Earl - rugged android tablet with epaper display for $250

[chicken]

Any thoughts on this?
http://www.meetearl.com/

Certainly an interesting gadget that I actually might buy. And the site is showing some prototypes. However I'm really skeptical about the price point.

For $250 they promise:
- 6" e-ink display
- IR touch screen
- GPS/GLOSNASS
- WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC
- Accelerometer, gyro, magnetometer, pressure, temperature, etc. pp
- FRS/GMRS/MUR two-way radio
- FM/AM/SW/LW radio
- solar charging
- Water/dust/shock/mud-proof. IP67 rated (claiming full submersion in 3 feet of water for 30 mins!!!)
.. and more

Also interesting to see that they skipped the usual crowd-funding sites. In essence calling good old pre-order on their own website "crowd-funding".

[Recyclojunk64]

Looks pretty good in terms of features. I might consider getting one as well if anyone else thinks its genuine. So is that green pcb in the last video (on the updates page) their prototype? Hopefully they keep the header for that RS232 port on the final product. Any idea if it can run Open-Street-Maps?

Only one day left though. Better make up your mind soon.

[AndreasF]

... So is that green pcb in the last video (on the updates page) their prototype? ...

The green one with the antenna board sticking out says "Freescale [obscured-by-SD-card]ools", so I guess the answer is no.

It is a nice concept, and the update rate in the first video looks quite impressive for e-ink. It clearly fills a niche, so if they manage to pull it off, it could do well.

[Rasz]

Saw this in May (my comments are on the bottom of this link):

http://hamgear.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/turning-your-smartphone-into-a-2-way-radio/#comments

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bricomnj/dxb-walkie-talkie-dock-for-iphone-android-and-blac


Tablet costs ~$60 in retail (china) with 800x480 crappy LCD. UHF/VHF Handheld with LCD and everything this product claims is another $40-60 in retail. GPS receiver chip $5-10.

Price point is definitely doable, but only if you  manage to sell a lot of them, otherwise it wont be economical. I seem to remember they are planning to sell some sort of service on top of it, charge for additional maps and so on. Maybe thats an angle.

[Recyclojunk64]

Specifications:   Android 4.1 • Flexible 6" E-ink screen (1024x768) • Sunlight viewable with lunar lantern mode • Glove friendly IR touchscreen • Waterproof shell • Kickstand • Solar charging • i.MX 6 DualLite 1GHz Cortex A9 • 1GB ram • 16GB memory + microSD • Wifi b/g/n • BT 4.0 • ANT+ • NFC • FRS/GMRS/MURS • GPS + GLONASS • Accelerometer • Gyroscope • Magnetometer • Temperature • Barometer • Humidity • Anemometer • AM/FM/SW/LW • IR blaster • 20+ hour battery • 3.5mm TRRS headphone/microphone jack • 20" usb lanyard • 303 grams (10.8 oz) • 183mm x 121mm x 15mm (7.2" x 4.75" x 0.6")

What I'd like to know is how they have those output ports (particularly the headphone jack), and yet it's mud-proof. I'm guessing a rubber plug maybe. Also, how will the long-wave receiver work without an external aerial?

I guess it looks alot more feasible than the Mu Thermal imaging camera though. I might actually purchase one of these. Hopefully it can be modified to transmit on the standard CB UHF band.

[chicken]

Here's an update on that project (it got funded with $535K from 1731 backers)
http://www.meetearl.com/updates/

To put it mildly, I have a few concerns (we need a "red flag" emoticon)

Looking at the caption-less images one would think they are already in production, however from the text it seems like these are snaps from a factory tour. They just figured out the manufacturer - after it didn't work out with an "engineering firm in Bangalore".

But don't worry, they are "really pushing to start production sometime in August."

The following statement makes me VERY doubtful about their original claims about ruggedness (waterproof!) and unique feature set, sounds more like a generic cheapo android tablet to me:

The beauty of our new partnership is that once the final hardware design is ready for manufacturing, their contracted factory can start production immediately.

Oh, and they just "decided to build the RF system as a separate module which will allow [..] to use the base system with several different configurations". Are they related with the Mu folks?

Being from Seattle they at least know their Software craft, no?

Using our specifications, their team will build and load Earl with a special version of Android adapted for E-ink with our software and provide our developers with an SDK for building applications.

It's just a bunch of apps I guess.. can't be much harder than the social apps and web sites the team built before. Should be done with in a month or so.



I really hate to bash this project, as the product idea is great and for that price I would buy it in a heartbeat. But oh the naivety of the young.

[ivan747]

Sounds like a good device to take to any trip and with GPS and GLONAS you can even use it for geocaching.

THe problem I see with this is that e-ink *should* mean it has a very long battery life, but I know how much a badly optimised OS can do to battery life. I don't trust they are gonna make it low power, and that would defeat the whole purpose of e-ink.

[chicken]

An update on this ambitious project:
http://www.meetearl.com/updates/

Looks like somebody sat them down and told them that hardware is a bit more involved than web apps. Start of production now scheduled for January 2014 instead of last week.