4 ms·

This is one of those projects that at first, is easy to dismiss as "silly" or "useless". On the surface, sure. But looking at the imgur album and reading the co

by cr0sh 9y ago

This is one of those projects that at first, is easy to dismiss as "silly" or "useless". On the surface, sure. But looking at the imgur album and reading the comments (and I would imagine going to the website, etc - which I haven't done), it becomes clear (and the author even says so on the album) that this project ultimately served a larger purpose: From start to finish, this project has helped the person develop a complete (or nearly so) set of manufacturing skills. An idea was taken from concept, on through a multitude of other steps (design, prototyping, software development, hardware development, etc), to producing a final working "product". Now - it seems from the comments in the album that this isn't the authors first go at such a project, but it may have been one of the most complex or largest they have done. Regardless of that, it has helped them to hone and develop a complete set of skills very few people have. Heck - I would encourage the author to try turning this project, or something similar, into a MOOC in some manner; I don't know if this is possible, or if it has been done before, but I bet there's a growing audience of people who'd love an all-in-one course to study to gain such skills. Part of the problem of implementing such a thing as a MOOC is whether a person has access to the needed tools and equipment; maybe that could be part of any pre-req's? Or, maybe people would pay for such a course, and parts or tools could be provided (kinda like those "boxed recipe meals" you can get)? Ultimately, I liked seeing this project; even though to me it seemed "frivolous", it really is a physical form of "random play coding exercises" software engineers do from time to time, in order to learn a new language or framework, or just to try out ideas or whatnot. Such a project thus becomes a education and learning opportunity of a very intense sort. If this individual hasn't gotten any job offers or such, I would seriously question "why not?" - they have shown a level of competence and follow through rarely seen in a single individual, and they should be considered a valuable asset to a company (that, or this person needs to create a startup or something).

abhi3188 9y ago
Hey you got it absolutely right.. i do these project for fun, as learning experiences, as self challenges and to keep the creative juices flowing.. it's how I enjoy spending my time and money haha
- cfstras 9y ago
  I love the work you did! There was some rambling about the RPi setup process - I fully agree that it can be time-consuming. A good way to make that better is building one's own OS image. Once you get the scripts running (which is fairly easy), you can customize them to your liking, preinstall your software and config, etc. There's a lot of opportunities to save power and make the bootup quicker if you look through the scripts. https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen
franl 9y ago
I would pay money for said course. I'm trying to piece together my own homegrown manufacturing curriculum through a combination of books, googling, diy projects, and YouTube. I don't expect to create world class engineering marvels on my own, but to be able to develop such a polished finished product as OP would be incredible. Any tips on where to start as far as 3D modeling and enclosure design goes?
- hugs 9y ago
  OpenSCAD! http://www.openscad.org/documentation.html http://www.openscad.org/documentation.html It might not be where you end, but it's a great place to start. (fwiw, I do all my 3D design with OpenSCAD. Been using it since 2011.)
  - franl 9y ago
    Very cool! Thank you! How do you find it helpful to think in terms of code that generates a design vs. jumping right into the visual aspect of a design (I'm assuming the latter is how a typical 3D design program works)? In other words, why do you prefer this to other more traditional 3D design programs?
    - hugs 9y ago
      The parts in my designs are fairly simple and mathematical (rectangles with holes like Lego Technic), which makes them good candidates for OpenSCAD. My product designs, though, are first made by hand in a playing-with-Lego-like way (3D printing parts made in OpenSCAD as needed). Beyond that, I like having the precision of source code for my designs. Like source code, I can easily check them into source control and track changes over time.
- abhi3188 9y ago
  sounds like an interesting idea but as pointed out above, with these kinds of projects, equipment access is the main hurdle.. I use Autodesk Fusion 360 for the modeling. I really like it though to be honest it's the only 3d program I ever tried and I just picked it up recently
developer2 9y ago
You analysis is on point. The comments on Reddit in particular were so far off base. On one hand you had people raving about how this needed to be patented and produced for sale - those people are (perhaps optimistically) out of touch with reality. On the other hand were people laughing in his face for how ridiculous this was to produce as a project, because it's obviously not marketable ("I am so smart"). It goes to show how the average person thinks - everything has to be about the ability to make money, right? Why should anybody do ANYTHING if it's not aimed at directly producing income? So few people remotely understood that this has NOTHING to do with the final product and its (non-)place in the world. This is about learning a lot about every step, from concept and design to an extremely complex production process, of a single interesting idea. No, it's not about patenting. No, it's not about mass-producing in China to get-rich-quick. No, it's not about showing off "an amazing 23rd century Apple product", which it is clearly not. Reading deep into the comments about his resulting product made me even more cynical about the average population. People just don't get it. The overall assumption is he's trying to invent the latest thing to sell people. The only reason to do anything in life must be backed by capitalist ambition! It is an idea, brought to fruition by one man's amazing ability to dedicate himself to learning - and performing - the entire process. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR OWN SKEWED INTERPRETATION OF HIS SUPPOSED INTENTIONS. tldr; People's obsession with capitalism seeps into everything they come across. You can't share the result of your labour without people only being able to see the possibilities from a capitalist point of view. Everything is viewed from a capitalist (if not, then political) standpoint; anything else is apparently unfathomable. tldr #2; I am envious of this product's creator. I wish I had even 5% of the creator's vision, ingenuity, ambition, or skill - let alone all four of those attributes.
- klez 9y ago
  That's a problem you sometimes see here too, on the various "Show HN"s. There's always some comments along the lines of "nice, but how will you monetize this". Seeing this is a website geared towards startup culture it's something to be expected, to a certain degree. But it makes you wander about the shifting meaning of the word "hacker".
- jackmodern 9y ago
  You sound pretty ("I am so smart") and condescending. Must be pretty hard living life as a poor lonely tortured genius.

