- 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.
There are many types of open source licenses, namely GNU AGPLv3, GNU GPLv3, Mozilla Public License 2.0, Apache License 2.0, MIT License, and the Unlicense. These mentioned licenses were ordered from highly protective to unconditional, and have different conditions for source disclosure, license and copyright notice, same license (for modifications) and changes.
I decided to choose the MIT License for my assignment work, but leave the final project under default copyright for now. Since I would like to research the possibility of further developing this into a commercial product, I decided not to license it yet. I will try to gather more information about this after the project deadline and make a decision then.
This project is a mix of hardware and software design, but open source software licenses can be used also for non-software work. To keep things simple, if I decide to choose a license for this design, it will cover all the hardware and software. Moreover, since I have not been building on earlier work, and I have not used any software or hardware design under a specific license, I am not obligated by continuing a previous license.
I started working on my slide, so it is updated to the point that I have currently progressed. It already includes my name, project name, Fab Lab name, a sketch of the project, a brief description of it. However, I will add a photo of my completed project later on. Maybe I need to come up with a better name for the project, too!
For making my short project presentation video, I chose Camtasia. It is a software suite, created and published by TechSmith, for creating video tutorials and presentations directly via screencast, or via a direct recording plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint. It has a versatile and user-friendly screen recording and video editing capabilities.
I had used Camtasia a few times during the recent years, and I have always been pleased with it. The software itself provides many good video tutorials to provide a smooth familiarization and start for new users. Therefore, I decided to use it also for making this video. I should mention that Camtasia is not a free tool, but it offers a 30-day free trial to new users.
My project presentation video can be found here.
I am aware that this design is far from being a reliable solution, since the outdoor conditions of cold winters, e.g. subzero temperatures, wind, rain, snow, etc., has to be considered. Implementing such durable and reliable design demands structure material and electronic design, which are not available in a FabLab. However, it was great to be able to put together an initial prototype, so that basic functionalities could be verified. I am very much tempted to continue to enhance this design further, if possible. I have added a list of future work possibilities to my 'Final Project' page, but from the point of view of production possibilities, I need to do a thorough research of the available commercial products and try finding support for a possible future prototype.
It was a quite informative and essential week. Because the topic of IP usually does not get the attention, it deserves. This week’s topic certainly got me thinking into the future of my design, and whether I could pursue its development in further stages or not.
It was a bit difficult to start designing presentation slide and video, while the project is still under progress. However, once I started doing so, it actually gave me a good perspective of what details I need from the final design.
