Slashdot Mirror

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/john-cole/brickpi-lego-bricks-with-a-raspberry-pi-brain

You may be interested in BrickPi. :)

there's a kickstarter for a sub $500 3d printer. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1650950769/rigidbot-3d-printer/

Electricity producing plants gives new meaning to the term "green energy", too!

Like any other seedlings I imagine you'd have to cultivate the plants in controlled environments for maximum yield -- Gives new meaning to "harvesting energy".
With these plants making our energy wouldn't the 'greenhouse effect' actually be good for us?

What if you combined this technology with those Glowing Plants?
You could add LEDs in addition to the inherent luminescence and give new meaning to both Grow Lights, and OLED!

It's just too bad that no one I know would use this tech, everyone in my address book is an asshole -- It's a regular Dicktionary... or is that an example of Dickshunnery?
OMFG! Two New Meanings for one word!

These guys are developing a lower cost and potentially customizable alternative: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/anthromod/3d-printed-robotic-hand

This was a pretty decent kickstarter for an open source project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewgodwin/schema-migrations-for-django?ref=live

Kickstarter ... 'nuff said. The Veronica Mars producers raised money to make a movie via kickstarter. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/559914737/the-veronica-mars-movie-project Seem to me to be the best solution ... no?

The design software isn't the problem. The problem is that the low-end 3D printers suck.

The ultraviolet stereolithography machines work fine, but so far, they cost too much. The Form 1 machine ($2300) is supposed to ship Real Soon Now. That's probably the first low-end machine that will really work.

The low-end plastic extruder approach (MakerBot, RepRap, Up, etc.) is fundamentally flawed. You're trying to weld a hot thing to a cold thing. That never works reliably. Cold solder joints and bad welds are the usual results of trying to do that in other materials. It sort of works for small objects where the previous layer doesn't have time to cool completely. But the time between one layer and the next being laid down has way too much effect on the weld quality. You need some way to heat the layer below the weld just before the weld, like a laser or a hot air jet. It probably would only take a few watts of laser power aimed at the join. You'd have to enclose and interlock the build area, as with a laser cutter, but that's not hard.

The plastic extruder machines will probably go away once stereolithography gets cheaper. It's a sort-of-works technology. Printers went through this. There was wet electrostatic printing (Versatec), magnetic printing, ink jet printing by electrostatic deflection of a stream of ink drops, electrolytic printing (dates from the 19th century), and spark printing. Commercial products using all those technologies were manufactured and sold, but xerographic and ink jet technologies were just better.

Just kidding. Here's the Kickstarter Link.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affordable-professional-3d-printer?ref=live

I'm not associated with that project at all, nor have I bought or plan on buying one of their printers. But it looks like they are sub-$2500, and the resolution on their examples looks damn good. Though I do wish the pictures themselves were higher resolution...

Even if that printer turns out to have issues, I still don't think printer cost should hold this back. What's $15,000 to Kinkos or a University or a craft store or a hardware store? The demand will easily make it worth the large startup cost. Even your local public library might get one. I could also easily imagine completely automated kiosks, like the photo printing ones.

So what is holding it back? Maybe a lack of awareness among non-geeks, copyright/patent issues, or the feeling of a 'solution in search of a problem'. It needs to find a niche where it's in high demand and visible to the public, and from there it'll take off. Hopefully.

I have read a lot of comments about 3D printers not being able to print bigger objects.

I found this on KickStarter: Gigabot 3D printer.

