gEDA-dev: Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit

[John Doty]

On Oct 12, 2007, at 12:22 PM, al davis wrote:

> On Friday 12 October 2007, John Griessen wrote:
>> DJ Delorie wrote:
>>>> There's a need for Libre/open-source hardware too.
>>>
>>> What hardware?  PCs?  Eval boards?  Televisions?
>>
>> Al has delineated this here before; I think it was
>> mostly along the lines of university lab bench gear
>> as a cottage industry.  Some can be as kits, since professors
>> always have graduate student slavery to employ on tasks...
>> if they sound slightly relevant to research.
>>
>> I'm thinking of doing some of it.
>
> There are lots of other "markets" too.  That one could be done
> by a group attached to a university.
>
> Another one is equipment for low power broadcasters.  In
> particular ...  monitoring equipment (frequency monitor,
> modulation monitor, EBS monitor), program automation, remote
> equipment, ...  The business opportunity  is for one station to
> make it available to others, and use it as a fund raiser.
>
> For this idea to work (in any market segment) the segment should
> be small enough that traditional business cannot supply the
> needs at a reasonable price.  The "cottage industry" aspect is
> important.

Space hardware.

There's a group at NASA Ames that's very interested:

http://colab.arc.nasa.gov/

They're right next door to Google, too. There's a lot of contact  
there. So far their projects have been software, but they are  
interested in hardware, too. They've been interested in what I've  
been doing with open hardware at my site:

http://www.noqsi.com/engineering/

I introduced them to gEDA earlier this year...

John Doty              Noqsi Aerospace, Ltd.
http://www.noqsi.com/
jpd at noqsi.com