18 Invention, Intellectual Property and Income

Assignment

  1. Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project

Preamble

My final project is to build a contraption to solve the errors that occur when using the Sony A6000 in panoramic mode. The panorama feature is one of the best features of the camera, allowing the user to take a picture with a resolution of 12,000 x 1,800 pixels without any external software manipulation. However, the camera has to be triggered and panned with the correct amount of movement and accuracy to let the camera handle the stiching.

Invention

The device that I will be trying to create in not innovative, but rather intuitive. It will hold the camera, trigger the shutter and pan at the correct speed enabling near-perfect panoramic mode shots. It could be put together by anyone who has any concepts of electronics and mechanical control and made in any fablab. Hence, I see this as a starting point to develop other ideas that can lead towards a better solution. I would like this also to encourage other users to start commenting and adding on to the development which, someday will develop the idea to perfection.

In terms of innovative ideas, I would have liked to construct the project using only mechanical parts i.e. by using some sort of wind-up mechanism with a spring, thereby making the device autonomous, non-reliant on external power and back-to-basics approach.

Intellectual Property

I have borrowed liberally from other sources and other ideas on how to house the camera, control the movement and develop the hardware and software to control the device. These came from predominantly Open Source Hardware and Software. This means that the hardware and software solutions were developed from another starting point, which was not my own, but could be used to develop other projects. In this case, there were numerous references, too many to count. So I am contributing most of my outcomes from ideas and projects taken from the Fab Academy Course and examples. However, I would like the idea attributed to my project as the starting point, even though their implementations may be better than mine.

After looking at the Creative Commons (CC) license and the MIT license, I still think the one that Neil uses in the Fab Academy material suits my needs best, hence I would file my project using the following:

(c) Rodney Dorville, 29th May 2015
This work may be reproduced, modified, distributed, performed,
and displayed for any purpose, but must acknowledge my Automated Panoramic
project. Copyright is retained and must be preserved.
The work is provided as is; no warranty is provided,
and users accept all liability.

INCOME

I do not expect any income from this project, though I will reap the benefits of using the device for near perfect panoramic photographs and that would be enough for me. It would save me the time and effort for carrying a tripod, setting up my nodal system, taking the photographcs and spending time stiching them together.

If someone would like to take the idea and market it, so be it, as long as he/she attributes the starting idea to this project.

PLAN FOR SHARING

This project needs more work to be done on it before I can fully release it into the public domain, however, there are sufficient points of interest of which I shall share with the photography community in Singapore (ClubSnap.com) as well as the numerous sites of which I have research to find answers to my triggering problem. I believe that most members there are not aware of the IR codes used as well as the function of the wired trigger.

I also intend to share the discoveries of the IR code (which does not seem to be published anywhere (or rather, I can't seem to find any reference of it)) so that users can further develop this into an IR Invervalometer without relying on the use of WiFi or wired triggering. These will be published under the Collective Commons License in sites like Instructables or Maker sites.

As for the entire concept idea, I intend to work on its problems before releasing to the public community, in terms of the triggering and movement processes and the control processes in the design. This is in hope that someone will build on it or help me design a clockwork geared system that will not rely on batteries for the movement of the camera.

Reflections

I have and will learn a lot from this project which combines a number of ideas and techniques in Fab Academy to produce a single product. I have also learnt that I should have paid a little more attention to where I have taken software and ideas and perhaps had a little more care in attributing their initial work and development efforts.

From Neil's lecture, I now have a better understanding of patents, copyrights and open source licenses and how ideas develop into projects and income-bringing ideas. I also like his thoughts on how projects should be developed using the Ready - Fire - Aim technique. I can see that happening in my final project, as instead of just completing the panorama feature, I can see that I can develop the project as an intervalometer, time-lapse and remote triggering projects for my camera

I am very happy to put my project into the public domain to be freely used and further developed on. Others may have better ideas, but all of us will benefit from the development

References

Not being of a artistic mind, I have shamelessly borrowed this template (simpleStyle_8) from html5webtemplates, in recognition of a simple, cool and functional webpage design.