn't stealing lots of ideas from the author for my own project; the hinge problem, keycaps, the mainboard designed on KiCAD, are all interesting.
Framework team, hire this guy, when it's legal :)
More suited to working with MNT Research[0] which makes actual certified open source hardware[1] :)
[0] https://mntre.com/reform.html
[1] https://certification.oshwa.org/de000017.html
It looks like https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next and the anyon_e use the same SoC and similar parts (e.g. Cherry MX ULP switches). I wonder how much of that is they're the only parts that would be put in such laptops?
Dear @Lenovo
Please hire this guy to help you make the thinkpad's keyboard to do wireless magic with the trackpoint and the mouse buttons include. Thanks
This is an awesome project! Thanks for taking time to document this. What's next on your plate? How do we follow you?
Obviously super cool and kudos like everyone else in here.
Feel like you could make a pared down version of this with commodity parts outside of the chassis if you aren't going for a flagship competitor. I guess you could also just buy a $20 chromebook, too. Maybe...you could fit a nice rockchip SOM inside a chromebook??
Wow this is fantastic, great job! I hope this heralds a new era of HW engineering.
P.S. @Hello9999901 any relation to "Bunnie" Huang?
Haha I wish, but no. Just surname coincidence.
Most of the older LED display have standard 30 pin or 40 pin connection. Lacking standard is keyboard connectors. Most standard are battery and fans.
Maybe laptop should have two layers or parts.One for Motherboard and memory and another for connectors, fans, power supply, battery etc. Then we can have more standard even if a little thicker.
Mad respect for this build. That's well beyond what many professionals in this field are willing to attempt
I was impressed this is open source, then impressed it was done by one person, then impressed it only took 6 months, and eventually somehow impressed again that it was a _high schooler_. My mind is blown. Kudos for managing to do something insane like this. Very inspirational.
That's impressive.
I'd be really happy with myself if I just built a case and put off-the-shelf components in it.
Amazin! what's the total cost for you?
Hanging around 5 grand. Unfortunately the R&D process was rough! The R&D BOM is linked below, feel free to take a look. If you were to build it, I'd estimate it costing around 1500 dollars (or less).
Thank you for sharing!
Back in my day, I thought spending $50 in wood shop was rough.
Yeah. My "budget" for similar scale project (sw, fw, hw, enclosure co-design) in high school 24 years ago was about $200. I'd have loved to have these kinds of resources/lab tools access. I even made [private, so that tool makers did not patch the holes/obfuscate] cracks for Eagle, HI-TECH C compilers and Solid Edge, to have some nice SW tools to work with, without arbitrary limits.
But I sure had plenty of time, and it was fun to always be learning something new. Simpler times when it was out of reach to have anything done for me, like prototype PCBs and let alone assembly. :)
These days are absolutely crazy in comaprison, with all the ready-made SBCs or SBC modules, and free software, and like $4 PCB prototyping services and CNC machining, 3D printing, $15 powerful FPGAs, $7 fully Linux capable 1GHz Cortex-A7 tiny computer modules for bread-boards, and cheap components from China... Still remember going to a shop buying single unit amounts of SMD resistors and capacitors over the counter. Now I can get 4000 unit SMD sample book for a few $ and never think about it again. Even my 2000 self would be able to afford it without much trouble. It's kind of a force multiplier easily available even for high-schoolers.
VERY impressive. the laptop looks great. wish you could manufacture and sell the thing, i'd consider one :)
Not to take anything away from this amazing achievement, but if you want a similar open-source laptop, also based on an RK3588, that will actually be manufactured and sold, check out the MNT Reform Next: https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/mnt-reform-next
Maybe, depending on reception! I geared it so it could be manufactured at a semi-small scale. Unfortunately, I don't have the capacity to make them myself :(. Thank you for the interest!
How is the idle power consumption of RK3588? I bet it's pretty high, I'd expect more than 1W.
I have a board with old MT6572, it idles at 270mW with working CPU, even less when in semi-sleep (turns off CPU and wakes up every half a second).
Here are some numbers from Orange Pi 5 Plus: https://xnux.eu/log/088.html
That's from early upstreaming, and for the whole board. But I can't imagine it being much lower these days.This is amazing, love the ESP32 watchdog controller. Had a question about the keyboard - would it make sense for the keyboard to be hardwired to the laptop via USB-C and detachable to have one battery source?
