Adafruit Founder Limor Fried: Open-Source Hardware Revolution [video]

https://www.tfir.io/2019/06/04/meet-adafruit-founder-limor-fried-open-source-hardware-revolution/

by CrankyBear • 7 years ago

190 45 7 years ago

tfir.io

Lowkeyloki• 7 years ago

I love Lady Ada. But I wish I could just read this instead of having to watch a video.

vorpalhex2• 7 years ago

Likewise. Transcription is cheap these days!

sametmax3• 7 years ago

How so ?

coolspot2• 7 years ago

https://pastebin.com/sp6FaKGj

frosted-flakes2• 7 years ago

This is from the "Open Transcript" option in the menu above the subscribe button, if anyone's wondering.

TaylorAlexander3• 7 years ago

I have so much respect for her. I tried to start an open hardware business and even with a big successful kickstarter I couldn’t do it. I always wanted to make great products and fun easy to follow tutorials, but I failed. Seeing her company dominate was at first discouraging but has become cathartic. Even though I never made those helpful products and tutorials, someone has. It helps me feel like my failure wasn’t that bad. I’m so glad Lady Ada and her team have been doing so well.

baybal2• 7 years ago

I can remember a great lot of people who managed to fail even on "hello world" level hardware businesses. Don't take this as some kind of discouragement.

The prime majority of successful small electronics businesses do very simple things like utilitarian "bare PCB" gadgets.

Olimex for example manages to get quite a lot of business despite being quite far away from Silicon valley's commotion (located in Plovdiv, a 350k people town)

I knew a teen who managed to spin a simple WiFi tester on ESP32 commercially. Also, just a PCB with a lipo battery and an MCU. He's doing great despite amateur level EE and it being a very niche product (professional WiFi installers are much the only buyers)

My own opinion, in electronics business you are always in between the Scylla and Charybdis of big and unprofitable businesses (commodity OEMs,) and niche/meme/fad products (hoverboards, vapers, and of course... the juicer)

Junk_Collector• 7 years ago

It's a brutal space to operate in and seems to be getting worse all the time. Investment capital is scare. Product copies are rampant and hitting the market faster and faster to the point I even sometimes see copies reach store shelves before the original. Suppliers are increasingly consolidated and manufacturers can be hostile to little guys who need delivery schedules.

Anyone who finds success in such a market has my respect and the fact the Limor has managed to not only succeed, but thrive in such an environment is a testament to how incredible she is.

TaylorAlexander3• 7 years ago

Yeah I’m definitely not really kicking myself anymore, but it was a brutal downhill slide to failure when it was happening.

And even though I tried to do a simple PCB product, I offered a lot of different accessories and kit options, and the product itself had an onboard radio that needed certification. I just didn’t appreciate how much complexity these little things add. I did know full well that I was unaware, and planned to figure it out by doing. It was painful though.

cbanek• 7 years ago

Just to chime in I've only had great experiences with Olimex!

cushychicken• 7 years ago

I'd have to guess that a large part of Adafruit's success is that they are always. Hustling. They have a weekly Youtube video detailing the 20+ new gadgets they unveil every week.

That's super impressive.

JMiao• 7 years ago

I relate to your sentiment so much! Do you think you’ll try again?

TaylorAlexander3• 7 years ago

Thanks! Well I sure won’t try doing a kickstarter business essentially solo again.

Recently I’ve found a job with someone who values open source, so while some details have yet to bear out, it seems like we might be open sourcing our work. So I may be able to get regular income working on open source. So far it’s all really great. I don’t want to do a solo business again, but I’m always trying to make sure my time is spent doing ethically sound work. Open source is a big part of my philosophy there.

SexyCyborg• 7 years ago

Limor is an amazing woman who has been very good to me. I honestly think she does not get enough credit for- A. having viable hardware manufacturing in the US and B. investing in good IP protection in China so that her products have never been cloned here. She has an absolutely uncrossable moat around her product line (at least as far as China is concerned) because of the massive knowledge base built by both creative, and technical professionals that it's tied to.

burfog• 7 years ago

When I saw "Fried", I though it was going to be about RF burns and a memorial service.

Evidently, she's as OK as she ever was.

avip• 7 years ago

Fried (-man) is a common East-European Jewish surname, from the German "peace". A moment of useless Genealogy...

DoofusOfDeath• 7 years ago

Me too! I first parsed that sentence as:

Subject:

   Proper name: Limor

      Title: Adafruit Founder

Verb: fried (past tense of "fry"), as in "burned out".

Sohcahtoa82• 7 years ago

And I thought "Limor" was just an alias and they typo'd "Fired", as in the founder of Adafruit was getting fired.

anbop• 7 years ago

She can’t be fired, she owns the company. There’s no VC in Adafruit.

nurettin• 7 years ago

That is what I thought as well. And the video kept on about her accomplishments as an engineer and I kept on wondering when they will hit the controversy. Very embarrassing.

wott• 7 years ago

This is another unfortunate consequence of the disastrous American typographical perversion of Putting Capitals on Almost Every Word in a Title (Often in an inconsistent Way To Add Insult To Injury).

mintplant3• 7 years ago

I absolutely love Adafruit tech for low-volume hardware hacking projects. Particularly the Feather nRF52832 [0]: onboard flash, Bluetooth Low Energy, a 5V-to-3.3V converter, and USB battery charging all in one little off-the-shelf board. And the runtime [1] and bootloader [2] are totally open! I'm tinkering with my own little fork to add signed updates, lock down the OTA DFU mechanism, and switch to a more secure BLE pairing mode.

By the way, if anyone knows of an alternative to the RedBear Nano V2 [3] in terms of form factor and power profile, please let me know, since Particle is sadly killing that board off after buying out RedBear. Glad I don't have to worry about that with Adafruit.

[0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/3406

[1] https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Arduino

[2] https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_nRF52_Bootloader

[3] https://store.particle.io/products/redbear-nano-v2

codesushi42• 7 years ago

Have you looked into an ESP32? It has on board WiFi and Bluetooth.

mintplant3• 7 years ago

I have! Neat little chip, and I'll keep it in mind if I need WiFi in a future project.

hartzell• 7 years ago

I think that you wanted your first link to be:

[0] https://www.adafruit.com/product/3406

mintplant3• 7 years ago

Oops, yes. Fixed.

jihadjihad• 7 years ago

When I was in high school, I somehow came across her post on building an MP3 player and putting it into an Altoids tin[0]. The post was a formative experience in my life and spurred me to pursue an engineering degree!

[0] http://www.ladyada.net/make/minty/index.html

ntoll• 7 years ago

Limor and Adafruit are an inspiration.

bityard• 7 years ago

More than 10 years ago now, I built myself a few x0xb0xes, one of Limor's first projects. You could only buy the PCBs and had to source all of the other stuff yourself. I still have one somewhere, those were fun to build and had a great community. http://blog.bityard.net/category/electronics.html

Very satisfying to see how big Adafruit has become.

Adafruit Founder Limor Fried: Open-Source Hardware Revolution [video]

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