Weekly Kickstarter Discussion

[kfitch42]

It seems every week we get some discussion of the generic pros and cons of Kickstarter.

Perhaps a more in-depth/specific example would be good.

In particular I am thinking about the project that first introduced me to Kickstarter: OpenVizsla

Launched: Nov 22, 2010
Funding ended: Dec 22, 2010 with $81,026 pledged of $17,500 goal.

To my knowledge no actual hardware has shipped from it yet.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bushing/openvizsla-open-source-usb-protocol-analyzer
http://www.openvizsla.org/
http://b.openvizsla.org/

[Mint.]

Kickstarter's so dodgy, I don't see why people even bother with it!

[westfw]

I went through the "technical projects" list at kickstarter (there are fewer than 100.)  OpenVizsia seems to be on one end of the spectrum, in terms of delays and non-shipping-ness.  On the other end, there's Gameduino, which seems to have done what it said it would, despite being very over-subscribed, and is now available from multiple sources.  Of course, kickstarter isn't all about pre-sales of some gadget, there are some flat-out requests for donations.  And there are some projects that I'm shocked were even proposed (mail-in rechargeable batteries?  Really?)

Overall, it seems to be doing at least as well as most venture capitalist investments.

[Rasz]

Haha you are reading my mind.
I was looking for ways to sniff SD Card data stream yesterday and googled OpenVizsla by accident. I remember OpenVizsla starting in 2010 and all the excitement. I didnt understand it at all because it was already redundant.  Saleae was on the market at that time, so was $50 SUMP (Open Bench Logic Sniffer from dangerous prototypes), Bus Pirate and many others (including cheap saleae/USDBee clones).
I felt vindicated yesterday while stumbling on that kickstarter page and reading comments
This is how Ouoya and other wank projects will end up (or that 2 years in the making LED flashlight lol).

ps I ended up finding
https://github.com/dirker/sdmmc-analyzer
plugin for Saleae, looks perfect for my needs.

I also found sigrok
http://sigrok.org
This looks very promising. One software to bind all the lab equipment. Who knows, maybe they will make Tabled app and Chris can rub it in Daves face as an universal display he has been talking about in few episodes. I LOVE the idea of using  big responsive tablt as a display for all my equipment.

[Smokey]

I've been following OpenVizsla from the beginning.  I didn't contribute, but I probably would have got one eventually had it actually finished.  There was one thing that always tweaked me about that project though.  They claim to be an "open source" usb analyzer, but at the moment there is nothing open source about it.  What I don't get is if you are going to keep a design closed and do all the work with just a couple people, why open source the thing at all? What's the motivation behind that?  When it's done, sell it for a huge markup like everyone else.  The HUGE benefit of a project being open source is the cumulative knowledge and contributions of a huge number of people who most likely already have the skills.  I keep telling people that the Internet is full of people that are smarter than you and looking for something to work on.  Learning how to do something like that from scratch, while it might be fun, is not the more efficient way to go.  Of course when I pointed that out in the beginning, I got flamed and told that they had an expert team working on it and not to worry.  That was like 2 years ago.  Now people are getting rightfully pissed and I get to laugh.  They really shouldn't have posted some of the hardware bugs that made them cut new boards.  It's pretty embarrassing when you are publicly developing a product and making stupid mistakes that would have gotten picked up before the boards were cut if they had just released the layout for a community review.  It is labeled as "open source" after all.

edit: typo

[Bored@Work]

I've been following OpenVizsla from the beginning.  I didn't contribute, but I probably would have got one eventually had it actually finished.  There was one thing that always tweaked me about that project though.  They claim to be an "open source" usb analyzer, but at the moment there is nothing open source about it.

Maybe they used "open source" as a buzzword to attract backers. Other Kickstarter projects use "Arduino" instead.

Of course when I pointed that out in the beginning, I got flamed and told that they had an expert team working on it and not to worry

Expert team? Yeah like "me and my buddy Chuck from down the road who used to work at Fries-R-Us"?

I find Kickstarter an interesting social study. How to depart people form their money when there is no obligation to deliver something in return for the money. Ingredients are apparently buzzwords like "open source" or "Arduino". "Gaming" seems to work pretty well, tool. Such does the music thing, or "we save the world".

[Smokey]

You know what would be super funny....... With all the embedded experience around here, if we started building a real open source USB analyzer now and had it done before they do. 

[Rasz]

You know what would be super funny....... With all the embedded experience around here, if we started building a real open source USB analyzer now and had it done before they do.

Yeah.
Lets call it Open Workbench Logic Sniffer, and get Ian from seed to make us some boards. It could sell around $50 with free shipping too!

[Hypernova]

Is there a survey somewhere of the ratio between fully backed projects and the ones that actually delivered?

[Pokolov]

Is there a survey somewhere of the ratio between fully backed projects and the ones that actually delivered?

I think no .

[ivan747]

Is there a survey somewhere of the ratio between fully backed projects and the ones that actually delivered?

I think no .

Kickstarter would go into bankruptcy if they did.

[cthree]

If you don't want to risk your money on "dodgy" projects then don't contribute to them. This is just bitching and whining by people who have contributed nothing but a bullshit attitude.

[Smokey]

I think the big point here is that you have no way of knowing if a kickstarter is dodgy or not.  And it appears that even the people running the campaigns don't know a lot of the time.  By backing a project you are essentially committing your money to nearly blind faith.  Without having gone through a product life cycle from start to finish and had it be successful you have no idea how much work it is going to be and how many different fields you need to touch. 

When a big company says they are going to make something cool, it's usually (I know, not always) safe to do things like preorder because at the time they announce a product they are most likely already done with the design and have the production rolling.  There have been whole departments of people doing design, research, marketing, consumer focus groups, production engineering, etc. before anyone outside the company knows anything substantial about it.  Kickstarters are usually just some guy with an idea.  It might be a really cool idea, and there might be a prototype, but that's not yet a production item.  You have no guarantee anything will work and you can't just go get a refund if it doesn't. 

You can't just say "don't donate to the dodgy ones" since every kickstarter is "dodgy" until they actually ship something.

[westfw]

There's a big difference between being "dodgy", and being "not as good as I could have done" or "too expensive for what you get",  "been done before",  or even merely "stupid."  The "Crowd Funded" topic seems to be headed toward being full of the latter. :-(