Please share your ideas

[cyb0rg777]

I see a lot of people coming in here to ask for ideas but they usually don't share their own. I can understand someone who wants to not give away an idea before they have enough time to do it themself and some ideas don't work out. Someone comes in to ask how to do something.Possibly it is an assignment or school project.You know they have to come up with something.But they never let us know how it turns out. A more general electronics question is different because someone reading later benefits from the discussion.

Some people are asking for ideas but not giving back.

What happened ?
I want to know how well it worked.

I think we need to grill them a little .
what do you want to do that for ?
Why do you want it that way?
How do you plan to solve this problem ?
What circuit will you use for this?

 

[Hank Fletcher]

I agree. People tend to get too concerned that someone is going to steal their ideas, but the truth is that you can knock yourself out trying to keep a monopoly on an idea that someone else in all probability might come up with independently anyway. Better to use that energy on what you're actually trying to accomplish, and submit yourself completely to the body intellect for maximum assistance. Everyone has a unique slant and motivation for what they do, so as long as you keep your ambition cranked to get something done there will be inherent value in your accomplishment regardless of its similarities to those of other people.

That said, there is another factor on this that I'm sorry to admit I've fallen victim to myself on occassion. I'm talking about being ashamed of your idea because you haven't been able to completely think it through by yourself, and you become too self-conscious out of fear you will be socially ostracized for the weirdness of your idea. Every new idea, or new slant on an old idea, needs to be coaxed into meshing with all the other ideas out there. I guess what I'm trying to say is that badgering people, or rather, coercing them, to share their ideas and the fruits of their/our labour more completely is not going to entice the desired result. I think you're right to expect that we should ask.

So come on... don't be afraid... share your idea... come on. Dammiit COME ON! Okay, okay, when you're good and ready...

 

[ericgibbs]

hi,
I endorse what you and Hank say about ideas and the OP coming back and telling us if we have been assistance or not.

I try to answer an OP's request for help, by asking him a question about the part of the circuit/whatever
where I believe the problem lies.

Hopefully this will get him/her to recheck the problem area and perhaps come up with their own solution.

I think that some OP's are reluctant to give too much background information about their projects in case they get
ridiculed or the p**s taken out of them.

This is one of the best forums I have been a member, the vast majority of the membership want to help the OP,
a small minority just want to belittle the OP. I am pleased to be a member of this forum

Its quite the opposite on many forums. .

Regards

 

[ThermalRunaway]

I think the biggest reason we rarely get feedback on project ideas is because the vast majority are people who have a college assignment to get in, they haven't studied all year and they've left everything to the last minute. They post on here in a desperate attempt to get someone to do the work for them, and of course that's not going to happen so I would imagine they go on to flunk the course, which is probably what they deserve!!!

For those who are genuine Electronics enthusiasts I would imagine feedback is ripe?

Brian

 

[Hero999]

trying to keep a monopoly on an idea that someone else in all probability might come up with independently anyway.

That's what patents are for.

But I agree with the rest of what you said.

Also I don't really think that patents are really a good thing for technology as a whole but that's a completely different debate.

 

[cyb0rg777]

Patents are a little different. People should release the details of their design and just restrict the mass production and sale. After all, they used other peoples ideas to make their own.

You guys can be sure if I patent something the details will be made available here.But it's pretty hard to get a patent because everyone has already done everything and patent lawyers cost a fortune. And like a lot of people here ,I'm not very smart. So I'm able to bring all my ideas here to the forum. I probably got help here anyway. Ideally we will all benefit at least by opening up and increasing our available knowledge and working together instead of individually.

 

[cyb0rg777]

You guys do know I was kidding about not being smart,right.
Cause I really am pretty smart.


It's a joke!

 

[Hero999]

Also, even if a patent is granted it doesn't actually gaurentee that someone hasn't done it before and that it will stand up in court.

 

[Sceadwian]

The patent system, at least in the U.S. is almost useless to anyone but the largest of companies. The only real way to guard a design is to come up with something very original and figure out how to keep people from reverse engineering your idea. You're better off hideing behind a 'trade secret' instead. This is not particularly easy either as ideas are usually very easy to reverse engineer. Makes coming up with a marketable product that you can make money on that much harder.

