at if you could swap out parts customize your phone the way you wanted to?

That’s what is working on: a smartphone hardware platform called oject Ara based on modular, upgradeable, hot-swappable components—much like today’s , which can be customized via endless combinations of Cs, Gs, hard drives more. To help move along the process, announced on dnesday a Module Developers Kit to inspire tinkerers to come up with a device that’s capable of fitting its vision.

The MDK describes various-sized Ara phones that use square rectangular component modules in uniform sizes. The kit comes with a flexible power bus, an on-device, packet-switched data network based on the MI Unio protocol stack, an “endoskeleton” that mimics the design seen in many oject Ara teaser photos.

The guide that comes stard with the kit offers thorough descriptions for each part of the Ara phone, such as where the connectors are located what they individually power.

For the uninitiated, oject Ara was announced late last year, was initially spearheaded by Motorola. The company described Ara as a free, open hardware platform that would allow third parties to create individual hardware components that could be “clipped” on to a phone. Motorola said that it wanted Ara to:

“do for hardware what the Android platform has done for software: create a vibrant third-party developer ecosystem, lower the barriers to entry, increase the pace of innovation, substantially compress development timelines.”

There’s not much mention of Motorola on oject Ara’s website, but following news of novo acquiring Motorola, it’s likely that has taken Ara’s reigns (, interestingly, photos have since been removed from Motorola’s initial Ara press release).

writes that the oject Ara team will be working on these alpha beta MDK releases, it’s looking for developer input to help steer the process—thus the oject Ara Developers Conference happening next week at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

The conference will consist of a detailed walk-through of the existing Ara platform, will reveal its plans for the future. ‘ll likely be seeing a more tangible version of oject Ara cropping up next week, too. There’s a schedule available, if you’re curious, the conference will be streamed online.