Community help in KitBiz
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Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!
Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!
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- Posts: 76
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Community help in KitBiz
I have some very positive experience with community help when I developed my shareware game at the end of XX century. Help in doc proofreading (it was very helpful because I am not native English speaker and I had really bad problems with my English), testing and debugging, even some help with software development (it is very unusual in case of closed sources semi-paid software that was my game in that time). At present I'm strong open source believer and my current interests are slowly moving from software to hardware and I have some plans to open my small open hardware kit store online. So this is my question: How hard to get similar community help (mostly in proofreading of documentation, instructions, terms/policies/conditions texts etc.) in open hardware kitbiz? Should it be some benefits for helpers as free PCBs or discounts or somethings? Or it is OK to expect some help "for free"?
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- Posts: 178
- Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2007 4:50 pm
Re: Community help in KitBiz
Under which circumstances would you help someone to earn money without getting anything back?Shaos wrote:Or it is OK to expect some help "for free"?
Literally anything, no schema, no help, no layout, no free sample, nothing...
Hardware is not software, you can not download a prototype for testing, debugging, development or doc proofreading. About the latter: Correct technical details in the datasheet are way more important than the correct grammar. Verifying technical details without the actual hardware is impossible.
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
The same as in open source software projects (software also earns money), no?...uhe wrote: Under which circumstances would you help someone to earn money without getting anything back?
Actually I can - it is possible to simulate and emulate hardware on PC - it is not a problem at alluhe wrote: Hardware is not software, you can not download a prototype for testing, debugging, development...
My problem is documentation...
I know there are some people who can verify schematics "by eyes"uhe wrote: Verifying technical details without the actual hardware is impossible.
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
I do HW testing at work, I have a spec and I have the real device and the difference is a defect
You can simulate a lot but that doesn't tell you if the real HW that you'd like to sell works as described or not, thats what a prototype is for.
Btw. it is not about earning money, it's about giving sth. back to the people that helped you.
I'm not aware of a OSS project which got developed in public and the result gets sold as closed source without a public version that people can download. Can you give me an example?
You can simulate a lot but that doesn't tell you if the real HW that you'd like to sell works as described or not, thats what a prototype is for.
Btw. it is not about earning money, it's about giving sth. back to the people that helped you.
I'm not aware of a OSS project which got developed in public and the result gets sold as closed source without a public version that people can download. Can you give me an example?
- westfw
- Posts: 2010
- Joined: Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:01 pm
Re: Community help in KitBiz
You can expect to receive a certain amount of advice "for free." For example, there's a relatively sturdy tradition of people posting their schematics/PCB layout in the Arduino forums for comments and advice. You can probably get help with documentation as well.
At some point, you need to make real hardware and assemble real boards. You can't expect would-be helpers to go to the expense of making boards themselves, so you'll probably have to send out a certain amount of "free" hardware at your expense to get adequate testing done. Did you see Amanda Wozniak's "Hardware Will Cut You" presentation? (http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/13 ... d-wozniak/ )
It would be a good idea to exactly describe the degree of commercialism of a project before asking for help. People might be annoyed at the idea of debugging a schematic that you were going to sell in vast quantities, even if the design was open source. Lots of people are likely to be annoyed if the final product isn't open-source after all...
The freeduino (http://freeduino.org ) project is perhaps an interesting example. While it was originally "politically" motivated, it was always clear that one of the participants was going to end up selling the design "for profit", and the rest of us weren't. I don't think anyone ended up feeling cheated; I have enough pre-production "kits" to have made it worth my time, and enough not-final-design PCBs to last me essentially forever... (working but not-final PCBs are cheap giveaways, since the alternative is probably throwing them away...)