Here's a 3d-printing pen that you could probably mod to be gun-shaped.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1790899723/681612454?token=225b918b

Ask and you shall receive.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/435742530/udoo-android-linux-arduino-in-a-tiny-single-board

I think you're looking for this board:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/435742530/udoo-android-linux-arduino-in-a-tiny-single-board

The link to the actual Kickstarter project:

www.kickstarter.com/projects/376482095/coral-bots-teams-of-robots-that-repair-coral-reefs

Here you go:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/376482095/coral-bots-teams-of-robots-that-repair-coral-reefs

Though, we could just support OpenShot directly... turns out that they've been running a campaign for almost a month already: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video-editor-for-windows-mac-and-linux

FYI:

The opensource video editing program also has its own kickstart page

You may want to visit it @ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video-editor-for-windows-mac-and-linux/

In that case the 12W Nano Light will blow the Philips light out of the water.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video-editor-for-windows-mac-and-linux - Contribute generously and spread the word pls. A good video editor has been long due on Linux!

As we have already seen via kickstarter and HIB this market exists and will pay. It however will not be able to fund AAA games

Oh, but I think it will be able to do that
Torment is very, very close to hitting $4M (and that's just the pre-paid budget, they'll probably sell more games when done). Once kickstarter-based games are the only way to get something new and non-DRM-ed, I am sure we will see $10M+ kickstarter projects.

In all seriousness, I wonder if their games library will be available for generic Android devices. When it comes down to it, the games library will make or break this thing. I don't play enough to justify buying one, but I'm definitely rooting for them from the sidelines.

Well, this exists and according to this kickstarter post:

As of 7:59 p.m. PT, there are already 104 published games on OUYA (all still free to try), like Final Fantasy III and some new surprises we think you’ll love: Beast Boxing Turbo, Stalagflight, Knightmare Tower, and even one called Save the Puppies. There are already a few entertainment apps, too. You can watch the TV shows and movies you already own with XBMC and Flixster, or watch games streamed through TwitchTV.

Man, I remember doing so much crap on my Dreamcast -- years after it failed. I hope this console is like a Dreamcast with the original intent of being open to homebrew and messing around!

... are crap. While I enjoyed FTL and thought it was one of the few indie games worth anything. Most indie games are worse then NES/SNES/PC games from 20 years ago.

The reality is the middle market for game development is coming back via kickstarter and indie games were really mostly smaller developers attempt to push mostly crapware on a gullible consumer base that will eat garbage if they propagandize properly via popular gaming sites.

The internet is a bizarre echochamber of gullible morons when it comes to gaming and you especially see this with how games have become homogenized as they've gotten more popular with the masses. For us expert gamers, gaming has really gone to shit everything has become lowest common denominator. Oldsters like myself hope to see a bit of a renewal of more complex games via kickstarter but most of us older geeks are taking a wait and see approach to see how it will all pan out given the limited funds for projects like PA.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/659943965/planetary-annihilation-a-next-generation-rts

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not paying the $40-$50 they want for some of the current games that are seriously outdated graphics and the PC versions are ports that don't get any love at all.

I agree. I just shelled out $65 for Tides of Numenera on Kickstarter, and I earlier put in $30 for Star Citizen. And they are not even going to be ready for quite some time! I didn't put any money, but I think I'll probably end up buying Hero-U (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1878147873/hero-u-rogue-to-redemption) once it's completed. Also interested in Richard Garriot's new project (Shroud of Avatar), not sure if I'm going to participate in the crowdfunding or not.

"Indie" does not necessarily mean "cheap" (see Tides and Star Citizen), of course they have smaller budgets than the triple-As even though Star Citizen is approaching $10M, but for me the recent ones have been about a certain renaissance. It's kinda has same overtures as Baldur's Gate series did 13 years ago - renewing the entire RPG genre, but on a industry-wide scale instead.

And gotta say, I love it. For last 5-7 years I've basically played just WoW and very few other games, until things started gaining more momentum about a year ago. The new indies, combined with Steam holiday discounts (where you can pay $5-$10 for a bit older games) has basically given me gaming back as a hobby.

Help these guys out to bring the cost of the "toner" for 3D printers down even cheaper :) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/833191773/filastruder-a-robust-inexpensive-filament-extruder

How about the ink? Probably the same game as with current printer ink cartridges - ongoing profit maker...ripoff Questionable if it's fair right now and in future???

