The strange evolution of the poco: A game-friendly kit began as a camcorder - [Resource

Abstract

THE POCO IS A NEW KIT THAT LETS OWNERS SNAP TOGETHER A PROGRAMMABLE HANDHELD video-game player. But it started life in 2009 as something completely different. The original concept was to make the first HD camcorder with a 14-megapixel photo capability, with a footprint about the size of a credit card.The inspiration for this was the Flip Video camera, which was introduced in 2007 and sold in the millions as a cheap and easy way to capture digital video. My goal was to improve the design using new mobile-phone technology to produce a similarly easy-to-use product, but one packed into a much smaller case. What happened next is a story about the need for adaptation in the face of changing circumstances. Fortunately, my family has some experience in handling what happens when concept meets reality: My father, Iain Sinclair, is an industrial designer who styled over 100 gaming systems for Saitek, and my uncle is Sir Clive Sinclair, who created the popular Sinclair line of home computers in the 1980s To create my camcorder, I first sourced an ultrathin 2.4-inch AMOLED (active-matrix OLED) display from CMEL that seemed brighter and clearer than anything I'd seen before or since. A suitable camera SOC (system-on-chip) came from Ambarella. I also learned about a camera module from a German company that could handle HD video even in low light, and capture 14-megapixel still images. Test results for the combination of the SOC and camera-module sensor were comparable to those produced by a much larger Sony camcorder. I added other technology such as postage-stamp-size supercapacitors from Murata to power an LED flash. To keep the credit card footprint, I chose a magnesium body with ultrathin walls (expensive but otherwise impossible to achieve using the cheaper alternative of injection-molded plastic).