It's a real loss. It likely could have survived as a bootstrapped business, but being venture backed meant either large growth or death. Dale hints at this in the article, and the choices Maker Media has made over time make more sense knowing the pressures of investment were top priority.
I didn't know it was venture backed. I am having a hard time imagining that as a swing-for-fences, 100x-1000x return kind of business. It sounds more like the kind if thing where a cash strapped business works out a long term deal with an understanding property owner who has maker kids constantly asking for a better 3-D printer.
If you knew anything at all about their funding you would know thats not at all why they got funded. Print is crazy expensive and eventually the muse ran out.
Can you elaborate? "Print is expensive" isn't a great reason for an investment fund to pour millions into a magazine publisher. What was the potential upside?
Consider that the washington post was purchased for $250M. That was about four months current revenue. Admittedly Make Magazine is great but probably not pulling in $700M annually.
If they could have convinced a "famous tech billionaire" to purchase Make as a vanity project / property ...
Why would it have survived as a bootstrapped business? Potentially, they would have been able to survive on less than 22 staff, but would that not have meant they could have cut back (likely long ago) to maintain a reasonable burn rate.
I'm sure the VCs noticed long ago that Maker wasn't going to pay back their fund, so while they may have kept looking for ways to make the business a huge success, isn't there some point where the VC cuts their losses and just leaves the business to do it's thing?
VCs are focused on paying back their fund. They know that most of the companies they fund don't have enough assets to get anywhere near making a dent.
Maker has a half decent brand, and if the company isn't forced to shutdown, it is possible they could reach profitability and find a way to be a huge cash cow in the future. Or, that they would just continue on, or sell for a penance one day.
The point being, I don't think, and I'm happy to hear a good argument otherwise, that VC is to blame for the bankruptcy.
VC money gave Maker enough money that they could operate and have a shot at becoming something big. How do we know Maker could have built up what they have built without that support initially?
Rapidly depreciating assets can change this equation. In that case it’s vastly harder to scale back to breakeven.
Think of a VR arcade at a local mall, at the point the decide not to buy new equipment they have effectively already failed. The question is simply do they get more money from liquidation or continue running the business into the ground.
It's a good point: why is it so hard to scale back? Dale says in the article that he is trying maintain control of Maker assets, which makes me believe the other option is a sale. Clearly, Dale wants to continue trying to build (even a break-even) business, but it's possible that the investors want to sell the assets, preventing this, so there is tension between someone running the business and someone funding the business. Dale says "It started as a venture-backed company but we realized it wasn’t a venture-backed opportunity." Who knows if it could have survived without VC backing, but this statement seems pretty clear that the investors weren't interested in the original direction of the company, and tried to put it on a higher growth trajectory -- hence my reading that the options were growth or death. On the product side of the business, the first customers of the magazine and faire were already Makers, and the interest was very high. Then, there was a big shift to package up all of this maker stuff, and sell it to general public. It didn't work. Had the business focused on the smaller niche group, it may have been viable, but not interesting to VC since the opportunity is limited to people who are already makers. Once the VC is accepted though, it's no longer an option to stay niche, and business decisions (such as opening a physical storefront in SF) only make sense when viewed with "huge-or-bust" mentality. It's mostly speculation, but I've been exhibited at Maker Faire since 2007, have written a handful of articles for the magazine and have friends that worked there.
The problem with bootstrapped businesses is scale. It can be very difficult to do big things like produce a LOT of high-quality original content and start an awesome family-themed DIY fair in the Bay area without money....
On the other side, one of the best bootstrapped DIY events is Defcon. I still remember when they didn't have air conditioning. I know it's not the same and it's not kids friendly- probably why it has succeeded.
My original point is, sometimes you just need to go big, so there is an opportunity to accomplish more. For an entrepreneur, failure is not always the biggest fear; Accomplishing too little can be a much bigger regret.
What stops a bootstrapped business raising money that doesn't stop a non-bootstrapped business? Is it one of those Silicon Valley "perfect play" things?
Subtly, bay area costs are preferred to prices paid by VC backed companies. I built a bootstrapped logistics company in SFBA, and it was brutal. Frankly, we only succeeded/survived because of a single giant deal that involved software and not logistics, i.e. 95+% margin.
Please don't break the site guidelines, regardless of how misinformed another comment is. Despite what we'd all prefer, most internet comments are misinformed. Flaming doesn't help.
Instead, if you know more about a topic—which it sounds like you do in this case—please share some of what you know, so we all can learn.
Well I certainly hope those investors are having a fun time schmoozing in the bar today after telling Maker Faire squarely in the face that they wouldn't give them another round of capital.
I'm sure they gave them the "We like what you're doing, and I'm sure someone will invest in you this round, but we'll be cheering you on from the sidelines" friendzone speech.
Nice job VCs for killing one of the most awesome things in the Bay Area.
There’s a certain catch-22 to monetizing a community of DIY enthusiasts. Large events are very expensive and hard to do right and require deep-pocketed sponsors. But it’s hard to sell DIY enthusiasts mainstream products because they would rather make it themselves or use the open source alternative. So sponsors may have correctly deduced the spend was not moving the needle.
And in the case of Maker Faire / Make Magazine the vast, vast majority of the things the community members made were not products at all and therefore helping them monetize their own work was really a dead end as well. For a short while Make ran an e-commerce marketplace and I think they overestimated the supply of and the demand for products from their community. Etsy bought a similar hardware marketplace and shut it down when it didn’t perform.
In hindsight I believe the real opportunity for revenue in the maker space is education. I like what LittleBits is doing. I may not pay for an elaborate electronics kit but I will gladly pay a subscription fee to anyone that elps my kids think math and science are fun and cool and keeps them engaged when others kids are tuning out.
Correct. Maker spaces are the loss leader for the services provided. They survive on donations and class costs. Really sad to see, but not unbelievably so.
The early issues of Make Magazine were filled with articles about repairing devices, building needed things instead of buying them, cobbling stuff together from scrap. It had a very distinct anti-consumerist vibe, which made it appealing to a lot folks including myself. The Faires were filled with like-minded folks who were there only to enjoy the process of building stuff. What do you sell this group of customers? In my mind, inspiration and a venue to share their projects with each other. Over time, though the maker movement became more focused on commerce, including tools that people needed to buy to become makers, and also startups founded by makers with the goal of selling stuff to the public. I'm surprised that I'm being critical on this point, since I really like business, and was a small business owner myself for years. What I'm trying to say is that Make lost sight of their original target customer profile (maybe due to pressure from investors), which is not an uncommon mistake. Smaller venues will crop up to support folks who like building things, which is a relatively niche group, and there may not be enough of us to support a the size business that the investors desired.
This. It was at that inflection point that I cancelled my Make subscription. It just didn't have the vibe any more. I also remember them developing their own fairly expensive custom ARM development board during the time the arduidnos were rapidly proliferating, and thinking, "why do they think people will buy this?" So maybe there were some sub par investments on that front as well?
Extra salt to wound: and what kind of profit/revenue/result is it going to generate other than the fact that it consumes power? The more I look back at the maker movement, the more it looks a structurally self extinguishing fire.
I ran a maker space for a while. It consistently lost money, as do most of the ones whose owners I've talked to. The only ones that don't "lose" money are generally supported by donations and a core group of owners who are each putting several hundred a month in to keep the lights on (i.e. from an accounting perspective they're still losing money).
In addition, there's an interesting phenomenon in the maker community that a lot of people think IP (models, designs, plans, etc.) should pretty much be given away for free, which limits revenue opportunities.
[Edit to add info in case anyone comes across this in the future]: The #1 issue is actually rent in a lot of cases. There's a conundrum where the people who most want to use a maker space are the same people who want a maker space in a place with high rent (i.e. in a desirable urban area). On the flip side, people who have their own garage / shed / yard are generally much less in need of a maker space (which would be in a cheaper area to serve them) since entry-level prices for most tools have gotten pretty cheap in recent years.
Next is labor cost. If you're not paying yourself a decent salary for your time, you're basically cheating yourself into thinking your maker space isn't losing money. Realistic labor cost should run you at least double prevailing minimum wage in the area for the hours you're open, probably more if you're counting on people to help students with things like CNC machining.
Next up is tools & repairs cost. You can actually get decent tools going for less than you would think if you don't splurge for name brand everything (especially printers, CNC mills, laser cutters, etc.), but if you're open to the public, the public is going to break your stuff. A lot. And you're going to have to fix it or pay someone to fix it. A lot.
Then there's all the ancillary stuff like electricity (likely to cost more than you think), insurance, accounting, payment processing, marketing, etc. etc. Basically, if you want your maker space to make money like a business you have to treat it like a business and that means a lot of overhead.
