Five gold pins: designing the joint
Every edge of every module carries the same five contacts. Getting them to line up first time took eleven prototypes.
5 min read
The joint is the product. If modules wobble, slip or lose contact, nothing else matters. We wanted a connection you could make without looking.
Each edge has five spring loaded gold pins and a pair of magnets that pull the modules into line before the pins touch. Power, audio and data share the same five pins, so there is nothing to plug in.
Rated for a hundred thousand joins
We tested the pins by snapping modules together on a rig until they failed. The answer was a little over a hundred thousand cycles, which is a lot of gigs.