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Novena: Open Source Hardware laptop launches!

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Open Source Hardware laptop from Bunnie has launched!  Hackaday reports:

[Bunnie] Launches the Novena Open Laptop


Today [Bunnie] is announcing the launch of the Novena Open Laptop. When we first heard he was developing an open source laptop as a hobby project, we hoped we’d see the day where we could have our own. Starting today, you can help crowdfund the project by pre-ordering a Novena.


The Novena is based on the i.MX6Q ARM processor from Freescale, coupled to a Xilinx Spartan 6 FPGA. Combined with the open nature of the project, this creates a lot of possibilities for using the laptop as a hacking tool. It has dual ethernet, for routing or sniffing purposes. USB OTG support lets the laptop act as a USB device, for USB fuzzing and spoofing. There’s even a high speed expansion bus to interface with whatever peripheral you’d like to design.


The crowd funding campaign has kicked off on Crowd Supply:

Crowd Supply: Novena


A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board.

 

It looks like its off to a strong start.  Already at $57,715 raised of $250,000 goal with 45 days left.

 

Cheers,

Drew

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  • Bunnie Huang and Sean Cross have a nice write-up of Novena in the latest IEEE Spectrum: Novena: A Laptop With No Secrets - IEEE Spectrum

     

    They talk about the FPGA a lot, which is good, but they neglect to say that the FPGA is closed source like the GPU and you can't even run Xilinx tools on Novena itself.  I'm not criticizing Novena for selecting the Spartan-6, since it's a very nice part, but IMO an OSHW/SW project should be clear about what parts aren't open.  Also, they missed a fine opportunity to advocate for open FPGA bitstream documentation.

     

    Warning: while most of the comments at the IEEE Spectrum link are nice, some are pretty ugly.  Well, that's the Internet for you image

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    Hi John,

     

    Thanks so much for the link. I really enjoyed reading it, and have bookmarked it. I won't comment on the FPGA bit since you summarized that, but the article

    was interesting overall too. Bunnie and Sean didn't go into the reasons why they wanted to have the production run, but trying to get in their mind, I guess they

    partly thought there was market (albeit low volume) for an open source laptop with expansion interfaces beyond the norm for a laptop, and it was partly a labour of love too,

    and partly to see how to produce things. I'm glad they trail-blazed though.

    As you say the offering has critics by the looks of the comments on that post, but their laptop was something in-between a "best guess" given how they thought others would

    use it (e.g. having a more generic FPGA subsystem rather than one connected to motor interfaces) and how they wished to use it.

    I think most of us would have done things differently, but often that is the case.

    I had to present at a conference yesterday, and one of the "best practice" guidelines we'd sucked up from colleagues to present to the audience was that it is highly

    worth spending time learning about establishing the minimum viable product (MVP) when you're trying to innovate.

  • in reply to shabaz

    One of the benefits of design by comitiee or at least a benevolent dictator and crew

  • in reply to Problemchild

    LOL. As engineers it is exciting to want to build, but being super-aware of what customers want is important too.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I think the Librem laptops from Purism will be closer to what an average consumer would want:

    https://puri.sm/

    image

     

    I've been following Purism with interest. Their blog has been very informative about the nitty gritty of Intel firmware:

     

    BIOS Freedom Status

    https://puri.sm/posts/bios-freedom-status/

     

    Roadmap To A Completely Free BIOS

    https://puri.sm/posts/roadmap-to-a-completely-free-bios/

     

    Road to FSF RYF Endorsement… and Beyond

    https://puri.sm/road-to-fsf-ryf-endorsement-and-beyond/

     

    Specifically, I found this very interesting:

    "Because Purism ships Librem CPUs fused to allow unsigned software, we

    have set our sights on publishing a Free Software implementation of

    the Management Engine firmware. No other company currently offers CPUs

    with this configuration, though it is our hope that our success will

    prompt more and more companies to fuse their CPUs for freedom."

     

    cheers,

    drew

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