In short, I don't recommend anyone start a maker space with delusions that it will make money. It probably won't. Only start a maker space if you and a bunch of your friends are all willing to pitch in every month to have a cool place to hang out and work on stuff.
The co-op model is basically my last sentence and the fees/restrictions are a lot higher than most people want from a maker space. It can definitely work, though. Also it's important to distinguish between maker space and hacker space. The latter can be profitable since you're often making your money renting out communal working space ala the WeWork model. The former is a lot harder to pull off.
> people who have their own garage / shed / yard are generally much less in need of a maker space
These are the people who also have enough money to actually spend on "doing stuff", but for whom going to a "dedicated space" (away from the home/family) to do it can be a huge inconvenience.
There definitely is, but successful makerspaces that I know of are co-ops. Tech Shop and Maker Faire were great, but my guess is they were “too corporate” to maintain a dedicated volunteer work force, and without volunteers, it’s probably too niche and too low-margin to be a sustainable business.
On the SF peninsula, yes. The TechShop bankruptcy, which was totally botched, left many people angry. (I was a member, but didn't prepay, so I didn't lose anything.) TheShop.build closed their San Francisco location recently, and at one point had an eviction notice on the door of their San Jose location. (I dropped my membership last month.) Maker Nexus in Sunnyvale is struggling to get enough members to survive. Today's email says they have 80 and need 200. (I pay for a membership there.)
Other cities are doing better. Usually because of government support. "We need to retrain workers" arguments play well in industrial cities.
The original Menlo Park TechShop had skilled people doing hard stuff. People making things for the X-prize. People from Stanford who needed more machine tools than Stanford had. People from startups. Gradually that declined. Stanford and Google got their own in-house shops. Then there was the "Etsy crap" era - people using CNC laser cutters to make "hand made" stuff to sell on Etsy. At peak, TechShop SF had eight laser cutters going almost constantly. That died when Etsy removed the requirement that you make it yourself.
Today, maker spaces seem to be mostly learning centers for teenagers. The "STEM" or "STEAM" thing. That's fine, but it's a branch of the college prep industry.
Disclaimer: CTO of Hacker Lab but speaking for myself here:
We've had more than a few Tech Shop refugees over the past few months/years. Noisebridge is great, and both of our spaces definitely have unique feels and great communities built around them.
I wandered into the space some 5 years ago and what stood out to me echos what above commenters have said - there is a definite air of don't-buy-what-you-can-build or repair within the maker sphere that spoke to me.
While there are plenty of edu institutions and private industry shops out there that have all the equipment we do and more, the community here of folks from different experience levels, background, etc. really makes makerspaces unique.
When Hacker Lab showed up there were only a small handful of coworking spaces in the area. 7 years later, I can't throw a stick without hitting one. I feel part of our survival has been going for breadth - coworking, hackathons, and makeing can all benefit from eachother.
That said, I'm as anxious and unknowing to see where this maker thing goes as the next person.
>Other cities are doing better. Usually because of government support. "We need to retrain workers" arguments play well in industrial cities.
NYC has two larger places I know of that basically follow this model. One is subsidized by a community college and is aimed more at professionals (companies, artists, etc.). The other opened a new location (took over afaik the techshop location that lasted a whole week) in a heavily government subsidized building.
TBH, I think there's a missing use case for maker spaces to aim lower on the tech tree.
Especially in cities with mostly apartments, traditional wood and metalworking hobbies are infeasbile due to the size of the tools. It's also inefficient to own them individually if you're using them 3 hours a week.
Make sure the maker space has everything your high school shop class did, market it that way, and you draw in an entirely new demographic to keep the site vibrant and fiscally healthy. There's plenty of opportunity for cross-pollination-- I could imagine someone coming in to use conventional power tools being apprenticed into using CNC equipment or 3D printing to achieve the same objectives, or the electronics enthusiasts pairing up with the metalworkers for custom panels and cases.
Maker Faire's business model was print media and events, two notably unprofitable models. Techshop was a for profit chain model trying to compete with volunteer diy maker spaces.
Contrast that with maker focused businesses like Sparkfun and Adafruit.
Look around at your local public library. Most of them are barely hanging on, except for the ones that haven’t made it.
I don’t see cities investing the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to build out a maker space, not to mention the money to staff it, run the training courses, maintain the equipment and pay for the insurance.
I know of a local library who's actually going through with this. They have a grant and tons of dedicated volunteers to design curriculum and plan out the space. I hope to see that project succeed.
Some public libraries are starting to build makerspaces. Not ones the size of TechShop, but tons of libraries now have at least a 3d printer, and better-equipped ones have some subset of laser cutters, vinyl cutters, sewing machines, embroidery machines, CNC machines, etc., along with classes.
I think hackerspaces are a good fit for public libraries. There’s a need for productive space since books don’t need as much space as they once did, nor do computer workstations. It would be cool to set up some of the space for making stuff.
Ottawa has the Imagine Space at one of its branches. Quite popular and some great tools and resources.
I’ve also considered starting a community makerspace in the west end of town, a coop or some sort of publicly funded model. This comment section is a good reminder that we had better have a solid operations plan in place for it to be a success.
Not indicated in the current headline is that it appears that Make Magazine is halting as well. From the first paragraph:
> [...] Maker Media, the company behind crafting publication MAKE: magazine as well as [...] Maker Faire, [has laid] off its entire staff of 22 and pause all operations.
Breaks my heart. I've been a subscriber since the beginning and I've got issue 1 sitting on the shelf just to my left.
I've got a list of things I want to make as a result of reading Make Magazine that would last me 5 lifetimes. If this is, indeed, the end, huge thanks to the entire crew at Maker Media (and the hundreds that contributed to Make Magazine over the years). You did what you did as well as it can be done.
Traditionally when a magazine goes under, the publisher sends you the remaining number of issues of some other loosely-related magazine. But since Maker Media isn't a traditional magazine publisher I'm not sure what they can do in a similar vein.
From the article it seems like he is trying to keep the print magazine going as opposed to organizing maker faires.
“We’re trying to keep the servers running” Dougherty tells me. “I hope to be able to get control of the assets of the company and restart it. We’re not necessarily going to do everything we did in the past but I’m committed to keeping the print magazine going and the Maker Faire licensing program.”
I took my kid to the most recent one in the Bay Area, which was fun. And crowded. And a bit expensive. Too bad it wasn’t working out, but glad we got a chance to go once.
Bummer. I hate seeing cool & quirky things go down the drain.
On a recent visit to SoCal, I saw a billboard for the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. I haven't been in years, I'm no longer a local, but I was happy to see it still going more than 30 years after I first heard of it. Hopefully it's still as much fun for people experiencing it now as it was for me back in highschool!
Does anyone here have context on the pitch that got them $10 million in venture funding? Hard for me to envision how that could have worked, but their VCs must have had a pretty articulated investment thesis.
I got into Maker Faire and making things, then I ran out of time. I had to learn Kubernetes. My kids were interested then they weren’t. My son is very technical and expressed interest in robotics, but he keeps coming back to game development and blender, and that is fantastic. I have a half dozen micro boards gathering dust for projects I was going to Make. I guess I haven’t seen value enough in my daily life from my little creations, and fundamentally making something novel is remarkably difficult. I’d really like to wire that gear up with MaxMSP or processing and make some beautiful sonic spaces, but for now it stays on the shelf. Is this just me or did something fundamental of that kind of experience undermine the maker movement in general?
Counter experience that still echos a lot of the same themes: I started tinkering with electronics around 2011, the typical beginner Arduino projects with the starter kit you've all seen-- it was enjoyable and I learned a lot, but never made anything that went beyond a toy or learning demo. By 2014 I was gainfully employed and had a little more disposable income so I gravitated towards freestyle and racing quadcopters which I've continued to enjoy through today. My lab and expertise have continued to grow every step of the way, and I've been excited to implement some very basic home automation on my own with ESP8266 kits now that I'm a homeowner. Realistically there isn't much "maker" related things I would see value in beyond commodity tools and a 3d printer, but vendors with FPV electronics touting cool new features or enhanced functionality have a reliable track record of cracking my wallet open. I suspect this is a broader feeling and contributed to Maker Faire struggling to find a niche with reasonable margins amid a race to the bottom in the associated hardware.
Ultimately I suspect Arduino boards gathering dust on the self are the overwhelming majority. People are either interested in it and rapidly move on to more specialized applications (Hobbyist multi-rotor electronics quickly graduated from 8bit AVRs to 32 bit ARMs) or they aren't and the dev kits find room in the closet.
I feel much the same way; I decided I needed a "project" when our child was born and I was looking at finding some things to do while enjoying paternity leave.
I figured I'd either learn android-development, or hardware-stuff. Bought an Arduino kit and never looked back. In my limited experience people dabble at such things then move on, or give it up entirely there isn't too much of a middle-ground.