Just opened Youtube and your video was on top of my home page! I will watch it later today.
Congrats on the awesome project! Actually, I think 'well done' is more fitting since this must have taken a ton of work and willpower!
This is what we come here for!
Extremely impressive work! I'll keep an eye on this, building my own laptop sounds like fun, provided I can get all the parts for reasonable prices here in Germany
A seriously impressive piece of work, especially only in 6 months. Bravo! :)
well done, thanks for documenting and congratulations on completing the project!
Truly appreciate it. I spent many weeks afterwards documenting the steps as thoroughly as I could. My email's on the site if anyone needs to reach out, as well. :)
An amazing challenge you set for yourself and pulled it off in 7 months is admirable, commendable and exceptional.
How much did it cost to make this open-source laptop? My wild guess is it's around $500-750.
This is so, so cool. Reminds me of Clockwork Pi stuff. Thanks for sharing :)
I’d like to follow up to see how it handles heat or excessive heat if any
I played Minecraft (epic gaming) with friends for a few hours, no problem! The massive heat capacity of the copper + heatpipe + active fan is good enough.
It might be a stupidly specific question, but may I ask what is the screen resolution and how many FPS you got? I am asking because I've been considering buying an Orange PI with RK3588 for gaming purposes.
Absolutely brilliant work. For an individual at high school to make something like this, it's an epic achievement. Gives hope to us all.
The project is outstanding but the fact that you've documented everything AND did a video about it speaks volumes about what you'll achieve if you keep at it
So if you want to install windows on this, do you have to add some secure bios feature? Is it possible to have access to that without big license fees?
You can just patch Windows to remove the check. It's not like any critical components of Windows are encrypted.
Unbelievably impressive. Such a wide breadth of skills and expertise needed to pull this off. And the final product looks great! Kudos to you!
This is amazing and I applaud your efforts. Perhaps the age of truly owning your peripherals, inside and out, is upon us.
I've long been disappointed that we've never really gotten standard laptops, in the way that there are ATX standard desktops.
The laptop form factor hasn't really changed in decades. It's a rectangle with a screen in the lid and a keyboard in the base. Below the keyboard is a battery and a system board. The battery has to be replaced when it wears out and the system board when it becomes obsolete, but then why aren't they both fungible parts? If you take any arbitrary ATX PC from many years ago, you can replace the system board/CPU/memory/storage with modern ones and carry on using the same chassis, screen, power supply and keyboard provided they meet the required specs for the new parts (and they often do).
So why can't I do this with the average laptop, instead of having to replace $200-$300 worth of perfectly good parts or more each time I want an upgrade?
I think my laptops have been split between mechanical and hardware EOL. I don't think the mechanicals would ever go for two lifetimes. But I actually take mine around places and am a little clumsy.
Mechanical what? The keys? There are people who have had the same keyboard for 30 years. You don't have to design things to be disposable junk.
That's even part of the advantage. If you want a higher quality chassis made of rubber-padded metal that can survive being dropped off a table then you'd only have to buy it once.
No one personally buys a Toughbook new for home use.
Because you don't pay that much for something to be durable if the durability will just be defeated by obsolescence. Whereas if you could upgrade it to later generation processors, clumsy people would save themselves a lot of trouble to buy the chassis once.
I guess we're talking from a completely different range within spectrum of laptop computing. Hinges, shells, flex cables, power ports, etc. all tend not last longer than hardware end of relevance for me unless it's one of rugged ones, but my use case is to throw into a bag and strategically yeet onto another luggage kinds.
OP you are incredibly talented. I believe very few people on earth could do something like that at your age and deliver. Congratulations !
Besides the enormous effort, what did the part cost?
If you can do something like this, then you'd be great at Factorio! :)
On a less joking note, I wonder if I'm decent at Factorio, I could learn this.
not only that, you can use this laptop to _play_ factorio!
Super cool work! One question: How much does JLC want for such a low volume cnc part of reasonable complexity like the laptop shell?
Congratulations Byran, this is really impressive work!
aight, mate. that's definitely impressive. no, not only impressive, i believe it can help you land a great job somewhere.
Extremely cool project and congratulations on having the mental wherewithal to see it through, and in such short order!
