Geoff Graham
Geoff creates high quality open source designs that are very well documented and include excellent discussion of the design theory.
He is pioneering open source projects that are published in commercial electronics hobby magazines, an industry which has a long tradition of restricting project copyright, but allowing “build your own”.
He is also an early leader in PIC32 projects with the comprehensive Maximite and the Mini-Maximite projects, which have very active community support (1, 2) to further develop the concepts. Another highly useful project is the Intelligent Fan Controller.
Andrew (bunnie) Huang
Bunnie Huang has been long time inspiration for sharing insights into “real world” design and manufacturing processes in general, as well as a series of products that are currently in production. His posts are insightful and also include diverse topics from leading edge biology to ‘Ponderings – The ravings and rantings of a madman’ of ” and a series of articles on Made in China. He also runs a monthly competition to Name that Ware – ie identify some partly camouflaged hardware.
Bunnie was also one of the five contributors to this astounding background piece for a commercial research organisation Innovation spaces of the future: research notes on China’s shanzhai meeting the Makers. This really is a must read for several major reasons!
The first post in this series also includes a footer with suggestions to help you start creating your own inspiration and turning that into reality and the Wiki is starting to build an array of useful resources to further help.
Updated because I left out the important part about the shanzhai interview!