At some point, you need to make real hardware and assemble real boards. You can't expect would-be helpers to go to the expense of making boards themselves, so you'll probably have to send out a certain amount of "free" hardware at your expense to get adequate testing done. Did you see Amanda Wozniak's "Hardware Will Cut You" presentation? (http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/13 ... d-wozniak/ )
It would be a good idea to exactly describe the degree of commercialism of a project before asking for help. People might be annoyed at the idea of debugging a schematic that you were going to sell in vast quantities, even if the design was open source. Lots of people are likely to be annoyed if the final product isn't open-source after all...
The freeduino (http://freeduino.org ) project is perhaps an interesting example. While it was originally "politically" motivated, it was always clear that one of the participants was going to end up selling the design "for profit", and the rest of us weren't. I don't think anyone ended up feeling cheated; I have enough pre-production "kits" to have made it worth my time, and enough not-final-design PCBs to last me essentially forever... (working but not-final PCBs are cheap giveaways, since the alternative is probably throwing them away...)
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
I'm talking about fully open projects: downloadable firmware hex and source code, eagle sch/brd+gerbers etc.
I even plan to publish links to PCBs in batchpcb and to BOMs in mouser - so people may produce my devices without me
For me it is very similar to opensource software model - you can take (buy) binary directly from author or you can compile (build) by yourself using freely available source codes
P.S. I'm buying official Slackware CDs from time to time even if I can download it for free I prefer to give some monetary compensation to its authors for such a great product
P.P.S. Don't think that to download and compile big modern opensource software project is a "free" action - you MUST buy a modern PC in order to do that efficiently
I even plan to publish links to PCBs in batchpcb and to BOMs in mouser - so people may produce my devices without me
For me it is very similar to opensource software model - you can take (buy) binary directly from author or you can compile (build) by yourself using freely available source codes
P.S. I'm buying official Slackware CDs from time to time even if I can download it for free I prefer to give some monetary compensation to its authors for such a great product
P.P.S. Don't think that to download and compile big modern opensource software project is a "free" action - you MUST buy a modern PC in order to do that efficiently
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
Thanks for the link - very interesting. It is definitely true for analog electronics and high-frequency electronics - real device is required to do debugging for it. But if we use only digital electronics and relatively low frequencies (as a few MHz) in most of the cases everything should work as expected if (1) all components are good (2) you did a good work on assembling (not short circuits etc.). Am I wrong? I'm software engineer, but soldering iron is my friend since early 80s and I got working almost all of my hobby designs from the beginning ("almost" is for LQFP64 chip that I soldered manually once and never got it properly working probably because of poor soldering).westfw wrote:At some point, you need to make real hardware and assemble real boards. You can't expect would-be helpers to go to the expense of making boards themselves, so you'll probably have to send out a certain amount of "free" hardware at your expense to get adequate testing done. Did you see Amanda Wozniak's "Hardware Will Cut You" presentation? (http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/13 ... d-wozniak/ )
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- Joined: Thu Nov 18, 2010 9:18 pm
Re: Community help in KitBiz
You're a software guy, okay. Analogous case:Shaos wrote:But if we use only digital electronics and relatively low frequencies (as a few MHz) in most of the cases everything should work as expected if (1) all components are good (2) you did a good work on assembling (not short circuits etc.). Am I wrong? I'm software engineer ...
If we use only standard libraries and the user only uses the software in ways that match our assumptions, and you did good work when you wrote it, then there won't be any bugs in the code...right?
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
I meant that digital schematics are perfectly testable in form of simulators/emulators and if it works on PC then "in most of the cases" it should work in real device...tinsmith wrote:You're a software guy, okay. Analogous case:Shaos wrote:But if we use only digital electronics and relatively low frequencies (as a few MHz) in most of the cases everything should work as expected if (1) all components are good (2) you did a good work on assembling (not short circuits etc.). Am I wrong? I'm software engineer ...
If we use only standard libraries and the user only uses the software in ways that match our assumptions, and you did good work when you wrote it, then there won't be any bugs in the code...right?