Pretty awesome. As someone who deals with Rockchip stuff a lot, I am going to take a look at the software part for sure.
This is one of the coolest projects I've seen here in a long time. Kudos! Your dedication to completion is admirable.
Went all the way through the article to be surprised at you saying:
> I ran out of time
And then realized this was a ... high school project!?
Way to go, amazing work!
came here to shit on this project, that there was no way it was open source down to the ME, like a raptor or framework computer. absolutely required IMO to be considered open source.
i didn't find any firwmware in the repo (didn't look exhaustively) but I did find that the SoC this is based on is supported by https://github.com/edk2-porting/edk2-rk3588 .
AFAICT the azoteq trackpad has proprietary firmware, so if that's true then i won't call this laptop fully open source. but from a practical perspective, i am much less worried about that then the boot path.
love the keyboard, wish i could test drive it!
so instead, i was left very, very impressed!
This is what the internet was invented for.
Thank you!
Also the 3588 chips can run LLMs on the NPU.
Not quite llama.cpp level easy but definitely doable.
For 7B class models the speed is usable
Incredible work
Fantastic work. How did you learn all of the EE and low level programming needed to pull this off?
Have you thought about finally adding a split ergonomic keyboard to a laptop instead of the standard slab?
That's a sick idea too! Wouldn't be too hard. I'll keep that in mind never thought of it before even though I've used my fair share.
There was a very old ThinkPad design that allowed the keyboard to take more space than the width of the laptop, but that was also bad old non-split layout
But at least not wasting existing left/ right side space and having a gap in the middle instead would be a nice start
Or maybe even get to the best of the portable/non-portable worlds: since the keyboard is wireless, you could detach 2 halves of the keyboard and place them on a desk at ergonomic shoulder distance
And this would allow you to also ergonomically position the laptop itself for a better screen position - vertical, just like your desktop monitor
ThinkPad: https://youtu.be/RRHFi_l9UR0
The 701 "butterfly"? It was cool for its time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_ThinkPad_701
Holy hell. This is so cool ~ an admirer
While this is impressive, how come you can't make your website scroll without stutter?
because the guy spent more time shipping the product than iterating on the website that describes the product. (Deadly sin of every startup wannabe)
Genuinely incredible work. Looking forward to seeing what other cool projects you do in the future.
FYI, none of my engineer friends in the U.S. can pull this off. This is truly impressive.
Well done!
Mental note, a commercial laptop of similar specs should never cost more than $4,673.81.
That was the R&D cost. According to OP, the cost of building one of these is around $1500.
my guess is when doing college applications, you figured you had to do something special to get into a good college, so you decided to do this lol
Doesn't matter why, pretty sick. I'm studying physics myself, so its pretty inspiring to see you do this
Thank you so much! The story behind the laptop was quite interesting — my friends and I were going to an athletics event far away, and he brought up the idea that I should make a laptop for my senior project as a joke (our school offers 1 free class for a "project", graciously funded by the school). I said "hell yeah." That's pretty much how this came to be, college didn't play much of a role imho. And best of luck studying physics!
nice work!
how much was it to get the case milled?
Thanks! Around $300 total from JLCCNC with 6061 aluminum, bead blasting, and matte black anodization (top, midplate, bottom).
huh, actually not that bad
I only would regard this as from scratch if they smelt they own foundry
I wish I had your talent, that’s impressive! And it took you 6 months only.
Heck of a high school senior project, my hat's off to you.
I might have missed it but how much did this cost in total?
amazing job!!
Very impressive work, and also nice video editing. Congrats.
Nicely done, huge amount of grit and craftsmanship.
i'm playing around with your onshape document and learning a lot of things for my own projects. thanks! (also, amazing work of course)
What's the BOM?
Thanks for the question. I'm working on compiling the BOM in these few days. A preliminary R&D BOM is here (apologies, it's in Google Sheets): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17arbJvPqW6koqEJwAzne...
This seems to list some components multiple times in a versioned way, did I get it right that this is rather a whole list of components you've bought while working on this project rather than the final list of the components needed to assemble the notebook you've built?
gg byran well played
Anyone know the amount of RAM available for the laptop?
Personally I'm a bit disappointed that it's based on Rockchip.