I still dabble with ESP8266 things two years later; most recently I hooked up a simple 433Mhz radio-receiver to a board, and wrote some code to receive/understand/decode the radio-broadcasts a cheap off-the-shelf wireless temperature/humidity-sensor transmits. This allows me to log the temperature/humidity of our sauna.
Usually I'd wire up a sensor of my own, but I figured it would be less-risky to use an off-the-shelf sensor/transmitter. The idea of mixing steamy saunas with a USB-PSU was a dangerous one, and I even balked at using a rechargeable battery.
There aren't many things I buy for my hobby/practice, just random sensors, or accessories. Most of the time I just order them from AliExpress and take the time-hit waiting for them to arrive.
Basically the same stuff for me-- ESP8266 reading a humidity sensor and flipping a 115v outlet controller on or off for the dehumidifier in my basement. The built in humidity sensor is either hilariously inaccurate or is reading dryer than ambient exhaust air, so having a remote sensor is helpful.
It's all fun stuff and of some usefulness to me personally, but I don't think much of anything I've done has any professional applicability; other than generalized familiarity with electronics and components I wouldn't feel comfortable producing a real product.
Are there actually consumer electronics out there that are just arduino examples glued together?
>Are there actually consumer electronics out there that are just arduino examples glued together?
A lot of the existing power-switches that can be toggled with an app / radio-button are little more than an ESP8266 and a relay. The sonoff-line of smart-switches would be the obvious example.
Sonoff also make and sell RF<->WiFi bridges, but I guess the target market is already hackers rather than consumers for things like that.
Otherwise I've seen a few wifi-controllable LED-strips, and similar things that I'm pretty sure are identical in terms of hardware to what I've built. You can see some crowdfunded projects are just scaled-up home-toys too.
I'm struggling to think of better examples, but I'm sure they exist! In terms of product though it's interesting to evolve something from a bundle of junk loosely coupled to being a thing in a pretty case which can be enjoyed by others. I setup a trivial display to show tram-departures from outside my house, which the whole family uses now and loves. It went from a cardboard-box with a pile of stuff in it to a 3d-printed display, and then later I added the ability for it to be controlled via a HTTP-server, running as an Access-Point when it was initially setup. The whole thing became very very user-friendly. (But at the same time the only real user is ourselves, and trying to sell it would be a bit difficult.)
Most Arduinos are just fancy ATmega breakout boards, and ATmegas are used in some production electronics. You can most certainly prototype consumer electronics with Arduinos and then design production hardware after you've proven the concept.
The Arduino IDE is also compatible with various other microcontrollers, including the STM32 family which are extremely widely used in production electronics. Typically their production code isn't written with the Arduino tools but you can most certainly prototype with it.
The programmable mechanical keyboards are going that way.
Some of the newer ones can trace their lineage pretty directly to Arduino clones running TMK/QMK firmwares. The commercial version is usually going to cut out as much of the Arduino bits as possible and go for a soldered on microcontroller once you're building for sale.
There are plenty of real world examples. An Arduino is merely a beginner friendly packaging for an AVR chip. In fact, you can pull out the AVR chip on some Arduino boards, and then you're free to program it yourself, provided you set up your own bootloader.
You'll find AVR chips controlling many, many devices in the wild. My Lulzbot 3d printer uses an ATMega for instance.
What the... you were looking for something to do.. after your child was born?
My kid put me through SEAL training level exhaustion. I slept 3-4 hours for months and was taking care of him non-stop. He rarely slept during the day. How in god's name did you find the time?
I'm one of those "rapidly move on to specialized applications" people who never moved on. :-) My Arduino is gathering dust but somewhere along the line I became a ham radio operator and my world changed dramatically after that. So I'm really thankful to DIY, maker, and hacker culture for all of the encouragement, tools, and tutorials that helped me get to a very happy place indeed.
Well. I appreciate the opportunity to reminisce. :-) It's only been 2 years for me, but:
First I became a local volunteer for ultramarathons, health care emergency exercises, things like that.
Next I developed a bunch of communications standards to support people in wildfire-type emergencies.
Then I just got really involved in learning about radio tech that uses the internet, and started working on a webSDR project to get a local server set up.
In between all of that I've participated in some ARISS SSTV events via the International Space Station and have some nifty commemoration certificates on my wall.
And finally I made a bunch of new friends and became part of a group that actually mostly observes a really high standard of communications decency and loves to support learning and technology. Through the community I've befriended astronomers, cops, engineers, firemen, physicists, all of those things I idolized as a kid.
This is to say nothing of the gadgetry, the ability to reach out across the world using any number of methods. Randomly getting in touch with a Japanese radio operator whose daughter lives just down the street from where I used to live in Japan. Talking to a Hugh from Ireland and telling him about my son who is also named Hugh. Getting my kids on the air and asking a bunch of radio operators across the US to take turns wishing them a happy birthday just for fun. Knowing they're enjoying it too. Fun little moments like that.
But most stuff at Maker Faire and in the Maker scene in general is in a quite unfinished state. It's easy to get inspired by all the Arduino stuff because it's there. But what about the move advanced things? Of course you could meet some people at Makerfaire who did this kind of stuff, but that was rare. I wish they would have had a clearer concept for that.
I think (perhaps unfairly) that these fun hardware projects are often parents like ourselves harking back to a day when exactly that sort of thing was absolutely fascinating... but that's not the world we live in now. Which one is going to be more rewarding: building a smartphone, or making an app? It's the latter.
That's not to say hardware stuff can't thrive, just perhaps not at the scale venture capital would require.
> Which one is going to be more rewarding: building a smartphone, or making an app?
The counterpoint to this would be: if your child built an app and showed it to their friends, would they be impressed? How about if they built a smartphone?
Check out the Arduino Leonardo for your son. It can emulate a USB HID input device (keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc). So your son can create custom controllers for his games. Just map GPIO to keys & analog pins to xyz scrolling & you’re off & running :-)
The world needs more good software than another person making toy electronics IMO.
I see them as a hobby for electronics people, non-programmer computer types, or just for fun for anyone. But given a choice between some cute electronic that won't leave my house and building a web or github based side project that thousands of people could potentially use, I'd go with the latter every time.
I say that after giving up on my own gaming electronics thing I was building until I realized my time could be better spent and I could buy a finished one from China for half the price.
>> The world needs more good software than another person making toy electronics.
Rather sad to read that electronics is thought of as a toy. It is the "body" which software runs on. I agree cute electronics is probably not that useful but the are many others.
Perhaps it's because you need to invest so much more time to make something useful in hardware. In software it's still possible to make small useful projects.
Hardware is, well, hard. But the kits available can make it much easier and more approachable. You just need to learn the ecosystem -- like learning a computer language and development environment.
You kind of seem to miss the major point of stuff being a hobby or interest in the first place. For other people the enjoyment comes from the process of making and understanding, not necessarily having a shiny end product.
For hobby projects (both software and hardware) I generally don't care if they leave my house or if one or thousands see them, that's something I do for me, not to fulfill some hypothetical need of the world.
I’ll be honest - if I had nothing but time and a paid off house, I’d be sorely tempted to just tinker for a while. The bay is no place to do that though - it’s too expensive.
I live in flyover country, with a paid off house, and good income. If you don’t have a mortgage, then it will be medical insurance (which costs just a much). If not that, the college savings, which is also equivalent.
I've noticed that it's hard to get really great returns on maker projects. Maybe it's my impatience but software provides me something immediate that's cool and useful. Besides, debugging software is worlds easier for me than debugging circuitry. Also, why are microcontrollers stuck in the C++ world? Stuff like CircuitPython is changing that, but it's not that ubiquitous. I'd love an ergonomic and mature Rust ecosystem on Arduinos, or even a gasp JavaScript runtime. Shouldn't chips be fast enough for this? I'd love to run some basic web stuff on an Arduino.
Adafruit has been driving a lot of usable, rewarding electronics. They've been pushing LEDS (mostly WS2812 and APA102) in usable, prepackaged form factors. I really love their LED strips that are already diffused. They're beautiful and immediately usable. They're a little expensive, but I use their products to try out my ideas. But besides them there's not a lot of companies who make physical hardware appealing and available.
Side-note, why aren't there LED strips with a 3.3v logic level??? Almost all microcontrollers have a 3.3v logic level but APA102/WS2812 have a 5v logic level. Very annoying to convert.
Hey I'm building a hardware company to address affordable housing 10x faster than existing approaches, read a bunch of your comments and they seem really insightful. Want to get coffee? Shoot me an email if you're interested at Pbadger27<at>gmail.com
For battery powered applications, you want power efficiency, which often means using “portable assembly” (aka C/c++).