Also I believe some people don't even need to simulate scheme to see that it has some mistakes - they may see problems just by looking at the schematics
The same way as I can debug C/C++ source code just by looking at it by my bare eyes
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
That works except when it breaks, or when there's operator error (per most bugs in software). You can't rationally assume that those things won't happen. When there's a hardware bug, you can't just put in a semicolon and recompile.
Some problems have a quick fix, others...others, you have to wait weeks or months while a replacement is made and you can try again. If what you're doing involves PCB design and you BANNED your board fabrication (often to usually the case) then you're taking weeks to get another iteration back. If you're doing custom ICs, then a delay of at least months would be expected. If you're doing custom fabrication...hah. I know people who have done manual device production runs which took time measured in years to get through. The only way they managed to have it be at all feasible is by doing parallel production at each stage and keeping fall-back parts so that if they screwed up on a process or made a design mistake, it wouldn't force them to start over from the beginning.
Then there's also the happy fun time of a last-minute design revision...maybe you realize you've done something in a really stupid way that will bite you, maybe marketing has promised various things to a big client without checking with engineering first...stuff happens. You think that's fun when it happens in software? Try hardware.
That said...I hate debugging code, it's soooo boring. I'd rather sit down with a multimeter and figure out why the heck my signal isn't going where I expected any day.
Except maybe after eight hours of tracing a phantom issue only to find out that there's a short in the cable.
Some problems have a quick fix, others...others, you have to wait weeks or months while a replacement is made and you can try again. If what you're doing involves PCB design and you BANNED your board fabrication (often to usually the case) then you're taking weeks to get another iteration back. If you're doing custom ICs, then a delay of at least months would be expected. If you're doing custom fabrication...hah. I know people who have done manual device production runs which took time measured in years to get through. The only way they managed to have it be at all feasible is by doing parallel production at each stage and keeping fall-back parts so that if they screwed up on a process or made a design mistake, it wouldn't force them to start over from the beginning.
Then there's also the happy fun time of a last-minute design revision...maybe you realize you've done something in a really stupid way that will bite you, maybe marketing has promised various things to a big client without checking with engineering first...stuff happens. You think that's fun when it happens in software? Try hardware.
That said...I hate debugging code, it's soooo boring. I'd rather sit down with a multimeter and figure out why the heck my signal isn't going where I expected any day.
Except maybe after eight hours of tracing a phantom issue only to find out that there's a short in the cable.
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
So I can't expect too much help from hardware guys?
OK, I will look for software guys interested in hardware and who doesn't know yet that debugging of hardware is very long and expensive process
OK, I will look for software guys interested in hardware and who doesn't know yet that debugging of hardware is very long and expensive process
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
You can expect plenty of help...if the request is framed in a way that interests people, and with the understanding that you still have to do physical prototyping at some point if you want to produce a valid end product. You have to build the thing, the same as you have to actually compile your code at some point.
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
I never said that I will not do physical prototyping - soldering iron is my friend since my childhoodtinsmith wrote:You can expect plenty of help...if the request is framed in a way that interests people, and with the understanding that you still have to do physical prototyping at some point if you want to produce a valid end product. You have to build the thing, the same as you have to actually compile your code at some point.
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
If you're mainly looking for a way to san check your schematics, that much is pretty reasonable. Particularly if it's easy to read, informative / interesting, and up front about any commercial interest. If you play it right, it's also potentially a way to build interest in an upcoming run of PCBs / kits / whatever.
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Re: Community help in KitBiz
Yes, I'm looking for a way to san check my schematicstinsmith wrote:If you're mainly looking for a way to san check your schematics, that much is pretty reasonable. Particularly if it's easy to read, informative / interesting, and up front about any commercial interest. If you play it right, it's also potentially a way to build interest in an upcoming run of PCBs / kits / whatever.
and documentation (that is even more important for me)
And I'm "open source everything" kind of person
I'm even ready to give away my docs and pics as "public domain"...
Forum rules
Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!
Get help, and assist others in with open source kits and running a business! Do not ask for legal advice or for consulting services in this forum, only general biz questions!