My thoughts and account of this years Maker Faire 2012 NYC
Posted by Simba
|
My thoughts and account of this years Maker Faire 2012 NYC October 10, 2012 12:21AM |
Hey guys, I just thought you might be interested my account of this years NYC Maker Faire event, posted here: Armani Creations. I will also add the following info for the RepRap forums that the Maker Faire 2012 nearly blew my mind. It totally blew my mind, the amount we learn in just a few hours during two days, how fourthcoming and friendly and truely American makers were, and that made me proud. I expected more children, and less excitement or useful knowledge, but in fact it was really impressive stuff.
One thing I took from the maker community was that they aren't really interested in making big bucks or making radical leaps in innovations, away from the mean. You definitely saw what I felt was a tendency towards making incremental progress on what others were using. A good example of this was that even though someone had a smash hit-business success, after many years they are still building the same product, version 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...etc. They rarely branch out like a normal business man would, trying to capture and eat the market and squash the competition. In fact, we saw Makerbot employees working side by side with Ultimachine employees (who clearly state to using makerbots open source design). This is fascinating, and also okay, because Makerbot still has the majority market share as a trusted, first-to-market player in this growing field. However, because the technologies are open, and people don't squat on the first advancement they make, you see this incremental progress sped up at a dramatic rate compared to say, my academic and government research experiences!
Also, I did not get the sense that the maker movement would be crushed any time soon. No one was there, say, from a foreign country, with a notepad, trying to figure out how to copy or steal designs. There were a few large american electronic companies though, introducing cheaper faster versions of the Arudino. Be on the look out for this, an 80MHZ processor on a fully compatible aruduino -style PCB. It even can use the same code.
Read: A $26, 6X faster Arudino. Wow!
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2012 10:18AM by Simba.
One thing I took from the maker community was that they aren't really interested in making big bucks or making radical leaps in innovations, away from the mean. You definitely saw what I felt was a tendency towards making incremental progress on what others were using. A good example of this was that even though someone had a smash hit-business success, after many years they are still building the same product, version 2.0, 3.0, 4.0...etc. They rarely branch out like a normal business man would, trying to capture and eat the market and squash the competition. In fact, we saw Makerbot employees working side by side with Ultimachine employees (who clearly state to using makerbots open source design). This is fascinating, and also okay, because Makerbot still has the majority market share as a trusted, first-to-market player in this growing field. However, because the technologies are open, and people don't squat on the first advancement they make, you see this incremental progress sped up at a dramatic rate compared to say, my academic and government research experiences!
Also, I did not get the sense that the maker movement would be crushed any time soon. No one was there, say, from a foreign country, with a notepad, trying to figure out how to copy or steal designs. There were a few large american electronic companies though, introducing cheaper faster versions of the Arudino. Be on the look out for this, an 80MHZ processor on a fully compatible aruduino -style PCB. It even can use the same code.
Read: A $26, 6X faster Arudino. Wow!
Quote
Microchip® PIC32MX320F128 processor
80 Mhz 32-bit MIPS
128K Flash, 16K SRAM
Compatible with many existing Arduino™ code examples, reference materials and other resources
Can also be programmed using Microchip's MPLAB® IDE (along with a PICkit 3 and our PICkit3 Programming Cable Kit, seen below)
Arduino™ "Uno" form factor
Compatible with many Arduino™ shields
42 available I/O
User LED
Connects to a PC using a USB A -> mini B cable (not included)
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2012 10:18AM by Simba.
Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.