A lot of micro-controllers are run from batteries, especially high-volume products, so there’s always going to be a pull towards power efficient languages, even if your app has wall power available.
Second heeen’s comment on using 3V3 directly. I built Halloween costumes that ran directly off an 18650 powering the Arduino and driving the APA102 LED strings. No issues as the batteries ran from 4.2+ to 3.7 or less volts. If it was life safety, I’d care, but for blinkenlights, I’m willing to push outside the datasheet.
C++, hell, I’d say C. The more abstraction, the less reliability. My group would never use anything but C in our embedded projects. I think it’s the “move fast, break stuff” attitude of non-embedded developers that has poisoned everything.
C++ is a trash language; somebody said it's object orientation is like trying to make an octopus by stapling four more legs on a puppy. It allows devs to abstract to the point of absurdity and obfuscates intention. C is much more hygenic, imo.
I've been enjoying controlling LEDs via python with raspberry pi. There are good libraries available and it's easy to connect the LEDs to anything else you want to do in python.
Time is also my problem (I have 3 childs). I also think that the amount of effort needed to produce something with enough polish to be useful (software or hardware) is very high.
IMHO, the quick pace at which everything change is a major cause of this complexity. Even for professional products, for example it is already difficult to find hardware supported by redhat 6. As opposite, see the effect of stability of arduino or ne555.
I had a similar experience until I realized how many other hobbies exist among friends and family that I could apply the knowledge to. I worked with my brother and cousin to add “push to” functionality to their homebuilt telescopes using IC linear magnetic encoders, which are so small they can be embedded in pockets in the wood, making for a much more integrated and beautiful scope than is possible with off the shelf products. Now making a more robust version of a similar gizmo to instrument my brother’s millwork shop. Then a wireless temperature/fan regulator for my grill. Guitar (or keyboard) effect pedals make for an endless series of wonderful, creative projects as well. In other words, all stuff we’d be doing anyway, to which the widget hacking adds an extra dimension of improvement and interest. As a kid I imagine I would have loved to build weird game controllers with my dad. Or customized RC airplanes.
I hope companies like osh park, sparkfun and so on never go the way of radio shack.
The first Maker Faire I brought the kids to was awesome. Over time they got more expensive, crowded and less fun. The kids complained so much at the last one I decided to stop taking them.
The reality is that this isn't the kind of venture that brings in money, and that's not as much an indictment against Maker Media so much as it is against the adverse conditions of which any venture is up against. I.e., we live in a (flawed) society. At least the ethos behind the Maker movement lives on.
I was gifted a subscription to their publication for years as a kid, but never got as into it as I wanted to. I loved reading about what others had made but felt like I never had the experience or expertise or money to make things myself. In hindsight, I probably could have done lots of cool thints.
When the subscription expired I didn't renew. This makes me so sad to see now - I feel like there's a world where I would have been extremely into this culture, and I feel like not having this publication around will prevent others from becoming that.
Make and the reprints will forever be one of those things that's inspiring to read. In reality, outside of Chinese factories there aren't communities of mechanically inclined tech savvy people interested in spending their time putting together other people's EE projects. Anyone capable of completing a Make project is unlikely to want to follow along and retrace someone else's project unless there's a real incentive to do so, such as saving money or building something that's impossible to buy.
Things don't last forever but it was impressive that Maker Faire got started in 2006 and survived the Great Recession which hit the Bay Area particularly hard. I went to the Maker Faire twice, the first time being especially magical. But I never went to any of the sub Faires. I think like Tech Shop, expansion was never going to be sustainable.
Again, things don't last forever but I'm grateful for what it was, when it was.
I’ve had a minor bone with make media over their ownership of the term “makerfaire”. To me, a makerfaire is a generic term that has absolutely nothing to do with the magazine.
Our local hackerspace tried to organize a makerfaire, and when we found out how much we had to pay to make media to use that name (I don’t remember the specifics, but it was enough to make us all reel back a bit) we ended up just changing the name to maker “fest” instead.
It’s very sad that the magazine is also dying :(, but I have always been a bit salty of make media’s attempt to own the term “maker”. Perhaps this saltiness was more common in the community. It honestly soured me against any of their products.
I still think that what they did was amazing, but there was just always that little sourness in the back of my mind when I’d recommend their publication to anybody. I think there is a lesson in there about branding. To my mind, allowing thousands of volunteers all over the world to throw “maker faires” is like a dream come true for a magazine like that. It’s a huge amount of advertising and brand association for them. If it was me, I would have put together an open set of graphics and styles for people to use at all of the maker faires, to make sure that every single one of those events was associated with my magazine.
> I have always been a bit salty of make media’s attempt to own the term “maker”
The concept of "people who build stuff as a hobby" is not really new at all. The coining of the term "maker" is, and honestly feels a little awkward to me. However, its possible they were part of the coining of that term, so its probably okay that they tried to capitalize on it.
Maybe if we had a more general/less-branded term to use, it wouldn't feel so forced.
"maker fair" is a generic description, something that can't be a trademark as it's not distinctive (unless it's for a category of thing that's completely unrelated to the term, like you could use it asa TM for apple juice, or something).
The USPTO doesn't agree with you. [1] More likely the examiner considered it "suggestive" which can be trademarked if it's well-known. At this point it is even incontestable. [2]
Meaning they're relying almost entirely on "maker" to provide distinctiveness.
If the USPTO has any inkling of sense they'd realise "maker" is a standard English word that is being used for its ordinary meaning (someone who makes things), and does not give any indication of a specific origin.
You can't prevent people using common words, with their ordinary meaning, to describe their own products by registering those words (that's common across all TM systems). Any attempt to sue someone for running their own maker fair using the words maker fair should be dismissed by asking the judge to look up the two words in the dictionary.
I don't know, but I assume it was a matter of quality control and branding. "Maker Faire" (with the weird olde english "e" at the end) is distinctive enough that it's obvious that it was chosen to be a trademark and represent an event sanctioned by the company.
A totally naive point of view, but it would be awesome if some players in the maker space that are profitable (Adafruit, R-Pi, Arduino etc..) could band together and form a non-profit to keep this effort going. The maker community is generally so very non-corporate that I'd hope a partisan organization would be easy to form and run with out individual agendas or products getting involved in any overwhelming way.
Maker Faire did so much good. No matter what happens, I know thousands of people saw a Maker in themselves because of MAKE and Maker Faire. I know it inspired me.
I was a Make magazine subscriber since the second year and gave several gift subscriptions. I contributed a couple of small (unpaid) pieces to the magazine, and was an exhibitor (also unpaid) multiple times at the NYC Maker Faire. I thoroughly enjoyed the Maker Faire set-up days and thought they made exhibiting worthwhile. It was like having a back-stage pass to the Oscars of Makerdom - all the stars were there and happy to talk shop. I knew I was creating free content for them that they were profiting from but thought I was getting a fair deal.
My subscription lapsed just about every year for some glitch or another and they were unable to convert any of the gift subscriptions which should have been very easy sales.
My opinion about supporting Make Media changed after the RealSexyCyborg incident in the winter of 2017:
Bunnie Haung (who I met at a Maker Faire set-up day) vouched for her and Dale still persisted in slandering her. I let my subscription lapse and quit going to the NYC Maker Faire. 2017 was the Maker Faire highest attendance and has been declining since then.
> My subscription lapsed just about every year for some glitch or another
This exactly -- of all the magazines I subscribe to, Make has (had?) the worst subscription department by far. It was surprising given how important a subscriber base is.
Okay, interesting! Your story has been an amazing and educational one beginning to end, one I can identify with as far as the cross-cultural aspects are concerned. Sorry for what you have been put through. Kudos to you for your amazing skills, energy and creativity! I hope (or, fairly confident) you will persevere in spite it all. Looking forward to hearing the whole story some day.
>Your story has been an amazing and educational one beginning to end, one I can identify with as far as the cross-cultural aspects are concerned. Sorry for what you have been put through. Kudos to you for your amazing skills, energy and creativity! I hope (or, fairly confident) you will persevere in spite it all.
I find the idea that people who make mistakes don't deserve "comfortable lives" repulsive. I believe that much of the world's pain is caused by it. If people everywhere tried just a bit harder to forgive and forget, the world really would be a better place. Entire wars would be prevented.
It looks to me that these people (this Dale figure, the Vice reporters etc) aren't impossible dickheads who belong in jail, but well-meaning people who made (grave) errors in judgment. They deserve "comfortable lives" just like everybody else. I bet you've made grave errors in judgment once or twice. I sure have.
(little sidenote: I don't have a strong opinion about this particular debate. I didn't dive deep, I don't know who the key players are. It seems to me that Naomi Wu is obviously the victim here, so I'm on "your side"- but that doesn't mean I agree with your hardline approach)
> I find the idea that people who make mistakes don't deserve "comfortable lives" repulsive.