That's the great thing, make your own, or buy a device that makes it: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/833191773/filastruder-a-robust-inexpensive-filament-extruder

I tried it at SXSW and it seemed fickle. To me it seems to be one of those devices that work when the planets align just right. And since their architecture is proprietary, I won't be able to modify things myself to try and improve the detection (or use it in other, cool ways). That's why personally, the DUO is a lot more appealing and I contributed to the DUO kickstarter.

I'm going with the DUO for a couple of reasons. LEAP has been at this for how long now, and they still don't really have a product widely available; the DUO guys seem to be ready to go *today*. And while LEAK doesn't have any plans to produce an open source driver so that I can use this device and do my own processing of the data, the DUO guys say their driver will be open source. Indeed, their hardware will be licensed under Creative Commons. I voted with my wallet - DUO

During our work on Our Future in Space video project we learned (I don't know how) that the entire Kickstarter team is, like 6 or 10 people, all of whom are running around with their hair on fire trying to keep everything running. They don't have a lot of time for improvements. Although with the money they're raking in (5% off the top), I would think they should be able to hire a couple more developers.

My associates at Space Finance Group recently assisted National Space Society in their successful Kickstarter campaign, "Our Future in Space".
Without telling too many 'secrets', there are some fundamental ideas to keep in mind. A good campaign needs publicity, and a network of people who already know about the project and want help out, a great video and KS website page, and a killer set of rewards. There are some websites (kicktraq.com is one) that provide useful data about specific projects, and about how the whole thing works - sorry I forget the others. Basically, your project is going to depend very strongly on how many of your network are motivated to go to Kickstarter, sign up and pledge. And make sure the rewards appear to be 'worth it'. We just looked at an IndieGogo campaign where a $4 trinket was the reward for a $100 pledge. Sorry, nobody's going for that.

And, assuming you succeed, be aware that KS takes 5%, Amazon takes 8%, and your rewards (if you have good, attractive rewards) are going to cost on the order of 30%. With other miscellaneous expenses, your real return will be close to 50%. (Funny, that's approximately the 'cost of sales' in most businesses.) Plan your project accordingly. Of course, if the reward is the product, then that helps your costs.

At least do something useful like the Kickstarter Death Star

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/461687407/kickstarter-open-source-death-star

Absolutely! I have a campaign going right now and I can't even find my own project. I was mad at Kickstarter for a while until I realized they have no incentive to publicize projects that are not near or past their goal. If a project is near or past their goal, KS will make money on it for sure, so why not make as MUCH as they can off those winners? If the project is sagging in the middle of its campaign or is having a hard time even getting started, KS support for the project may be wasted effort. So they make the projects that will make them money more prominent.

(Shameless plug; I need all the publicity I can get) http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbaddeley/digitally-connected-portable-scoreboard

Definitely this.

We have a kickstarter campaign going right now, and we've posted some of our behind-the-scenes stats: http://portablescores.com/behind-the-scenes-of-a-kickstarter-project/

Our video has less than 2000 views; of course we're failing. We've done everything we can to get publicity, but we're doing something wrong, or we're just not lucky. Kickstarter failures are more a testament to one's ability to tell a story and get publicity, not necessarily to the product.

Slightly shamed plug (I would be remiss if I didn't post): http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bobbaddeley/digitally-connected-portable-scoreboard

With the Rapsberry Pi, you get access to a high speed processor with lots of RAM, Ethernet, and linux (filesystem, etc.), which makes it easy to write programs. Ad d an ADC board like this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/254558907/data-acquisition-system-for-raspberry-pi?ref=live and you can control it directly from the Raspberry Pi - so you get the best of Arduino (analog interface) and the Raspberry Pi at once.

Yes, we have stupid games lately.

But we also have things that are not stupid at all.

Getting Doom with it was a large part of their Kickstarter campaign.

