Makesense challenges hackers and makers to attend “holdup”!

Makesense want “supercool individuals” to help solve social issues. This was the theme of a presentation given at the Shanghai Xinchejian hackerspace last night. The invitation gives a good overview of what they are about. Listening to their presentation and delving into their web site shows they have a good sense of humour as they talk of themselves as gangsters and about holdups (a holdup is an issue that the gangsters AND community try to solve!). Their web app to connect people and issues is here.

The presentation also showed that while Makesense is very new and growing fast, they have a very mature approach and are already achieving significant results across the world.

It is worth while exploring their site to see what they are up to and to see if any of their activities is something that you want to join in!

They intend to organise a “1-day event for you within 50 days” in Shanghai to commence the activity (holdups?) and their site shows they are very active across the globe!

Creating things – wiki resources

Creating things, a series of pages collating resources to help you create ideas and turn them into reality has been added to the wiki. There are now nearly 30 pages on the UsableDevices wiki, and while the content, structure and presentation are all ‘works in progress’, the approach, style and value of content is starting to show it’s usefulness.

Creating things provides brief descriptions of different creative processes,  along with links to detail on the key steps and a growing number of resources.

The mix of approaches from artistic creation to technical is to provide alternative ways to suit your style, or challenge you to try new ways. It is also to encourage a flow of ideas and increased interaction between these communities. Some examples of cross community activity can be found in the Inspirations page.

The intent is to create a ‘really useful’ resource that contains summary information about different processes and techniques, but then most likely will link to external sites for more information. It is not intended to create an internet directory of categories and links and it is not intended to create lists of software and other items purely for advertising. It is hoped that the community that grows around this site will manage the content to include diverse content that is ‘really useful’, and not just categorised lists of links.

Inspirational people – part 3

This third article in the “inspirational People” series features two people involved in establishing the first hackerspace in China, Xinchejian.  This space is very active, has a very diverse range of projects and is actively involved with many external organisations in the local community and has a very diverse cross-cultural membership.

David Li

In addition to David’s involvement in founding Xinchejian and creating new projects, which can be seen at the Xinchejian site, David has given a number of interesting conference presentations, for example recently at the China Open Week (Slides and Intro here! (Partially English) ), and at TED Five Star Square.

David 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!

Ricky Ng-Adam

Ricky plays a key role in helping to run the Xinchejian and is involved in several global initiatives which are mentioned on the Xinchejian site.

One in particular is highlighted here because of the staggering vision that everyday folk can contribute to “The 100 Year Starship™  (100YSS™) study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible.”

Ricky is one of the hackerspace contributors through the Hackerspaces Global Space Program.

 

You are strongly encouraged to keep up to date with the current activities and read more on these two inspiring people at the Xinchejian site and through your own research. You might even get inspired and join in, or enthuse others, or follow your own inspiration! You can even contribute inspirations and other helpful information on the Wiki.

Inspirational people – part 2

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.

 

Inspirational people – part 1

This post in the inspiration series focuses on inspiring people and what they do that is inspiring. Previous posts in this series focussed on the inspirational project or presentation, rather than who is inspiring.

Rob Gray

Inspires because he has shared many interesting projects, such as “The Quub is an open-source microcontroller system based on tiny “core processor” boards, a system of addressable daughter boards, and provision for simple networking. ”

He also has an extensive interest in nature photography, he travels and lives in his own design and build mobile home – now at generation 2 and also because his “entire web site is archived by the National Library of Australia as a “publication of national significance”.

Rob provides an excellent example of sharing and community building through his web site and extensive essays, tutorials, FAQs, diaries and publications.

He does most of this while living on the road in remote “outback” Australia!

Interview      Inspiring Project QUUB       Another inspiring project wothahellizat

Ian Lesnet

Inspires because  he is taking a pioneering role in open sourcing his projects, crowd sourcing the project design, development and maintenance, and is also placing large portions of his business processes and web site setup into public domain as well and even seeking community input on pricing.

His the projects extremely useful, very adaptable and are continuously being used for new purposes and enhanced, and he is really successful at targeting a low price, including shipping that is very attractive to users.

A very inspirational presentation “Get your stuff made“.     A long list of great projects.

Explore the site – there is everything from open part lists (BOM) and links to easy purchase shopping carts, to extensive documentation and extremely good information on designing, making and especially manufacturing. The forums are extremely active and very helpful. The Dangerous Prototypes community even proposes and designs some projects almost independently of Ian who has even funded some of the PCB prototypes.

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If you don’t have the technical knowledge of those listed above, then check out Ian Lesnet’s Dangerous Prototypes site, or Adafruit, Sparkfun, ePanaroma, etc. Do keep coming back here as the Wiki will be collating many resources to help you get started, or continue your journey.

You don’t have to design any electronics to create a working circuit! You can use electronic building blocks and some code to make it do what you want! There are plenty of code examples to get you started. You might even find an existing product or a kit that does what you want.

You can take many approaches from the use of pre-existing hardware and software building blocks, to modifying one item, or creating the entire system.

There are even groups, forums, sites and companies that are very supportive of of individuals and will manufacture and maybe sell your idea.

The people selected in this series of posts were chosen because they have completed and shared interesting work and encouraged others to use and modify it, and also because they provide alternate ideas to common mainstream approaches. I also have to admit personal bias, as two of them are fellow Australians and are a similar age to me, and I have purchased and built one project, want more, plus I have several of Ian Lesnet’s projects!