Some people don't share your attitudes, unfortunately. You can see this since they tried to make Wu's life as uncomfortable as possible, with no qualms whatsoever, all out of extremely fuzzy, purported "mistakes" on her part. Yes, Dale did finally issue a clear and complete apology so that issue was resolved to everyone's satisfaction, but let's be clear on how extremely rare that attitude is. Most conflicts tend to simmer because those who are in a losing position will never want to admit to themselves that they're losers, and change their ways - instead, they will keep behaving as "impossible dickheads", entirely by their own choice. Being naïve about this doesn't prevent or resolve conflict; it encourages more conflict since everyone sees how weak your reaction is to being bullied.
Why do you think that if I say that "never forgive, never forget" is a harmful attitude, I only mean it towards the people who share your opinion about the issue? I think it's a harmful attitude all across the board, on all "sides" of every conflict. I strongly disagree that trying to de-escalate emotions "encourages more conflict".
It's perfectly possible, and much more constructive, to write that you think this Dale is a dickhead without "never forgive" and without denying him a "comfortable life".
Bullies are not going to stop bullying because someone on the internet thinks they don't deserve a comfortable life. At the same time, perpetrating the idea that mistakes ought to haunt people for the rest of their lives, that forgiveness is a weakness, is actively harmful and makes culture more hateful. Plus, you're making a discussion more inflammatory to absolutely nobody's benefit.
>It looks to me that these people (this Dale figure, the Vice reporters etc) aren't impossible dickheads who belong in jail, but well-meaning people who made (grave) errors in judgment. They deserve "comfortable lives" just like everybody else. I bet you've made grave errors in judgment once or twice. I sure have.
Dale genuinely could not fit me into his cognitive framework. He was an older guy who'd grown up on "Chinese can't be creative" which there is some truth to- it's really, really tough for us. What tripped him up is numbers- 1.3b of us, our outliers are...well like me. I am unlikely in a small pool- in a large one me, or someone like me is a statistical certainty. He made a mistake- and some people behind the scenes with other motives and their own prejudice who encouraged him to speak up and act on that mistake.
Vice knew. They made no mistake, no confusion, no misunderstanding- it was spelled out for them. Examples were provided of people in very similar situations and what the consequences were. Vice was flat out willing to subject me to state action for the sake of giving their story a "hook". Dale was, at absolute worse a prejudiced old man in a position where that prejudice did a lot of harm- Vice had multiple people involved who fit every definition of sociopath.
> Dale genuinely could not fit me into his cognitive framework. He was an older guy who'd grown up on "Chinese can't be creative"
That's not true. I've met Dale, and the impression he makes is of a very humble, quiet and kind person. My understanding is that he gets along very well with other Chinese makers.
His conflict was with you, specifically, not with all Chinese people, and it's in very poor taste for you to try to turn this personality conflict into a racial or gender issue. You've done this often in your many online spats.
Come on, even Dale had to acknowledge that his "apology" was totally fake and inadequate, and issue a more convincing one later: https://makezine.com/2017/11/19/apology-to-naomi-wu/ If that tweet and article was the only thing you had to go on, "do not forgive, do not forget" is a totally sensible attitude.
>My opinion about supporting Make Media changed after the RealSexyCyborg incident in the winter of 2017:
Thanks, the damage was and is pretty bad- and long-lasting. But, "be like water" and all that. I'm slowly pivoting to hardware development. Studying welding and CNC operations now also.
But- as far as business dealings with Make my one direct experience, in an area I'm qualified to talk about is that their China strategy was simply awful. Just textbook how to fail in China. They chose a Chinese partner that did not understand Maker culture, was incentivized to not support it (even curtail it), and let them run the Make brand into the ground during a time when billions of RMB was going into Maker initiatives:
Not just government grants, but parents willing to pay generously for after-school hands-on activities that cultivate creativity. Lego absolutely nailed it, they were and are the model for Make to follow:
https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2188280/bric...
I told Make all this last year. Even with all the shit they pulled- I want Chinese kids to have something better than factory jobs making shanzhai shit. I will talk to Make or anyone else if it means more creativity here. I am a true believer- I would make a lot more doing literally anything else if I wasn't.
I offered to get Make legal representation, connect them with the investors that were asking for an introduction- just at least hear them out. Nope. Patronizing and dismissive. They were convinced their current Chinese partner had "lots of guanxi" and had it all figured out. It was a huge, huge missed opportunity for absolutely no reason at the absolute height of demand. Now, of course, the Maker market has cooled off: http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003171/made-in-china-the-boom... and things would be much harder.
Make seems to make very bad business decisions, driven by enforcing an in-house ideology and social hierarchy that really has no relation to the Hacker ethic at the heart of the Maker movement.
There are few companies I look up to as much as LEGO, they had a bad financial time in the 0's, where they had to sadly sell off the parks. But now they have really found what makes them special again. Including expanding to new markets like China. It came as a pretty big surprise for me that they got some Lepin factories closed down and raided by the Chinese authorities. They are as you say a good example of a company that knows how to work in China.
>It came as a pretty big surprise for me that they got some Lepin factories closed down and raided by the Chinese authorities. They are as you say a good example of a company that knows how to work in China.
This is becoming more and more common. Adafruit is another example, really good IP protection in China so no one has knocked off their boards. I have a Chinese IP lawyer I recommend who is great at this, but unfortunately most foreigners feel American IP protection is sufficient so won't spend the little bit it takes to protect themselves (better) in China.
> Adafruit is another example, really good IP protection in China so no one has knocked off their boards.
Could you please (briefly) elaborate on these protections or point me in the right direction to look, ie articles and/or search terms? I mean absolutely no disrespect but as a westerner without any real knowledge of China I only know the stereotype of China being like the wild west where everything gets ripped off. I'm happy to do some research to learn more about it if you could advice me where to look!
>I mean absolutely no disrespect but as a westerner without any real knowledge of China I only know the stereotype of China being like the wild west where everything gets ripped off. I'm happy to do some research to learn more about it if you could advice me where to look!
No offense taken! It seems crazy but things change fast- and yes we still steal loads of stuff and tend not to respect IP not registered in China. I have not found a really good write up in English, I've been meaning to get together with some local friends and do something. But yeah- totally ok to be skeptical, we don't have a stellar track record
I have a couple of really poor Adafruit knockoff I2C PWM expander boards from a couple of years back (Aliexpress seller). The logo/silkscreen is rough, there's a PCB trace missing and the power LED resistor value is too low so the light was blinding until I replaced the resistor. Maybe the situation has changed?
>Thanks, the damage was and is pretty bad- and long-lasting. But, "be like water" and all that. I'm slowly pivoting to hardware development. Studying welding and CNC operations now also.
Keep at it, you are setting an amazing example here. Very good luck with it all.
Is some of the most fun I have had in ages in making tech do weird shit. I currently have a stepper motor rumnning over optic fibre as the first stage of my new 3d printer build.
Their faire in San Mateo was crazy expensive. Kids tickets (for even 4 year olds,) were $30 and adult tickets were $50. Parking was ridiculous at $35 per day, despite this being San Mateo and the events center having plenty of parking. Parking for the Oakland A’s and Warriors is cheaper than that. The proximity to the Caltrain was advertised as a “10-15 minute walk” despite the distance being almost a mile. With several small kids and it being rainy that weekend, the thought of walking a mile in the rain wasn’t very attractive only to pay $220 for two adults and four kids under age 7. Helpfully there were bicycle instructions from San Francisco in case someone thought that might be a good idea. For being billed as a “family friendly event,” It was anything but, just on the logistics front alone. It’s like the organizers are detached from reality and live in some kind of dream world where $245 is a fair price for a family of 4 with parking. That’s about double what I pay to go to Major League Baseball games with the family. I get it, they don’t like cars, because climate and all that. But some of us live in reality. To get to the Caltrain from my house in Mountain View, it’s a two mile walk. So with kids we’d have to load the car to drive to the station, so we might as well just drive to San Mateo.
My point is simple: tickets and parking were insanely priced and it’s no wonder that the overall business failed because clearly the management had some trouble reconciling reality with their perception of their own value.
FWIW, you could always park for free at one of their satellite lots and take a bus right to the front gate. We did that for years and it worked fine.
I don’t think they run the parking concession on-site, and they charge $35 for those spots because the lot fills up fast at that price. If they charged less, the lot would just fill up sooner.
Yes, the location was really not ideal in terms of access, but tbh I don't know where else in the bay area you could hold that kind of event.
I think the bigger issue was that every year it felt like 98% of the same exhibits in the same places. So it was the kind of thing you did once. Twice was a mistake. In 2016(?) I volunteered at a friend's booth, and didn't even really want to walk around because I'd already seen it all. And ppl gobbed the booth because it something different.
