17 - Invention, Intellectual Property and Business Models

We are getting close!

• Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project.
• Prepare drafts of your summary slide (presentation.png, 1920x1080) and video clip (presentation.mp4, 1080p HTML5, < ~minute, < ~10 MB) and put them in your root directory

This week is less on learning and more on finalizing the final project. Every day is a learning day, so I will focus on the video editing.

• I share most of my code and designs. I use a BSD-3 clause for it.

• I want to create a commercial for this product

• Kdenlive is a very powerful video-editing tool.

I publish most of my work that might benefit others under a BSD-3 clause.

BSD 3-Clause License

Copyright (c) <year>, <name>
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
• Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

I use(d) FreeBSD quite a lot and liked the permissive license. Yes, others can take this code, compile it and use it in their product. For most of my work, I am fine with this.

I am thinking of starting my own company and that will mean my designs will be my income. That will probably mean that these designs will not be made available publicly. The designs that I do make public will continue to use this BSD-3 clause license.

When people want to re-license my commercial work, I will contact a dedicated lawyer. :-)

The slide must quickly convey the specific details of the design that make it special. These are

• independent puzzles with their own microcontroller
• interlocking puzzles
• modular panels
• a central controller
• random solutions each time

Because the final panels were not yet finished when I wrote this text, the slide uses a temporary view of the box. This will be updated when the final panels are in place.

After finishing the panels and some feedback from the European FabAcademy meetup on the fonts, this is the final slide:

I have two ideas for a video clip.

1. A commercial for the product
2. a narrated explanation of the different components.

The idea: after a life-long quest you have found the thing you were searching for.

It will have shots of running up an old tower, seeing a lab and finding the box. Ending with the question “Do you dare to press the buttong?…”
It will be shot at the masons guild at waag and have epic film music of Ilya Marfin.

The tricky constraint is the time, as there is so much detail I would like to show… Therefor i will focus on the narrated explanation video clip first.
After everytning is done, I will create the commercial, but this will be after the scoring of my work.

The idea: an explanation on why I made this box, what its features are and showing that they work and work together. Packaged in an inviting form.

The main sections are:

• intro
• game play
• creation
• internal working
• future plans

The narration was done at 03:00 AM under a woolen blanket, so the sound quality is not something to be proud of. I will redub this after finishing all documentation for the weekly reports and the final project.

• In the end, there is a slide and a movie clip…

• Kdenlive (the video editing software) was installed on my Ubuntu Linux machine using snaps. These are nicely contained packages, but they are also run in a sandbox to protect the rest of the system. This means that saving of files outside the sandbox can be tricky and should be verified by the user before closing the application. Because the sandbox is destroyed when the application is closed…
  My project files were lost, but I managed to extract an auto-save file from a cache directory. This saved a lot of time when I worked on the video.
• The Ground Fault Circuit Interruptor (GFCI or “aardlekschakelaar” in Dutch) kept tripping. It cost me quite a lot of time to find the fault and then it was 01:30 and time for bed. The rest of the work was done on the night after till 04:00.

• The stress of finishing in time is an essential part for me. It is when I perform best, so I would not change anything. :-)