Ideas

Ideas before they become OC projects:

• Portable Context Device
• Open power connector for mobile phones, PDAs and laptops. (Wikipedia lists a variety of connectors -- or were you looking for an AC power connector? What sort of specification do you want?)
• Open design laptop (you can replace the components). (see computer component wiki: custom notebook)

-- OCZ has an open design customizable laptop here.

better data cable ideas

• Open data cable. Random good ideas: "One under-appreciated attribute is that the moving parts of the connector are on the cable side, not the system side; when the connector begins to show some wear and tear, the cable is thrown away, not the PC (or printer, or disk drive, or camera)." -- Michael Teener [1] ... Many popular data cables also include power (Power over Ethernet, FireWire -- but not the iLink variant, USB)... What voltage? extra-low voltage [2]? ... Is it better to have the same connector on both ends of the cable, or have different connectors? Same connector allows peer-to-peer arbitrary mesh; different connectors afford/suggest a tree topology ... putting 2 connectors on every device, "upstream" and "downstream", allows linear daisy-chaining; 3 identical connectors allow any arbitrary-dimensional topology ... the round pins vs. flat blades (vs. other connector shapes) controversy[3] ... optical isolation (like MIDI hardware) seems like a good idea ...

• When someone trips over the cable, destruction of the fixed socket is unacceptable -- but is it better to destroy the cable, or to let the cable pop out -- like MagSafe? ... twisted pair for power, and twisted pair for data ... Some data line codes (such as the one used for USB) are designed to work even when the twisted pair is accidentally twisted an extra half-twist; is it worth arranging things so the entire plug can be plugged in with an extra half-twist with no problems (like automobile keys) ? ... What's this I hear about non-contact power pads?

"What we would like to see is one cable that carries audio, video and power to or from whatever device you need to use. It needs to be small, it needs to have tremendous bandwidth (perhaps using fiber optics), and it needs to be smart enough not to ruin anything you plug it into. ... Please, someone round up all the consumer electronics manufacturers, and somehow make them all use the same connectors." -- Gizmodo.

Some commenters on Gizmodo have some interesting ideas:

• wireless for all data, wires only for power
• use a standard power connector -- Green Plug
• fiber
• "something can be really good new, but how many tests have there been which rate performance over time? Especially with in-wall installations, this may be a very serious issue."
• "You can already do everything on a CAT5e cable network ... the next version of the PoE spec is supposed to allow for 56 watts of power per cable, which is more than enough for hard drives and such."
• "You already have it, its called FireWire."
• "we already had one cable for everything. It was coax. It was used for audio, video, even networking. But then people wanted better. The that pretty much messed everything up. Stop wanting more and you'll be fine."

A few commenters on Gizmodo seem to think it is impossible or unfeasible.

• "If it does all of that at the same time, it will need to somehow send and receive data at the same time- is that possible?"
• "This whole concept is ridiculous..."
• "There's money to be made in chaos."
• "some cables need a lot of pins and some don't and it would be silly to have a 24 pin connector for USB for instance, and it would be costly to have cables that have lots of pointless wires in it."
• "power inside the transmission cable? thats just asking for interference."

Understanding how cables fail might help us design better ones:

• "A Lesson in User Failure: Investigating the Serial ATA Connector" by Ryan Smith 2008
• "If I were a manufacturer of a delicate, expensive, high-quality precision instrument, I would design one-way connectors, so they could not be plugged in the wrong way. But Caviar does not share this philosophy." -- Carla Schroder

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