| Electronics > Projects, Designs, and Technical Stuff |
| uSupply Custom LCD |
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| EEVblog:
--- Quote from: KNSSoftware on October 19, 2017, 04:00:35 pm ---Is this not suppose to be an open source project though? As much as I would love to follow the experience of getting a custom display designed and produced, does it not go against the point of this particular project, if we can't build our own one without buying one of your custom displays? --- End quote --- No, the "point" of this project is for me to produce a commercial quality and commercial looking product I can sell, and have fun doing it. Yes it may well be "open source" in many respects, but it would be silly to strictly design it around having the ability from a few people (and it is literally a few people, like 0.01% of customers) to be able to make it themselves using all off-the-shelf parts and use that as the driving design factor. That is almost zero on my priority list which is (in rough order): 1) Design a product that I want for myself (and close to my original concept for the uSupply) 2) Design a good looking and well engineered product 3) Design a product that is commercially viable (David2 who is doing a bulk of this work is a full time employee on real professional engineering Australian wages, and this will cost me a lot to design and I want a return on that investment), that means BOM cost matters. I cannot live on advertising money forever so I'm also moving into commercially viable niche products, and that is basically why I hired David full time. 4) Design something that makes for some good video content (custom LCD would make for a good how-to video). and right down the bottom: 5) Think about were OSHW comes into it. But ultimately why a custom LCD? Because I think they look better and that's what I want. Trust me, we have debated for many hours and endless google searching for LCD solutions that might be suitable, and ultimately we think that custom LCD is just nicer, as well as being potentially cheaper and more suited to the case design we have. You can design a good looking commercial product using all Digikey off-the-shelf parts, but it's ultimately not going to be as nicely polished as what you can do with some custom stuff. Yeah I can use a nice Newhaven graphic LCD, and have standard Digikey PCB mount tactile buttons through holes in a front panel off-the-shelf box etc etc, the kind of projects you get in Silicon Chip magazine etc, but that's not going to give a nice polished well engineered niche commercial product. The goal of open hardware should be about learning and sharing of designs and ideas, not making sure every product can be built 100% identical by just anyone. If you have not seen my video, there are many aspects to OSHW, it's not just some ideal uptopian thing of everything is free and readily available: |
| KNSSoftware:
--- Quote from: EEVblog on October 19, 2017, 10:30:23 pm --- --- Quote from: KNSSoftware on October 19, 2017, 04:00:35 pm ---Is this not suppose to be an open source project though? As much as I would love to follow the experience of getting a custom display designed and produced, does it not go against the point of this particular project, if we can't build our own one without buying one of your custom displays? --- End quote --- No, the "point" of this project is for me to produce a commercial quality and commercial looking product I can sell, and have fun doing it. Yes it may well be "open source" in many respects, but it would be silly to strictly design it around having the ability from a few people (and it is literally a few people, like 0.01% of customers) to be able to make it themselves using all off-the-shelf parts and use that as the driving design factor. That is almost zero on my priority list which is (in rough order): 1) Design a product that I want for myself (and close to my original concept for the uSupply) 2) Design a good looking and well engineered product 3) Design a product that is commercially viable (David2 who is doing a bulk of this work is a full time employee on real professional engineering Australian wages, and this will cost me a lot to design and I want a return on that investment), that means BOM cost matters. I cannot live on advertising money forever so I'm also moving into commercially viable niche products, and that is basically why I hired David full time. 4) Design something that makes for some good video content (custom LCD would make for a good how-to video). and right down the bottom: 5) Think about were OSHW comes into it. But ultimately why a custom LCD? Because I think they look better and that's what I want. Trust me, we have debated for many hours and endless google searching for LCD solutions that might be suitable, and ultimately we think that custom LCD is just nicer, as well as being potentially cheaper and more suited to the case design we have. You can design a good looking commercial product using all Digikey off-the-shelf parts, but it's ultimately not going to be as nicely polished as what you can do with some custom stuff. The goal of open hardware should be about learning and sharing of designs and ideas, not making sure every product can be built 100% identical by just anyone. If you have not seen my video, there are many aspects to OSHW, it's not just some ideal uptopian thing of everything is free and readily available: --- End quote --- Dave thanks for your considered reply. While I hope that it doesn't set a fashion for members of the open source community to rush out and start adding custom components into designs; my biggest oversight and acceptance is that you rightly have commercial drivers, and this turns out to be a commercial product, which is appreciable; you have to pay the bills. You are just sharing the ins and outs. I must have missed that bit. I am not trying to blow smoke up your clacker, but i am genuinely enjoying seeing this baby grow - albeit the long haul. |
| EEVblog:
--- Quote from: KNSSoftware on October 19, 2017, 10:51:44 pm ---While I hope that it doesn't set a fashion for members of the open source community to rush out and start adding custom components into designs; my biggest oversight and acceptance is that you rightly have commercial drivers, and this turns out to be a commercial product, which is appreciable; you have to pay the bills. --- End quote --- The vast majority of OSHW products are not polished finished commercial products. If you want a really good looking and feeling commercial (or even hobby) product then there is a very good chance that you will have to go custom on some things. And BTW, the LCD will not be the only custom thing on this design, and once again there are design reasons for this. |
| Monkeh:
And if it's open source, and people want to build one, and they don't want to try and get one of your custom LCDs.. well, it's open source. They can change the design, put a graphic LCD in, and change the display code to use it. Yay, open source. It's about learning, sharing, and adapting, not outright copying. |
| jaycee:
--- Quote from: Monkeh on October 19, 2017, 11:43:20 pm ---And if it's open source, and people want to build one, and they don't want to try and get one of your custom LCDs.. well, it's open source. They can change the design, put a graphic LCD in, and change the display code to use it. Yay, open source. It's about learning, sharing, and adapting, not outright copying. --- End quote --- This. I'm glad someone else finally gets it. If the project is open source there is absolutely NOTHING to stop someone committing code which can drive a regular graphic LCD, or 7 segment LED, or whatever you want. Dave's custom display makes no difference. This is EXACTLY why designers dont open their designs. Too many entitled whiners. |
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