To be honest I think most of the really awesome makers don't usually show up at Maker Faire. 95% of the exhibits are of the "Look ma I put a servo inside a puppet" variety. Very few of, say, the Hackaday-front-page caliber. There are some, but not enough to make it feel mindblowingly awesome.
I'd say there's no point really for individuals unless you're selling something with a decent profit margin. Publicity and talking with people is easier to get online.
>My point is simple: tickets and parking were insanely priced and it’s no wonder that the overall business failed because clearly the management had some trouble reconciling reality with their perception of their own value.
The ones I went to were always full of people including families. The price is about the same as a theme park or other such event.
Just because to you it's not worth the price does not mean it's not worth the price to everyone. Assuming everyone thinks exactly like you and values things exactly like you is a very flawed view on life.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 278 ms ] threadI'm guessing you meant fuse. And totally agree.
If they could have convinced a "famous tech billionaire" to purchase Make as a vanity project / property ...
[1]http://oatv.com
I'm sure the VCs noticed long ago that Maker wasn't going to pay back their fund, so while they may have kept looking for ways to make the business a huge success, isn't there some point where the VC cuts their losses and just leaves the business to do it's thing?
Maker has a half decent brand, and if the company isn't forced to shutdown, it is possible they could reach profitability and find a way to be a huge cash cow in the future. Or, that they would just continue on, or sell for a penance one day.
The point being, I don't think, and I'm happy to hear a good argument otherwise, that VC is to blame for the bankruptcy.
VC money gave Maker enough money that they could operate and have a shot at becoming something big. How do we know Maker could have built up what they have built without that support initially?
Think of a VR arcade at a local mall, at the point the decide not to buy new equipment they have effectively already failed. The question is simply do they get more money from liquidation or continue running the business into the ground.
On the other side, one of the best bootstrapped DIY events is Defcon. I still remember when they didn't have air conditioning. I know it's not the same and it's not kids friendly- probably why it has succeeded.
My original point is, sometimes you just need to go big, so there is an opportunity to accomplish more. For an entrepreneur, failure is not always the biggest fear; Accomplishing too little can be a much bigger regret.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping
Please enlighten us on how much one round of print costs.
This comment sums up how many idiots pretend they know anything about things they have nothing to do with.
Instead, if you know more about a topic—which it sounds like you do in this case—please share some of what you know, so we all can learn.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm sure they gave them the "We like what you're doing, and I'm sure someone will invest in you this round, but we'll be cheering you on from the sidelines" friendzone speech.
Nice job VCs for killing one of the most awesome things in the Bay Area.
And in the case of Maker Faire / Make Magazine the vast, vast majority of the things the community members made were not products at all and therefore helping them monetize their own work was really a dead end as well. For a short while Make ran an e-commerce marketplace and I think they overestimated the supply of and the demand for products from their community. Etsy bought a similar hardware marketplace and shut it down when it didn’t perform.
In hindsight I believe the real opportunity for revenue in the maker space is education. I like what LittleBits is doing. I may not pay for an elaborate electronics kit but I will gladly pay a subscription fee to anyone that elps my kids think math and science are fun and cool and keeps them engaged when others kids are tuning out.
Extra salt to wound: and what kind of profit/revenue/result is it going to generate other than the fact that it consumes power? The more I look back at the maker movement, the more it looks a structurally self extinguishing fire.
In addition, there's an interesting phenomenon in the maker community that a lot of people think IP (models, designs, plans, etc.) should pretty much be given away for free, which limits revenue opportunities.
[Edit to add info in case anyone comes across this in the future]: The #1 issue is actually rent in a lot of cases. There's a conundrum where the people who most want to use a maker space are the same people who want a maker space in a place with high rent (i.e. in a desirable urban area). On the flip side, people who have their own garage / shed / yard are generally much less in need of a maker space (which would be in a cheaper area to serve them) since entry-level prices for most tools have gotten pretty cheap in recent years.
Next is labor cost. If you're not paying yourself a decent salary for your time, you're basically cheating yourself into thinking your maker space isn't losing money. Realistic labor cost should run you at least double prevailing minimum wage in the area for the hours you're open, probably more if you're counting on people to help students with things like CNC machining.
Next up is tools & repairs cost. You can actually get decent tools going for less than you would think if you don't splurge for name brand everything (especially printers, CNC mills, laser cutters, etc.), but if you're open to the public, the public is going to break your stuff. A lot. And you're going to have to fix it or pay someone to fix it. A lot.
Then there's all the ancillary stuff like electricity (likely to cost more than you think), insurance, accounting, payment processing, marketing, etc. etc. Basically, if you want your maker space to make money like a business you have to treat it like a business and that means a lot of overhead.
In short, I don't recommend anyone start a maker space with delusions that it will make money. It probably won't. Only start a maker space if you and a bunch of your friends are all willing to pitch in every month to have a cool place to hang out and work on stuff.
These are the people who also have enough money to actually spend on "doing stuff", but for whom going to a "dedicated space" (away from the home/family) to do it can be a huge inconvenience.
Other cities are doing better. Usually because of government support. "We need to retrain workers" arguments play well in industrial cities.
The original Menlo Park TechShop had skilled people doing hard stuff. People making things for the X-prize. People from Stanford who needed more machine tools than Stanford had. People from startups. Gradually that declined. Stanford and Google got their own in-house shops. Then there was the "Etsy crap" era - people using CNC laser cutters to make "hand made" stuff to sell on Etsy. At peak, TechShop SF had eight laser cutters going almost constantly. That died when Etsy removed the requirement that you make it yourself.
Today, maker spaces seem to be mostly learning centers for teenagers. The "STEM" or "STEAM" thing. That's fine, but it's a branch of the college prep industry.
Farther out but an awesome space and a bit less intimidating is Hacker Lab in Sacramento https://hackerlab.org/
We've had more than a few Tech Shop refugees over the past few months/years. Noisebridge is great, and both of our spaces definitely have unique feels and great communities built around them.
I wandered into the space some 5 years ago and what stood out to me echos what above commenters have said - there is a definite air of don't-buy-what-you-can-build or repair within the maker sphere that spoke to me.
While there are plenty of edu institutions and private industry shops out there that have all the equipment we do and more, the community here of folks from different experience levels, background, etc. really makes makerspaces unique.
When Hacker Lab showed up there were only a small handful of coworking spaces in the area. 7 years later, I can't throw a stick without hitting one. I feel part of our survival has been going for breadth - coworking, hackathons, and makeing can all benefit from eachother.
That said, I'm as anxious and unknowing to see where this maker thing goes as the next person.
NYC has two larger places I know of that basically follow this model. One is subsidized by a community college and is aimed more at professionals (companies, artists, etc.). The other opened a new location (took over afaik the techshop location that lasted a whole week) in a heavily government subsidized building.
Especially in cities with mostly apartments, traditional wood and metalworking hobbies are infeasbile due to the size of the tools. It's also inefficient to own them individually if you're using them 3 hours a week.
Make sure the maker space has everything your high school shop class did, market it that way, and you draw in an entirely new demographic to keep the site vibrant and fiscally healthy. There's plenty of opportunity for cross-pollination-- I could imagine someone coming in to use conventional power tools being apprenticed into using CNC equipment or 3D printing to achieve the same objectives, or the electronics enthusiasts pairing up with the metalworkers for custom panels and cases.
Contrast that with maker focused businesses like Sparkfun and Adafruit.
I don’t see cities investing the hundreds of thousands of dollars it would take to build out a maker space, not to mention the money to staff it, run the training courses, maintain the equipment and pay for the insurance.
A few examples: https://library.pflugervilletx.gov/services/pfab-lab, https://www.chipublib.org/maker-lab/, https://ignite.hepl.lib.in.us/, https://www.jocolibrary.org/makerspace
I’ve also considered starting a community makerspace in the west end of town, a coop or some sort of publicly funded model. This comment section is a good reminder that we had better have a solid operations plan in place for it to be a success.
https://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/imagine-space-0
> [...] Maker Media, the company behind crafting publication MAKE: magazine as well as [...] Maker Faire, [has laid] off its entire staff of 22 and pause all operations.
I've got a list of things I want to make as a result of reading Make Magazine that would last me 5 lifetimes. If this is, indeed, the end, huge thanks to the entire crew at Maker Media (and the hundreds that contributed to Make Magazine over the years). You did what you did as well as it can be done.
https://hackspace.raspberrypi.org
The Faires were licensed and should have been cash cows (I see local one is still selling tickets).
https://readerservices.makezine.com/mk/default.aspx?pc=MK&pk...