If someone can come up with low cost open source laptop with RPi compute module 5 with 16GB RAM I think it will selling like hot cakes given the software and hardware eco-system that exist round RPi [1]. It just that the compute module has yet to come with 16GB RAM unlike the normal RPi 5 but it will probably just around the corner [2].
[1] Compute Module 5:
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/compute-module-5/
[2] New 16GB Raspberry Pi 5 on sale now at $120 (191 comments):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42642873
No hardware sell like hot cakes relative to the pain and cost incurred.
Care to explain?
I think 32 is the limit for the motherboard.
> Personally I'm a bit disappointed that it's based on Rockchip.
Why would you?
You mentioned Raspberry where, compared to the competition, you pay more for the name while they deliver even the same capabilities or more bang for the buck... Don't get me wrong. Huge Raspi fan here. I have 3 models laying around here, because they are the easiest to purchase. But the competition is not to be overlooked.
Also, aren't the compute modules strandarized or compatible? So it should be interchangeable, no?
Because it's the eco-system for software, hardware, firmware, drivers, books, documentation, blogs, papers, training modules, etc. It's the same reasons Nvidia thriving for ML/AI while the rest are playing catch up.
Amazing work. How much did it end up costing?
Good evening sir Bryan, a 15 year old with you... Can you teach me how you made the PC, please... Last year I was able to create a mobile application running on a smartphone.. this year I planned on creating a mobile phone and a PC... Please can you teach me.... I don't know anything about designing PCB's tho..
This is some seriously impressive stuff.
Amazing project.
Congratulations on a beautiful build!
some people just have what it takes and all you can do is watch and appreciate. really awesome!
Awesome work, the future is bright
> runs +7B LLMs
+7B means "additional 7B"
if you want to say "more than" or "at least", you say "7B+"
Cool project. Keep building!
wow, this is way more awesome than I could have thought. Very well done.
Astounding, well done.
I'm honestly rather envious. I guess my 'sour grape' is that the lack of funds and opportunity for me to do this is what lead me to go into software and then on into Machine Learning which I do think turned out for the best. Making electronics like this, while still difficult, is far easier than it used to be and I do enjoy it as a hobby in a way that I probably would not have as a career.
It is no doubt an incredible achievement. I don't like the 'anyone can do this' when that clearly isn't true - it comes across as a humble brag and seems to be a strong part of hustle culture. I would much prefer 'anyone with a decent amount of money and a high enough intelligence can do this', or 'this is now far easier to do than it has ever been'.
I do like the idea of MIT being a beacon to the best and brightest and I do think that the lack of a level playing field means that many otherwise talented people miss out on that opportunity. Perhaps what I would really like is for the world to have more MITs but I don't know if that is possible and I worry that attempts to do this would undermine the quality of MIT. So perhaps I should be content that MIT exists as is and that some people get to go there even if I did not - we all benefit from the fruits of their labor. My university was a top tier university renowned for harsh grading and I was still rather disappointed by the quality of my peers and I worry that the quality at universities in general has since declined further.
Cheap and high quality small batch electronics and hardware fabrication is rapidly changing the world in a way that I think few people understand. It used to be that you had to have a decent size company to do this kind of stuff and that company needed capital investment, layers of management etc. So the cost of bringing a widget into the world was really expensive, risky, and took a long time. The only way to make that money back was to do things in bulk and sell a lot of them which meant you had to be sure there was a sufficient target market. These days a single person can design and fabricate a single item for comparatively very little. And if they want to make it accessible to the rest of the world there is no need to build a factory, just upload the plans. If it's a popular design in all likelihood someone in China will produce it in bulk at commodity prices. The speed of commodification has become so fast that it's practically instant. There is a bit of a phenomena going on at the moment with 'high tech overproduction' where it is claimed that China is intentionally over producing high tech goods to undermine Western markets - it's my view that they're ahead of us on the commodification curve. As manufacturing also manufactures the manufacturing tools the commodification process is a self reinforcing cycle.
I am envious too. When I was young, even younger than Bryan's age, I had grown a strong interest in electronics. But I was limited by a lot of things:
1. Breadboards are the best thing I can use, to create a PCB, I can only rely on manually soldering connections on a general-purpose PCB (the kind of PCB with many holes). And I had never heard of EDA at that time (~2008-12ish)
2. Being raised in a family where my parents never went to college, they can't give me any help and advice in study, let alone the funding. It took me 2 years of begging to convince my parents to buy me a computer, which already costs them 2 months of wages.