They did say the Kickstarter was only for devs, so Doom would be more as a tech demo than the main reason for purchase, but a lot of the 9,500 supporters looked like regular people wanting to get in on the next cool thing.

I can imagine a lot of unhappy people.

Gonna be pretty hard to make a "real" Ultima without Lord British on board. And he's a bit busy at the moment Kickstarting his next game.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/600284081/adtrap-the-internet-is-yours-again?ref=search

Obligatory

This is probably the best thing that could have happened to SimCity 5 in order to save the SimCity franchise.

It's a pity how corporate greed can ruin an otherwise excellent product. Management at EA/Maxis was obviously incredibly detached from the product. Comments such as how surprised and unprepared they were for the massive response they got to the new product speaks volumes to the fact that the people in charge had absolutely no clue about the products they make, nor what it takes to make them successful.

The good news? At least there is one team out there that gets it!

Did you liked TA, you might like Supreme Commander (Supcomm,and Forged Alliance, not Supreme Commander 2).
You might also find the Planetary Annihilation kickstarter of interest.

In this case, probably the best way is to back Civitas on Kickstarter: It appears to be SimCity the way EA should have done it. If they succeed widely while SimCity flops, then it's fairly clear that it was EA's approach to that was the killer, not the type of game.

Voting with your wallet by not buying is like voting at the polls by not picking any of the candidates.

If you want to vote with your wallet (as opposed to simply saving the money), you have to buy a competitor's game.

Or fund one. As far as alternatives to SimCity go, perhaps Civitas on Kickstarter? Their goal is to have all the SimCity features: big cities, terraforming, subways, curved roads, real singleplayer, disasters, save/reload, etc, with none of that always on DRM. Oh, AND LINUX SUPPORT (check the Updates page).

I own Simcity Classic, 2000, 3000, 3000 for Linux by Loki Software, 4 Deluxe Edition, and the Rush Hour expansion. I won't be owning this game until it can be played offline. All I wanted was Simcity 4 with multicore and GPU simulation acceleration. Imagine how much math can be done in parallel using OpenCL or CUDA.

Maybe this kickstarter will be a hit and EA will wake up. They should start by reading the Valve employee handbook and firing the entire management team unless they take a development role.

Re:The better product is city in motion 2 or some of ideas on kicker starter.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d

http://www.train-fever.com/

No Baldur's Gate 3 sadly, but there is Project Eternity by the guys that did Neverwinter Nights 2 and Icewind Dale. There's also a new game that was launched today called Shroud of the Avatar by Lord British (Ultima series!!).

No Baldur's Gate 3 sadly, but there is Project Eternity by the guys that did Neverwinter Nights 2 and Icewind Dale. There's also a new game that was launched today called Shroud of the Avatar by Lord British (Ultima series!!).

Wasn't the record the Elite:Dangerous kickstarter? It raised £1.5m, which is about $2.2m. Planescape should breeze past this easily as their first day raised nearly $1m, which is kind-of unbelievable.

Off the top of my head, the developers of Project Eternity and Wasteland 2 would tend to disagree.

Wasn't the record the Elite:Dangerous kickstarter? It raised £1.5m, which is about $2.2m. Planescape should breeze past this easily as their first day raised nearly $1m, which is kind-of unbelievable.

Off the top of my head, the developers of Project Eternity and Wasteland 2 would tend to disagree.

I don't think they deceived anyone who actually paid attention to looking into it. First of all, it's EA, they have a history of fucking good things up. So when I heard about a new SimCity, I was elated at first, then as I read into it, because I am suspicious of anything EA does, I was disgusted by it. Second of all, it's EA, they made up a story about social interaction being what everyone wants. But really it's just DRM they want to sell. And lastly, it's EA...

How about someone start a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to buy the source code for SimCity4? It's not like EA will be using it...although they might have to after this abysmal launch. I see someone is attempting to launch a Kickstarter to build a new SimCity style game http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1584821767/civitas-plan-develop-and-manage-the-city-of-your-d