“We’re trying to keep the servers running” Dougherty tells me. “I hope to be able to get control of the assets of the company and restart it. We’re not necessarily going to do everything we did in the past but I’m committed to keeping the print magazine going and the Maker Faire licensing program.”
On a recent visit to SoCal, I saw a billboard for the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. I haven't been in years, I'm no longer a local, but I was happy to see it still going more than 30 years after I first heard of it. Hopefully it's still as much fun for people experiencing it now as it was for me back in highschool!
Ultimately I suspect Arduino boards gathering dust on the self are the overwhelming majority. People are either interested in it and rapidly move on to more specialized applications (Hobbyist multi-rotor electronics quickly graduated from 8bit AVRs to 32 bit ARMs) or they aren't and the dev kits find room in the closet.
I figured I'd either learn android-development, or hardware-stuff. Bought an Arduino kit and never looked back. In my limited experience people dabble at such things then move on, or give it up entirely there isn't too much of a middle-ground.
I still dabble with ESP8266 things two years later; most recently I hooked up a simple 433Mhz radio-receiver to a board, and wrote some code to receive/understand/decode the radio-broadcasts a cheap off-the-shelf wireless temperature/humidity-sensor transmits. This allows me to log the temperature/humidity of our sauna.
Usually I'd wire up a sensor of my own, but I figured it would be less-risky to use an off-the-shelf sensor/transmitter. The idea of mixing steamy saunas with a USB-PSU was a dangerous one, and I even balked at using a rechargeable battery.
There aren't many things I buy for my hobby/practice, just random sensors, or accessories. Most of the time I just order them from AliExpress and take the time-hit waiting for them to arrive.
It's all fun stuff and of some usefulness to me personally, but I don't think much of anything I've done has any professional applicability; other than generalized familiarity with electronics and components I wouldn't feel comfortable producing a real product.
Are there actually consumer electronics out there that are just arduino examples glued together?
A lot of the existing power-switches that can be toggled with an app / radio-button are little more than an ESP8266 and a relay. The sonoff-line of smart-switches would be the obvious example.
Sonoff also make and sell RF<->WiFi bridges, but I guess the target market is already hackers rather than consumers for things like that.
Otherwise I've seen a few wifi-controllable LED-strips, and similar things that I'm pretty sure are identical in terms of hardware to what I've built. You can see some crowdfunded projects are just scaled-up home-toys too.
I'm struggling to think of better examples, but I'm sure they exist! In terms of product though it's interesting to evolve something from a bundle of junk loosely coupled to being a thing in a pretty case which can be enjoyed by others. I setup a trivial display to show tram-departures from outside my house, which the whole family uses now and loves. It went from a cardboard-box with a pile of stuff in it to a 3d-printed display, and then later I added the ability for it to be controlled via a HTTP-server, running as an Access-Point when it was initially setup. The whole thing became very very user-friendly. (But at the same time the only real user is ourselves, and trying to sell it would be a bit difficult.)
The Arduino IDE is also compatible with various other microcontrollers, including the STM32 family which are extremely widely used in production electronics. Typically their production code isn't written with the Arduino tools but you can most certainly prototype with it.
Some of the newer ones can trace their lineage pretty directly to Arduino clones running TMK/QMK firmwares. The commercial version is usually going to cut out as much of the Arduino bits as possible and go for a soldered on microcontroller once you're building for sale.
You'll find AVR chips controlling many, many devices in the wild. My Lulzbot 3d printer uses an ATMega for instance.
My kid put me through SEAL training level exhaustion. I slept 3-4 hours for months and was taking care of him non-stop. He rarely slept during the day. How in god's name did you find the time?
You did not put it all on the wife did you?
First I became a local volunteer for ultramarathons, health care emergency exercises, things like that.
Next I developed a bunch of communications standards to support people in wildfire-type emergencies.
Then I just got really involved in learning about radio tech that uses the internet, and started working on a webSDR project to get a local server set up.
In between all of that I've participated in some ARISS SSTV events via the International Space Station and have some nifty commemoration certificates on my wall.
And finally I made a bunch of new friends and became part of a group that actually mostly observes a really high standard of communications decency and loves to support learning and technology. Through the community I've befriended astronomers, cops, engineers, firemen, physicists, all of those things I idolized as a kid.
This is to say nothing of the gadgetry, the ability to reach out across the world using any number of methods. Randomly getting in touch with a Japanese radio operator whose daughter lives just down the street from where I used to live in Japan. Talking to a Hugh from Ireland and telling him about my son who is also named Hugh. Getting my kids on the air and asking a bunch of radio operators across the US to take turns wishing them a happy birthday just for fun. Knowing they're enjoying it too. Fun little moments like that.
That's not to say hardware stuff can't thrive, just perhaps not at the scale venture capital would require.
The counterpoint to this would be: if your child built an app and showed it to their friends, would they be impressed? How about if they built a smartphone?
I see them as a hobby for electronics people, non-programmer computer types, or just for fun for anyone. But given a choice between some cute electronic that won't leave my house and building a web or github based side project that thousands of people could potentially use, I'd go with the latter every time.
I say that after giving up on my own gaming electronics thing I was building until I realized my time could be better spent and I could buy a finished one from China for half the price.
I'd be just as happy to see my kids getting interested in electronics as coding.
Rather sad to read that electronics is thought of as a toy. It is the "body" which software runs on. I agree cute electronics is probably not that useful but the are many others.
For hobby projects (both software and hardware) I generally don't care if they leave my house or if one or thousands see them, that's something I do for me, not to fulfill some hypothetical need of the world.
Adafruit has been driving a lot of usable, rewarding electronics. They've been pushing LEDS (mostly WS2812 and APA102) in usable, prepackaged form factors. I really love their LED strips that are already diffused. They're beautiful and immediately usable. They're a little expensive, but I use their products to try out my ideas. But besides them there's not a lot of companies who make physical hardware appealing and available.
Side-note, why aren't there LED strips with a 3.3v logic level??? Almost all microcontrollers have a 3.3v logic level but APA102/WS2812 have a 5v logic level. Very annoying to convert.
A lot of micro-controllers are run from batteries, especially high-volume products, so there’s always going to be a pull towards power efficient languages, even if your app has wall power available.
Second heeen’s comment on using 3V3 directly. I built Halloween costumes that ran directly off an 18650 powering the Arduino and driving the APA102 LED strings. No issues as the batteries ran from 4.2+ to 3.7 or less volts. If it was life safety, I’d care, but for blinkenlights, I’m willing to push outside the datasheet.
Specifically check out bibliopixel for controlling LEDs in python. https://maniacallabs.github.io/BiblioPixel/
IMHO, the quick pace at which everything change is a major cause of this complexity. Even for professional products, for example it is already difficult to find hardware supported by redhat 6. As opposite, see the effect of stability of arduino or ne555.
I hope companies like osh park, sparkfun and so on never go the way of radio shack.
When the subscription expired I didn't renew. This makes me so sad to see now - I feel like there's a world where I would have been extremely into this culture, and I feel like not having this publication around will prevent others from becoming that.
Again, things don't last forever but I'm grateful for what it was, when it was.
Our local hackerspace tried to organize a makerfaire, and when we found out how much we had to pay to make media to use that name (I don’t remember the specifics, but it was enough to make us all reel back a bit) we ended up just changing the name to maker “fest” instead.
It’s very sad that the magazine is also dying :(, but I have always been a bit salty of make media’s attempt to own the term “maker”. Perhaps this saltiness was more common in the community. It honestly soured me against any of their products.
I still think that what they did was amazing, but there was just always that little sourness in the back of my mind when I’d recommend their publication to anybody. I think there is a lesson in there about branding. To my mind, allowing thousands of volunteers all over the world to throw “maker faires” is like a dream come true for a magazine like that. It’s a huge amount of advertising and brand association for them. If it was me, I would have put together an open set of graphics and styles for people to use at all of the maker faires, to make sure that every single one of those events was associated with my magazine.
The concept of "people who build stuff as a hobby" is not really new at all. The coining of the term "maker" is, and honestly feels a little awkward to me. However, its possible they were part of the coining of that term, so its probably okay that they tried to capitalize on it.
Maybe if we had a more general/less-branded term to use, it wouldn't feel so forced.
Like "coder" vs programmer/software developer.
[1] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=78893436&caseType=SERIAL_N... [2] http://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn78893436&docId...
What's curious to me is that the mark actual has a disclaimer (https://www.uspto.gov/trademark/laws-regulations/how-satisfy...) on "faire", the only slim element of distinctiveness in the mark.
Meaning they're relying almost entirely on "maker" to provide distinctiveness.
If the USPTO has any inkling of sense they'd realise "maker" is a standard English word that is being used for its ordinary meaning (someone who makes things), and does not give any indication of a specific origin.