3. In the small town in middle west China where I grown up, I searched every corner of the library, only to find 2 or 3 books that are related to electronics, and I spent all my time after school studying them. I can't find anyone who are also interested in the same things I was doing, I was all on my own.
What happened then?
1. I studied hard on the only books I found, and learned about C51 microcontrollers, and that introduced me to the world of programming
2. I took a selective examination and went to one of the most prestigious high school in the capital of the province (Changsha, Hunan), and because of my intests in programming, I took part in olymptics in informatics, which is competitive algorithmic contest, and got the entrance to one of the best universities of China
3. After graduation and 5 years of working as a professional programmer, I was finally able to give myself a good environment for what I loved as a kid, something people like Bryan would already have when they were born. I bought myself 3d printing machines, and learned EDA and found JLC, PCBWays are so helpful.
I really wish I could have all these when I was young, but I think I'll give myself all the things my parents can't, and make myself a kid again, to learn and to play.
> A highly integrated, high end, open source laptop.
Not sure what’s meant by “high end” here. Performance is a rather important aspect, and the RK3588 this uses will make it slower than almost every laptop on the market. Practically all are twice as fast (both single- and multi-core), most are 3–5× multi-core, and the best approach 7× (paired with 2.5× single-core).
Looking at Lenovo India, they sell three laptops that are slower multi-core and maybe slower single-core (running Celeron N4020 or Athlon Silver 7120U); after that, they’re all at least twice as fast, in both single- and multi-core benchmarks.
(I’m simplifying to PassMark’s single-/multi-core scores, using <https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Rockchip+RK3588&id=...> and such.)
From <https://www.byran.ee/posts/creation>: “In many aspects, the Rockchip RK3588 is the fastest consumer-procurable chip on the market.” As someone not involved in these spaces, this was my vague impression, but it still ends up disappointing if you simply can’t get good performance for a project like this because only bigger companies can buy the better-performance things. It’s an extremely impressive project, but unfortunately will be rendered not viable for many—probably most—people for this one reason. That makes me sad. I wish they’d sell us the good stuff.
I suspect that utmost performance was not the main focus of the project. Nevertheless, the complexity of the project would not be different if a different CoM was to be adopted. Even creating a custom CoM doesn't seem that much more complicated, as the daughter board is as complicated since it already needs to handle high-frequency traces as well. Super impressive project!
There's a way to phrase this comment better, which reflects sadness on the facts of the market, and isn't a kind of attack on the author.
Super impressive!
Dude this is great, you not only build a cool thing, but also you know how to preach about it! Very proud, hope you do great things. Don't let the spark die.
Brabo.
Holly crap. This man is the messiah of tech. Keep going my guy. That is so impressive. I look forward to what you do next.
wowww very cool
damn it looks clean
Wow I didn’t even know this was possible.. some people are just on another level.
What in the world, almost half of the comments here spelled his name wrong.
You're right! I hadn't noticed that until you pointed it out and I'm sure most readers didn't either.
Hopefully Byran doesn't mind that glitch in this otherwise rapturous and justly triumphant reception :)
I feel like this thread is helping HN to reorganize itself around its proper purpose.
super cool
Holy fuck
People like Byran live amongst us
Making their own laptops but from SCRATCH
Imagine how good this man’s pasta carbonara tastes
Thank you so much!
Hopefully this new hardware development framework you just released can help me avoid being spied on by the National Security Agency's Tailored Access Operations gang and other scary creatures. True, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. But I intend to build a billion dollar company that can fit entirely on a laptop (AI models are my employees). I don't want the pesky U.S. government or other bad hackers being privy to my advanced technology and corporate secrets.
Thank you for your service to the free and open source principle. Richard Stallman and Eric Steven Raymond would be proud.
At which point was the mental map created within Obsidion and did you really need it?
You are clearly a very clever person and you do not need a web app wiggly graph thingie to throw ideas together.
There's no need to gild a lily!
Please keep the faith - I love that you are focussed on being altruistic and sharing your skills to the benefit of everyone.
Thank you.