18 - invention, intellectual property

introduction

Goal of this week is to 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 website’s root directory. (which, for my documentation system is the folder ‘content’)

As plans go, I think I like to release the project under a CC-BY-SA License. I’m personally not in the market for product development of specifically this project, and I think this project potentially could infringe on a lot of branding and trademarks.

What -could- work however is releasing the design and software as open-source, and perhaps (when I feel like it) selling some kits for (for example) the electronics alone.

a ‘furby synth’ module might be not a product or specific device someone would want to buy. (and it might be impossible, even though Hasbro’s original patent has expired - their trademark is still very much allive.

So, instead I will release my design as ‘creature synth’. You can adapt or add a face of a creature you like, add its voice or sound effects on a small SD card - and off you go. (at time of writing every domain name ‘creaturesynth’ is still vacant. I might register the https://creaturesynth.com just for entertainment purposes..)

Most of my projects have been documented on a dokuwiki: http://wiki.edwindertien.nl. After FabAcademy I might reconsider moving (part of) the documentation of my projects to GitHub. Still, I need to check this for the long-run (the wiki has been operation for more than a decade). For now my final project is documented here in gitlab for as long as that exists. Let’s see who rusts first :)

learning outcomes

  • Develop a plan to share your work
  • Formulate future opportunities and/or development for your final project

evaluation checklist

  • Created a dissemination plan for your final project
  • Outlined future possibilities and described how to make them probabilities
  • Uploaded a draft summary slide and video

lessons learned, tips and tricks

(or, the most insightful mistakes I made)

  • The mechanism to control the eyelids and beak proved a little bit more challenging than expected. I had to change the part designs a bit in terms of tolerances and spacing
  • the Bambulab is much better for high-accuracy detailed technical parts!
  • It is very nice to work with a reduced, well matched component set (like the fab inventory)

left for todo

  • assembly and testing of the electronics (done:)
  • assembly of the mechanical face plate, face mechanism and bowden cable drive (done:)
  • integrate both (done:)
  • expand the software (could be further expanded. Triage. Don’t fix it if it aint broken… )

reflection

Interesting week with a lot of planning, ordering components, boards arrived on time. Mechanical design is more work than expected but it seems to be coming along ok. I decide to put most of the design files in the ‘design’ section. The movie is made using some small parts of previous weeks, added with a synth track featuring the FABulous Furry Synthesiser Module :)

copyrights and references