You can't prevent people using common words, with their ordinary meaning, to describe their own products by registering those words (that's common across all TM systems). Any attempt to sue someone for running their own maker fair using the words maker fair should be dismissed by asking the judge to look up the two words in the dictionary.
'Faire' is simply French for 'to do' or... 'to make'.
My subscription lapsed just about every year for some glitch or another and they were unable to convert any of the gift subscriptions which should have been very easy sales.
My opinion about supporting Make Media changed after the RealSexyCyborg incident in the winter of 2017:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kassycho/a-male-ceo-has...
Bunnie Haung (who I met at a Maker Faire set-up day) vouched for her and Dale still persisted in slandering her. I let my subscription lapse and quit going to the NYC Maker Faire. 2017 was the Maker Faire highest attendance and has been declining since then.
This exactly -- of all the magazines I subscribe to, Make has (had?) the worst subscription department by far. It was surprising given how important a subscriber base is.
FWIW, Dale finally apologized:
https://twitter.com/dalepd/status/927712935987707904
Most of the pain in the world is caused by this attitude.
The real assholes are IMO the Vice people, and Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/vice-vs-sexy-how-18216256
There's a whole untold story- but Make contacted Vice, which was what caused all the subsequent events.
Thank you!
It looks to me that these people (this Dale figure, the Vice reporters etc) aren't impossible dickheads who belong in jail, but well-meaning people who made (grave) errors in judgment. They deserve "comfortable lives" just like everybody else. I bet you've made grave errors in judgment once or twice. I sure have.
(little sidenote: I don't have a strong opinion about this particular debate. I didn't dive deep, I don't know who the key players are. It seems to me that Naomi Wu is obviously the victim here, so I'm on "your side"- but that doesn't mean I agree with your hardline approach)
Some people don't share your attitudes, unfortunately. You can see this since they tried to make Wu's life as uncomfortable as possible, with no qualms whatsoever, all out of extremely fuzzy, purported "mistakes" on her part. Yes, Dale did finally issue a clear and complete apology so that issue was resolved to everyone's satisfaction, but let's be clear on how extremely rare that attitude is. Most conflicts tend to simmer because those who are in a losing position will never want to admit to themselves that they're losers, and change their ways - instead, they will keep behaving as "impossible dickheads", entirely by their own choice. Being naïve about this doesn't prevent or resolve conflict; it encourages more conflict since everyone sees how weak your reaction is to being bullied.
It's perfectly possible, and much more constructive, to write that you think this Dale is a dickhead without "never forgive" and without denying him a "comfortable life".
Bullies are not going to stop bullying because someone on the internet thinks they don't deserve a comfortable life. At the same time, perpetrating the idea that mistakes ought to haunt people for the rest of their lives, that forgiveness is a weakness, is actively harmful and makes culture more hateful. Plus, you're making a discussion more inflammatory to absolutely nobody's benefit.
Dale genuinely could not fit me into his cognitive framework. He was an older guy who'd grown up on "Chinese can't be creative" which there is some truth to- it's really, really tough for us. What tripped him up is numbers- 1.3b of us, our outliers are...well like me. I am unlikely in a small pool- in a large one me, or someone like me is a statistical certainty. He made a mistake- and some people behind the scenes with other motives and their own prejudice who encouraged him to speak up and act on that mistake.
Vice knew. They made no mistake, no confusion, no misunderstanding- it was spelled out for them. Examples were provided of people in very similar situations and what the consequences were. Vice was flat out willing to subject me to state action for the sake of giving their story a "hook". Dale was, at absolute worse a prejudiced old man in a position where that prejudice did a lot of harm- Vice had multiple people involved who fit every definition of sociopath.
That's not true. I've met Dale, and the impression he makes is of a very humble, quiet and kind person. My understanding is that he gets along very well with other Chinese makers.
His conflict was with you, specifically, not with all Chinese people, and it's in very poor taste for you to try to turn this personality conflict into a racial or gender issue. You've done this often in your many online spats.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Thanks, the damage was and is pretty bad- and long-lasting. But, "be like water" and all that. I'm slowly pivoting to hardware development. Studying welding and CNC operations now also.
But- as far as business dealings with Make my one direct experience, in an area I'm qualified to talk about is that their China strategy was simply awful. Just textbook how to fail in China. They chose a Chinese partner that did not understand Maker culture, was incentivized to not support it (even curtail it), and let them run the Make brand into the ground during a time when billions of RMB was going into Maker initiatives:
https://theasiadialogue.com/2016/05/26/makerspaces-for-the-p...
Not just government grants, but parents willing to pay generously for after-school hands-on activities that cultivate creativity. Lego absolutely nailed it, they were and are the model for Make to follow: https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2188280/bric...
I told Make all this last year. Even with all the shit they pulled- I want Chinese kids to have something better than factory jobs making shanzhai shit. I will talk to Make or anyone else if it means more creativity here. I am a true believer- I would make a lot more doing literally anything else if I wasn't. I offered to get Make legal representation, connect them with the investors that were asking for an introduction- just at least hear them out. Nope. Patronizing and dismissive. They were convinced their current Chinese partner had "lots of guanxi" and had it all figured out. It was a huge, huge missed opportunity for absolutely no reason at the absolute height of demand. Now, of course, the Maker market has cooled off: http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1003171/made-in-china-the-boom... and things would be much harder.
Make seems to make very bad business decisions, driven by enforcing an in-house ideology and social hierarchy that really has no relation to the Hacker ethic at the heart of the Maker movement.
This is becoming more and more common. Adafruit is another example, really good IP protection in China so no one has knocked off their boards. I have a Chinese IP lawyer I recommend who is great at this, but unfortunately most foreigners feel American IP protection is sufficient so won't spend the little bit it takes to protect themselves (better) in China.
Could you please (briefly) elaborate on these protections or point me in the right direction to look, ie articles and/or search terms? I mean absolutely no disrespect but as a westerner without any real knowledge of China I only know the stereotype of China being like the wild west where everything gets ripped off. I'm happy to do some research to learn more about it if you could advice me where to look!
No offense taken! It seems crazy but things change fast- and yes we still steal loads of stuff and tend not to respect IP not registered in China. I have not found a really good write up in English, I've been meaning to get together with some local friends and do something. But yeah- totally ok to be skeptical, we don't have a stellar track record
There is an event going on https://imgur.com/a/5w3P8l4
Shenzhen maker week has no relation to maker fare, but it seem to have surely overtaken it
Muaa Haaa Haaa. Good stuff. CNC is awesome. :)
Seems to turn into a huge (fun) time sink, but expands out the possibilities for creating things.
Looking at your video list on YouTube quickly, it seems like good initial learning:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkmVH8knK60
If/when you're up for a more full-on CNC system - without getting crazy expensive - the Shapeoko 3 is very, very good:
* https://community.carbide3d.com/t/hardcore-aluminum-milling-... <-- stuff done by someone who really knows what they're doing (not me ;>)
* https://carbide3d.com/shapeoko/
Personally, I started with 3D printing too (FlashForge Creator Pro), and moved into CNC after hitting frustrating limitations with that.
Haven't gotten into welding yet (it's on the ToDo list), as no backyard or shed here to do it in. Ugh. :/
In theory, I should be able to find a Maker type place nearby, but haven't investigated that yet.
Any idea if there's an equivalent to the Shapeoko in Shenzhen? eg high quality, but low cost
So far, all I've seen online is the same cheapo stuff (low quality, low cost) that appears in any kind of Ebay search for CNC. o_O
Keep at it, you are setting an amazing example here. Very good luck with it all.
edit - if you are pivoting to hardware development, get one of these; http://www.latticesemi.com/en/Products/DevelopmentBoardsAndK...
use this on it; http://www.clifford.at/icestorm/
and this is where you can find some useful modules - https://opencores.org/
Is some of the most fun I have had in ages in making tech do weird shit. I currently have a stepper motor rumnning over optic fibre as the first stage of my new 3d printer build.
My point is simple: tickets and parking were insanely priced and it’s no wonder that the overall business failed because clearly the management had some trouble reconciling reality with their perception of their own value.
I don’t think they run the parking concession on-site, and they charge $35 for those spots because the lot fills up fast at that price. If they charged less, the lot would just fill up sooner.
I think the bigger issue was that every year it felt like 98% of the same exhibits in the same places. So it was the kind of thing you did once. Twice was a mistake. In 2016(?) I volunteered at a friend's booth, and didn't even really want to walk around because I'd already seen it all. And ppl gobbed the booth because it something different.
The ones I went to were always full of people including families. The price is about the same as a theme park or other such event.
Just because to you it's not worth the price does not mean it's not worth the price to everyone. Assuming everyone thinks exactly like you and values things exactly like you is a very flawed view on life.
> "It works for people but it doesn’t necessarily work as a business today, at least under my oversight"