To contribute some recommendations that don't involve OSH...<div><br></div><div>As a company that makes powerful embedded processors that could potentially offer affordable toolkits, TI could make the following improvements:</div>
<div><br></div><div>- Offer libraries for a GCC compiler rather than IAR workbench. While you can port code written for IAR to a GCC equivalent, it takes time and that's something I don't have a lot of.</div><div>
<br></div><div>- Understand that not all users are Linux experts. I found the BeagleBoard nearly impossible to use for this reason. Perhaps I should have just avoided BeagleBoard in the first place for this very reason.</div>
<div><br></div><div>As far as tools that I don't see readily available (and please feel free to offer suggestions if you know of such tools) that TI could make:</div><div><br></div><div>- Super simple ability to play audio.</div>
<div>- Support of polyphonic audio playback.</div><div>- Ability to process audio data (DSP, etc) but expose simple high-level api to accomplish this.</div><div>- Plug and play LCD with powerful graphics libraries (or better use Processing or Javascript or something else familiar to create visual UIs)</div>
<div>- Some ability for computer vision with fairly easy to use API.</div><div>- Stupid simple network APIs</div><div><br></div><div>For now it's cheaper for me in terms of time and $$ to buy a mac mini to accomplish these tasks. Would be nice to have something smaller and cheaper that runs on batteries at some point. I thought BeagleBoard / BeagleBone would be the answer, but they are far from it. Way to complex for what I'm looking for and I don't have the time or knowledge to create a "yet another toolkit" solution in this area :)</div>
<div><br></div><div>-jeff</div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 5:03 PM, Rob Faludi <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rob@faludi.com" target="_blank">rob@faludi.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">Digi, Radio Shack, Intel and many others are <i>definitely</i> interested in the maker/designer/innovator community. Actually I also spent an hour on the phone with State Farm today too, on the topic. Best as I can determine it, these companies are all for real. But that doesn't mean they fully understand us yet. And we need to understand them too. After all it's at least as complicated being an investor-owned multinational enterprise as it is to be a hackerspace.<div>
<br></div><div>It sounds like TI is interested in the community part of what we offer. Not sure how much open-hardware matters to them one way or the other. I've met hardly anyone outside of our little circles that have even heard of it. Open software yes; hardware, not so much yet. So I'd doubt there's much fear around it in commercial circles. You gotta know it to fear it. But even then, it's not a very scary thing. Electronics manufacturers have published technical specification and schematics for years, so OSH will be more evolutionary than disruptive. And hey, if it moves product in this economy, anyone who has to do a quarterly earnings call is going to fall down and worship it!</div>
<div><br></div><div>Best of luck Kipp, to you, your presentation and those thirsty penguins.</div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><div>--Rob</div></font></span><div><div class="h5"><div><br><div><br><div><div>On Jul 24, 2012, at 3:47 PM, Kipp Bradford wrote:</div>
<br><blockquote type="cite"><div style="word-wrap:break-word">This is all incredibly helpful, not just for my conversation with TI, but maybe more for creating mutually beneficial strategies for large corporations in general (Radio Shack?).<div>
<br></div><div>I don't think turning around a battleship is possible, and it might not be beneficial in the long run for the OSH community. I'd like to see TI be wildly successful with their battleship, but maybe drop a couple hovercrafts into the water that are well-resourced and serve our needs. I'd be very happy with 1% of a $14B company devoted to open hardware.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Here's where I make some strange analogy to battleships and torpedo-weilding hovercrafts piloted by desert penguins, but I'm not going to go there.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>-Kipp<br>
<div><br><div><div>On Jul 24, 2012, at 3:12 PM, Andrew Fisher wrote:</div><br><blockquote type="cite">I'll chime in on that one as well as I've hit the same point as CTP I don't have enough time left for "yet-another-whatever" unless it completely addresses a hole in how I'm doing something so I overcome inertia. TI don't seem to deeply engage or interact with the OSH community and see that their interactions need to be based around flogging a particular product. If they took a more engaged stance then sales and product would come as they'd see the issues that actually exist and then design to fill the hole...<div>
<br></div><div>Great to meet all of you at my first Sketching as well!!</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers</div><div>Andrew<br clear="all"><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>--</div><div>Andrew Fisher</div>
<span style="color:rgb(51,51,51);font-family:proxima-nova-1,proxima-nova-2,Tahoma,Helvetica,Verdana,sans-serif;line-height:19px"><a href="http://about.me/ajfisher/bio" target="_blank"><font size="1">http://about.me/ajfisher/bio</font></a></span><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jul 25, 2012 at 4:36 AM, Christopher T Palmer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ctp@ctpdesign.com" target="_blank">ctp@ctpdesign.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div>
Not to overstate the obvious (re Alicia's response), but are we not
talking about the electronics manufacturing equivalent of asking an oil
tanker to do 180 degree U-turn? Is there respect at the corporate level
for open source hardware? The whole notion has to give them willies down
to their very bones. I know that there are people in these companies who
get OSH, but they aren't always (ever?) the people in charge.<br><br>
For my part I had sent my earlier reply to just Kipp, but I'll share it
with everyone here. This is the case for me, and I thought I was the only
one until I started hearing this from my colleagues more and more. I
don't want to learn yet-another-language, in yet-another-IDE, on
yet-another-tool. I simply don't have the time/brainspace/passion for it.
I have stuff to do, art to build, students to teach. And when I do learn
a new language (even though I really don't want to) it'll be something
that takes me in an exciting direction I can't already go - for instance
Processing, or MAX/MSP, or some such. I know people who love love love to
dig into a new programming language, but I am meeting more and more of us
who just don't. <br><br>
What I have no idea about is if there's enough people like me to cause a
shift, or if there will always be plenty of the other clamoring for the
ever new.<span><font color="#888888"><br><br>
CTP<br></font></span><br>
ps - SO AWESOME to see you all in Portland last weekend!<div><br><br>
<br><br>
At 11:12 AM 7/24/2012, alicia wrote:<br>
</div><blockquote type="cite"><div>Second, they've been very
reluctant to admit that the MSP430 Launchpad took any inspiration from
Arduino, although some engineers who worked on the product will tell you
exactly that, the company as a whole denies it and treats Arduino as a 4
letter word.<br>
<br><br>
<br></div><div>
On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 10:35 AM, Kipp Bradford
<<a href="mailto:kb@kippworks.com" target="_blank">kb@kippworks.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
<dl>
<dd>I have an opportunity this Thursday to tell the TI senior
microcontroller folks how to better serve our community. The 900 people
in the room will include the Pandaboard folks, BeagleBoard folks, MSP430
team, C2000 team, and more.<br><br>
</dd><dd>What would you like to see from TI?<br>
</dd><dd>What do they do well for us? What could they do better?<br><br>
</dd><dd>Send me an email and I'll incorporate your interests into my
talk!<br><br>
</dd><dd>Thanks,<br>
</dd><dd>-Kipp<br>
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