by cr0sh 9y ago

abhi3188 9y ago

Hey you got it absolutely right.. i do these project for fun, as learning experiences, as self challenges and to keep the creative juices flowing.. it's how I enjoy spending my time and money haha

cfstras 9y ago
I love the work you did! There was some rambling about the RPi setup process - I fully agree that it can be time-consuming. A good way to make that better is building one's own OS image. Once you get the scripts running (which is fairly easy), you can customize them to your liking, preinstall your software and config, etc. There's a lot of opportunities to save power and make the bootup quicker if you look through the scripts. https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen https://github.com/RPi-Distro/pi-gen

franl 9y ago

I would pay money for said course. I'm trying to piece together my own homegrown manufacturing curriculum through a combination of books, googling, diy projects, and YouTube. I don't expect to create world class engineering marvels on my own, but to be able to develop such a polished finished product as OP would be incredible. Any tips on where to start as far as 3D modeling and enclosure design goes?

hugs 9y ago
OpenSCAD! http://www.openscad.org/documentation.html http://www.openscad.org/documentation.html It might not be where you end, but it's a great place to start. (fwiw, I do all my 3D design with OpenSCAD. Been using it since 2011.)
- franl 9y ago
  Very cool! Thank you! How do you find it helpful to think in terms of code that generates a design vs. jumping right into the visual aspect of a design (I'm assuming the latter is how a typical 3D design program works)? In other words, why do you prefer this to other more traditional 3D design programs?
  - hugs 9y ago
    The parts in my designs are fairly simple and mathematical (rectangles with holes like Lego Technic), which makes them good candidates for OpenSCAD. My product designs, though, are first made by hand in a playing-with-Lego-like way (3D printing parts made in OpenSCAD as needed). Beyond that, I like having the precision of source code for my designs. Like source code, I can easily check them into source control and track changes over time.
abhi3188 9y ago
sounds like an interesting idea but as pointed out above, with these kinds of projects, equipment access is the main hurdle.. I use Autodesk Fusion 360 for the modeling. I really like it though to be honest it's the only 3d program I ever tried and I just picked it up recently

developer2 9y ago

You analysis is on point. The comments on Reddit in particular were so far off base. On one hand you had people raving about how this needed to be patented and produced for sale - those people are (perhaps optimistically) out of touch with reality. On the other hand were people laughing in his face for how ridiculous this was to produce as a project, because it's obviously not marketable ("I am so smart"). It goes to show how the average person thinks - everything has to be about the ability to make money, right? Why should anybody do ANYTHING if it's not aimed at directly producing income? So few people remotely understood that this has NOTHING to do with the final product and its (non-)place in the world. This is about learning a lot about every step, from concept and design to an extremely complex production process, of a single interesting idea. No, it's not about patenting. No, it's not about mass-producing in China to get-rich-quick. No, it's not about showing off "an amazing 23rd century Apple product", which it is clearly not. Reading deep into the comments about his resulting product made me even more cynical about the average population. People just don't get it. The overall assumption is he's trying to invent the latest thing to sell people. The only reason to do anything in life must be backed by capitalist ambition! It is an idea, brought to fruition by one man's amazing ability to dedicate himself to learning - and performing - the entire process. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR OWN SKEWED INTERPRETATION OF HIS SUPPOSED INTENTIONS. tldr; People's obsession with capitalism seeps into everything they come across. You can't share the result of your labour without people only being able to see the possibilities from a capitalist point of view. Everything is viewed from a capitalist (if not, then political) standpoint; anything else is apparently unfathomable. tldr #2; I am envious of this product's creator. I wish I had even 5% of the creator's vision, ingenuity, ambition, or skill - let alone all four of those attributes.

klez 9y ago
That's a problem you sometimes see here too, on the various "Show HN"s. There's always some comments along the lines of "nice, but how will you monetize this". Seeing this is a website geared towards startup culture it's something to be expected, to a certain degree. But it makes you wander about the shifting meaning of the word "hacker".
jackmodern 9y ago
You sound pretty ("I am so smart") and condescending. Must be pretty hard living life as a poor lonely tortured genius.