The inspirations from this and previous posts are being collated in the wiki, please view and considering contributing.

{U}sable{D}evices Wiki – collating and sharing useful information

One of the goals of this site is to share information, and of course that should not just be any information, but ‘useful stuff’.  With the Internet and growth of the information society or whatever buzz words spring to mind, there is a huge volume of information available. Lots of it is readily accessible and good quality, but a lot is hard to find, or easy to find – if you know what to look for or where to look, or information is easy to find, but only in bits that are widely dispersed and would benefit from a central summary.

This site is attempting to build a community to reduce these issues. I am making a start by collating the Inspiration posts onto the Wiki. This will provide a summary list view and detailed pages, as well as add the Semantic MediaWiki enhancements (web 2 features) and allow easier re-use of the information.

This site is not trying to be a repository, not trying to be a “web directory”, although there will be aspects of both, but trying to provide useful “stepping stones” to find targeted/structured information for people at all skill and knowledge levels. It is up to the readers of this site to see if this approach has any merit, to modify the approach, and hopefully join in and build the community.

The inspirations on the Wiki will soon be followed with more technically focussed information in several areas, so please keep an eye on the {U}sable{D}evices site, as these will be valuable resources to help you get started, and please join in with reviews and contributions.

Safer Alarm – 7400 competition entry

The Dangerous Prototypes Open 7400 competition winners have been announced, congratulations to all the well deserving winners.

The Safer Alarm did not get a prize, but the project is still a great idea :), so please have a look and think about providing at least some ideas!

This competition has helped to generate some interest in this site (and traffic) with visitors from ten countries in the first two weeks, thanks to Dangerous Prototypes.

Inspirations from Sketching in Hardware 2011

Even just the presentation titles from Sketching in Hardware 2011 are exciting, and the content is even better. I found many great ideas and challenges!

  • Improvement? and Sideways Invention: Alternative Technology
  • Building the Web of Things …. fast prototyping Web-based physical mashups
  • Motivating the Masses to Make
  • Inspired by Edison
  • What does “DIY” mean?
  • What does “DIY” mean when you depend on a massive global industry for your raw materials?
  • Playing in the Scrapyard: … Recycling … Re-use
  • Help Wanted… how to transform a great project into an awesome product…
  • BYO Hackerspace
  • Re-inventions and Improvements
  • Personal Fabrication
  • Modular electronics documentation
  • State of the [Open Source Hardware] Union
  • Open Innovation as a model for invention – OpenIDEO
  • Eliminating barriers … from connecting weird stuff to the internet
  • Connecting Open Hardware to Its Source
  • Programming Programs to Program Programs

I have shortened a few titles to highlight the things that leapt out at me. Once again I encourage you strongly to read or watch the presentations yourself, as your interests will be different to mine!

Community events on the wiki

A “Community Event list” has been started to list key information on interesting ‘special’ events related to creating, making, tinkering, hacking, or your own  community.

These events, may be organised by local communities, but are not ‘local’ community events, they special events, that are widely advertised, open to others and hopefully share the outcomes.

It is linked in the main navigation on the left hand side.

The list format and content is very much in test stage – this is my first Wiki, let alone leaping into using Semantic MedaiWiki extensions.

A rough to do list is:

  • to link in the data entry form,
  • add several views of the events for example a list / table and calendar styles, and
  • keep adding in more events.

A key theme of {U}sable {D}evices is Community Sharing, which goes hand in hand with contributing, so please jump in and add to the Wiki, or discuss changes.

Instantly turn your project into a “kit”… or any open project into a “kit”!

Instantly turn your project into a “kit”, or any other open project – is this possible? Yes, well nearly.  It is now easy to have your PCB produced and for sale on the web, but did you realise that you can also have your project part list “instantly” available for sale?

Dangerous Prototypes has made a great start with a central parts list for all their projects, plus of course the part list for each project, but the exciting bit is that they are also creating a ready made cart at one supplier.  I am sure others are doing similar as well. Imagine if the costs for these projects were automatically updated with current costs, plus “kit” and volume discounts.

While not all parts are always included, typically missing the PCB and a couple of parts, this is a huge step in being able to “painlessly” purchase most parts of a project. It almost turns the project directly into a kit. Of course the delivery cost still has to be factored in, but this is a great step forward.

Just image the powerful effect of having people look at your project and being able to “buy now”, when all you have to do is publish your project files and PCB layout.

Imagine when all the current project repositories have this – how many more purchases will go to suppliers? Imagine massive lists of projects with buy now that has current pricing and choice of supplier, even source your project from multiple suppliers (with due care to delivery costs)!

We all have a huge buying power and should be able to convince more suppliers to offer this functionality and we all  made sure to publish project parts lists in this fashion, then I am sure that:

  • competition amongst suppliers would start to reduce these “kit” prices
  • group purchases would also help drive prices down for some
  • suppliers would be able to improve internal processes and offer bigger discounts on these “kits”
  • all sorts of opportunities for percentage discounts, or percentage of sales would be possible

Octopart had a partlist, here is one example, for a while and are thinking of bringing it back, that would be another great way to wake up suppliers to this opportunity.

Now I don’t take credit for this idea, Dangerous Prototypes, Folknology & many others have been getting these ideas out there. There are also many related issues relating schematic and board design with part libraries. More on this in coming posts.

So, this is a shout out for everyone to:

  • encourage their favourite suppliers to add shareable shopping carts, and
  • use the shared shopping carts that already exist.

I have started a forum for further discussion on this.