 

[Optikon]

The patent system, at least in the U.S. is almost useless to anyone but the largest of companies. The only real way to guard a design is to come up with something very original and figure out how to keep people from reverse engineering your idea. You're better off hideing behind a 'trade secret' instead. This is not particularly easy either as ideas are usually very easy to reverse engineer. Makes coming up with a marketable product that you can make money on that much harder.

Thats correct!

If your design is worth 10's of millions of dollars in revenue, then it _makes sense_ to defend your patent by spending 1 million dollars (to start with!)

Otherwise, forget it. The patent simply represents the right to sue and nobody usually does because of the excessive costs involved.. so all in all pretty useless to all but the big boys.

 

[cyb0rg777]

I really like open source software.I think it would be great if we could start building hardware the way open source programmers do software.
Maybe we would start with an idea.
Then we discuss the idea until we figure it out.
Then we break it down into sections maybe for a big project.
We could leave a "to do list ".
And people could submit ideas and improvements.
Possibly using a some type of wiki.
Finally we end up with a device that we could protect under a license just to keep someone else from making a fortune off of it.
That takes a lot of teamwork though and determination most people are like "alright,whatever".Or they just don't have the time or resources.

I tell you what we need.
An actual engineer who has organized this type of project.


Or we could just share our ideas.
I let my imagination run off for a second there.

 

[Hero999]

Sceadwian,
I agree.

I don't think pattents are a good thing for technology as a whole, they should do away with them in my opinion.

Perhaps it should be made similar to copyright so if you can proove you're the first to invent something then you have the rights to it for a certain length of time.

 

[Sceadwian]

Cyborg, the problem with that idea is hardware is almost always application specific.

 

[gramo]

Whats a good starting point for this application?

 

[cyb0rg777]

If there is one thing I do have ,it's ideas.
Don't get me wrong though if I hear a better idea than mine I will throw mine right into the recycle bin because I'm a team player.

If we had a wiki we could take all the best ideas from the boards.
The ones that people showed the most interest in.
Mostly I think stuff that is not readily available in stores the way people want it made.
Then people could slowly make changes ,add improvements or show alternate designs.We would want to keep stuff modular so that If we design a usb interface for one project it can be easily transfered to another.


I think one of the best things to design first would be test equipment. The more people that have easily made test equipment the more that can help design. I wonder how hard it would be to design a 100mhz usb oscilloscope?I have a capacitance to voltage adapter on my to do list. It would be great to have a web based schematic editor.Or we could just settle on all using a certain one.

 

[cyb0rg777]

No comments?

I think improving the display and editing of schematics some way would increase our productivity very much.

Open source programmers can easily make changes to their ideas. For us it's a lot more steps.You use an editor to make a schematic then ,for the site you save it as an image and upload it. I know most of the people here don't have a schematic editor. I write all my schematics in a notebook I've had for years. Open source programmers also have a version system so that all the old versions are saved instead of one version erasing an old version.

Lets say someone asked how to hook a parallel port to a relay. I could quickly grab a transistor,resistor,ground ,voltage and relay symbol and wire them together and save the schematic . I can't recall the value of a resistor to use but you get the idea.

I know the threads got a little off topic but that's the idea ,sharing ideas.

 

[Sceadwian]

Great idea, who's going to code it? =)

 

[cyb0rg777]

I was looking at Eeschema .
It's an open source editor integrated into kicad.
It's not exactly what I want though.One thing I really don't like is that whenever you select a chip you have to look for the exact chip you need in the library.WHY?
All you need is a square with a certain number of pins sticking out.Then you type in the part number.I guess the part has to be exact for pcb routing and simulation but I dont want that.

Also I was looking at how firefox plugins are made,but you're right ,If you're waiting on me you will be waiting a long time.

 

[3v0]

No comments?

I think improving the display and editing of schematics some way would increase our productivity very much.
.

Look these over and write a white paper to let us know which one the group should be using.