On Monday, November 4, 2013 21:09:52 Arokux X wrote:
To tell the truth the EOMA project looses its "openness" in my opinion. It was first advertised to be an OSHW project. Then schematics of the EOMA68-A20 got closed. Then motivation for the pricing disappeared. I wonder what will happen next.
i hope to help fix that. well, not all on my own, but with the help of everyone here. so:
* the upcoming MEB will be open hardware. it will sport the open hardware logo right on the PCB and we will host the layouts online for your enjoyment / forking / playing with. they currently exist in a git repository and i use kicad with them.
* coinciding with the MEB launch, a new website will be rolled out that can be used (or ignored :) by the community here. it will start out simple and contain various useful bits of information along with forums to get us all started ... and from there we will expand it together
* we will promote weekly videos posted showing different project concepts. we will create these videos as needed, but would love to promote community content as well / instead
* we will be hosting project files / schematics / etc in an online warehouse open to everyone.
* we will be providing opportunities for people to create custom devices and even work with people to productize their ideas where there is desire to do so. we will be offering a full range of coordination services including casework, PCB customization, boxing, branding, shipping. that work will be taken on by people and companies who are in the EOMA68 community and we will strongly encourage releasing the results as open hardware. to aid in this, we have a fledgling partner network that will be unveiled on launch that will be open (and gratis) to join for anyone with the desire and the skill set.
i’ll also address the elephant in the room regarding the new MEB hardware here:
the MEBv2 has been done largely behind the scenes.
why? well, so far the EOMA68 community has done lots of tinkering but quite honestly produced very, very little in the way actual “i can hold it in my hand” devices. this has led some to lose some faith in the community focus. personally, i’m a 100% believer in community .. but i also recognize it needs coordination. note: not imposed direction or leadership, but coordination.
i have been lurking in the outskirts of the EOMA68 world since last december; so while i’m not a newcomer to EOMA68, i am a newcomer to the community.
in recognition of the above, i decided to create a low-key, concerted and highly organized effort to create an MEB type product. this meant a small team working tightly together, and since this community lacks any sort of template for doing that the possibility of making a quality device in a short period of time by throwing schematics and ideas around on this list looked like a very low-odds-of-success type proposition.
trust me, it was hard enough to get something done in 6 weeks as we:
* made decisions like “usb2 or usb3”, “gig or just 10/100 ethernet” * 2-layer or 4-layer board * created the branding elements (logo, name, colors, etc) * had to do multiple prototype runs to prove the schematics
as i hope you can appreciate, the above things are completely ripe for bikeshedding discussions. just look at how difficult the relatively simple EEPROM layout discussion has been for reference.
Chris and I have been financing this effort out of our own pockets. between prototyping and branding, I’ve personally spent a thousands on this already. by the time all is done with production, a sum of money that could buy a small house in many developed nations will have been spent. i hope you can appreciate in light of that why i opted for a reliable method rather than toss this to the EOMA68 community which has yet to demonstrate its ability to produce such results.
my hope is that with this project behind us, we’ll be able to take the processes we used successfully and apply them in an open community context such that people in the wider community can replicate our successes and even, one hopes, improve on them.
the MEBv2 project has involved people from the existing EOMA68 community, such as Chris and Luke (and people you may not yet know very well, such as David), as well as myself. this is not the first EOMA68 relevant processes i’ve helped finance or been involved with, even if it is the first you may have heard of. so this is not an attempt to ‘hijack’ the EOMA68 community, but an exercise in creating a reproducable process that can produce success.
this community is in need of process that can be used to create amazing things together, and i hope that post-launch we can translate the processes used to make the MEBv2 a reality into the open community here to the benefit of all.