About 4 years ago I built the FEZDA obstacle avoidance robot. This basic bot was a fun introduction (as developers call it a "Hello World" project) to the embedded electronics world. It was based on the GHI FEZ Domino board with Arduino headers and running the Microsoft .NET MicroFramework.
It was very satisfying to watch it navigate it's way around completely autonomously. The project was based on various boards offered by GHI and my hacking together the mechanical components together. So while I selected the modules, it was very limited to the modules that I could purchase pre-made. This was because the thought of making my own modules seemed like an insurmountable challenge.
Over the past many years since, I've absorbed much information from the helpful fellows on the GHI Electronics forum. I've asked many questions and hopefully as well have helped some along. To give back, I submitted several projects (including the FEZDA C# code, a couple utilities to help debugging and a simple WiFi utility).
But the GHI community has armed me with enough knowledge to start offering my own modules.
My background is software development, no Electronic Engineering at all, so don't expect clever designs. In fact one of the names that I wanted to go with, but was already taken, was Curious Designs, as I figured people would look at my boards and think "That was a curious decision to do it that way".
It's an empowering feeling that many things are now possible for me in this realm. I just need to: come up with the idea, layout it, have the boards made and install the components - and BAM! (to borrow Emerald's phrase) - there's my creation! Obviously it's not that simple, but the thought that it's possible feels good!
It's a bit concerning that by doing this, I will lose revenue as people can reproduce my designs. But hopefully people will find them useful enough to cover my production costs if they don't want to produce them themselves.
Over the next few months I will be working on the FEZDA II project. As a part of this I'll be producing modules to make it come to life. Hopefully others will find them useful to build their own bot or as a helpful part in their project.
A theme I trying to develop here is to give back to the "maker" community. This will be apart of what I will be trying to do with this venture. For some this includes community teaching and involvement, for others it's forming make camps and still others it's a serious issue they are politically active in. But these are not what I'm very good at or have a disposition for.
So here are some ways I intend to do this:
- Provide many, if not all, of my in-house (Lieb-Tech.com) modules as OSHW, including Eagle files, BOMs and datasheets
- Provide the software drivers for the modules under the Apache 2.0 license
- Use GitHub to distribute them so as to provide the full access to the source code
- Use this Blog to provide information about designing and making modules for others
- In the future I will provide services that will hopefully make it easier for other makers to offer their modules
- In future I will provide software that hopefully will make it easier for other makers to organize the process
Not sure where this is going to take me, but hopefully it will be an enjoyable ride!
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