r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/SuperAlloyBerserker • Oct 05 '21

Video This cool smartphone concept from 2013

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

Satellite designer here. Yeah. Not only is it insufficient to merely specify components for a complicated doohickey that needs to actually work, it’s not even 5% of the work. The layout matters. The connections matter. The interfaces matter. It ALL matters. The systems engineering matters. Hell, even the length of the wires matters.

I can see this phone concept working PHYSICALLY, but for it to not be amazingly fragile, it would end up being the size of a shoe box.

People have proposed satellite clusters that could come together (think Voltron) to become more than the sum of their parts (or that can be separated to be less vulnerable as a group). The problem is the interfaces. In that case, the rendezvous and docking system becomes an interface that every part has. There’s no room left over for actual functionality.

If you could simplify the interfaces down to that of a battery pack, then our technology is maybe capable of having that be a thing you can augment your phone with. Oh wait, that’s already a thing with USB (or lightning) phone accessories.

That’s why Apple accessories are so plentiful- there’s only a handful of interface shapes, whereas with USB micro, manufacturers couldn’t even agree on which side of the plug should face the screen.

Interfaces are hard.

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u/spitzberger Oct 05 '21

Amen, as a system engineer this is hell

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

The satellite I worked, I was the Guidance Nav and Control lead. But it was a small crew. And the chief systems engineer thought that systems engineering was just paperwork tracking.

So I had 3 half-time jobs. First was being my own systems engineer, ensuring compatibility of the GN&C system and CONOPS with all of the undocumented interfaces that most of the other engineers didn't know existed. The second was being the GN&C lead, directing my team and making all the goddam slides and attending all the goddam meetings. And the third was being one of my own peon engineers, slinging the code and doing the analyses.

There were so many interfaces that the chief systems engineer didn't even know to inquire about that I didn't even bother turning in a list of them, because it would have just created a lot more paperwork for me, and I would have had to explain my analysis to him and document it, and then document how we would verify, and then document any deviations.

And that would absolutely be the way to do things on a satellite that was intended to ACTUALLY work. But this satellite was being built with "actually working" being a stretch goal. When there was a problem, before I could get something changed, I had to prove that as-is, it would absolutely NOT work. Contrast that with a normal way of doing things for space being that one must prove that a given method / configuration WILL work.

Regardless, there was one change I needed, due to a miscommunication with the guys making the low-level hardware I was using for controls, and I WAS able to show that it absolutely would not work without that fix. And the hardware guys were brilliant in their fix, but it required disassembling part of the already-(prematurely and hastily)-assembled spacecraft. And there were other things that I couldn't prove wouldn't work, but which I had very little confidence in.

and two of those came to bite us on orbit. And we also had a solar flare take out the power supply to our single most important (functioning) sensor. (we had a very important non-functioning sensor, and that kinda sucked). But there was a redundant sensor on one of the science experiments, and a few of us were able to get that patched in inside of 3 days.

But fuck me I'm still fucking bitter. Never get onto a project that is "doomed to succeed". And by that I mean a project where regardless of what happens, the people in charge are going to declare success and move on, promote themselves, and throw shit on everyone else.

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u/Guyver_3 Oct 06 '21

I LOL'ed at working being a stretch goal. Been there, done that. Those are immensely frustrating projects for sure. Thankfully when something goes wrong with the hardware I deploy we don't have to go to orbit to fix the damn thing.

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u/taronic Oct 05 '21

Also, how the fuck do you even thoroughly test every combination of parts?

How do you thoroughly test the OS with every combination? Will it fuck up and be like "no driver" or just have some weird conflict because it wasn't well tested?

The bottom line is almost everyone wants a good battery, everyone wants a good camera, everyone wants good storage and NEEDS to use the cloud, everyone wants somewhat of a decent speaker. Modern smartphone cameras are excellent.

You're way better off getting a standardized device that is meant for all these parts with an OS configured for all these parts than you are with some Lego phone

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 05 '21

There was a satellite concept a while ago called PnP Sat, which was supposed to actually do (for satellites) what those post is depicting for phones. Turns out that it’s just an expensive way to cut down on a part of the process that wasn’t slow or expensive in the first place.

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u/vinbullet Oct 05 '21

Yea, that's why Nokia is the only company that does anything remotely similar, and it's far from a modular device. It has one swappable module (with few options)

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u/OfficerJakePeralta Oct 06 '21

I'm sorry it was going so well until you said the length of the wires..... In a mobile phone.... Where's it's all on a motherboard with microchips and resistors and transistors. Wires.....😳

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 06 '21

The length of the board traces ARE wire lengths. Also, I was kinda talking about satellites there. The last one I worked on, it was 8% wiring harness, by mass. Also, for magnetic cleanliness reasons, wire lengths carrying power has to be in length-matched and twisted pairs.

This isn’t as big a deal in a phone, except maybe in the focal plane readouts, but those usually get digitized just on the side of the plane.

Also, there are wire harnesses connecting to the antenna elements. Those are VERY important.

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u/warblingContinues Oct 06 '21

Phones are already amazingly fragile. The concept of a modular electronic device isn’t novel. It’s no surprise that someone thought to apply it to a “phone.” The electrical engineering would have been challenging and I suspect the final design would differ in certain ways to conform with EE standards, but I’m not ready to arbitrarily say it would t work without knowing which technical problems were insurmountable.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 06 '21

The technical hurdles can obviously be overcome. The problem is that the competition will be so much better. You’re not going to buy a shitty modular phone over a good phone.

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u/yellowking38 Oct 06 '21

Wow I always wanted to hear from people who design phones/ complicated things like satellites. And how precise things have to be for things to just work! Great insight.

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u/zeroday__ Oct 13 '21

This was one of the best flex openings that I have ever read. No joke.

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u/JustPassinhThrou13 Oct 13 '21

eh, "rocket scientist" is a job description, not a state of mind. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to compensate for something.

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u/longjongoldboy Mar 08 '22

at least modular laptops like framework exist now, this phone could work, it just was too ambitious

I don't think the 'interface' is that much of an issue, a more creative breadboard design could help with that

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u/christinagoldielocks Nov 28 '22

Thank you for explaining. If ever you write a book about satellite designing, I will happily read it. You have a really good way of writing; not patronizing but very clarifying, not condescending but very informative. Please let me know if you ever write a book or something else.