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Interview: Ask Limor Fried About Open-Source Hardware and Adafruit
With her signature pink hair, MIT engineer Limor Fried has become a force in the maker movement. Last year she was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by Entrepreneur Magazine, and her company, Adafruit Industries, did $10 million in sales. Limor has agreed to take some time away from soldering and running a new company to answer your questions about hardware, electronics, and Adafruit. As usual, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
Every community has tinkerers, I think you'd agree. We all have that friend with a garage full of tools and a workbench, and whenever something breaks and needs fixing, we go to him/her. I do believe you, along with other entrepreneurs, have given people unprecidented access to robotics and automation tools at a very low cost, and this opens many doors for these jack of all trades types to build replacement parts. Combined with 3D printers, I can imagine these people building all kinds of things to fix broken equipment, or fill a niche need, in their communities.
But there is one hold-up to these technologies having a happy and fruitful marriage: Copyright. Specificially, that once we have all this equipment, we're going to need a catalog, a google of sorts, to get blueprints and construction materials from. We had thick ACME Electronics parts catalogues in the 90s, but today there doesn't really seem to be that kind of centralized one-stop access to large numbers of blueprints for these tools you've created.
With that background stated, what, if any plans, do you have to start addressing this need within your emerging market?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Do you intend to take the idea of wearable computing much beyond the eye-candy fashion accessories AdaFruit currently offers? It seems to me that there are opportunities for things like shoes which provide a built-in pedometer, for example.
Does it matter at all? Your nick suggests that gender is an important topic to you, correct?
I've been a follower of your youtube channel for years. I've watched Adifruit grow from a little corner of your apt to a $10mill company.
I loved the old school hacking vids you used to post. Not only were they informative but also gave us a glimpse of what your true passion is.
As your company has grown Ive watched you have to transition more from a Geeky EE who gets to engineer cool stuff to someone that has to deal with the headaches of trying to run a company.
As a ME myself and my wife a CE, we got into engineering because we LOVED engineering. But now that we are 10+ years into our careers, most employers want to push us toward project management or flat out management and we get to do less and less of the "core" engineering we love to do.
Do you find it difficult to balance the "I want to do EE engineering" with "I have a $10 mill company to run"?
Do you miss being an engineer first vs a business owner first? Will you hand most of the business reins over to some MBA type, giving you more time to go back to those engineering roots you love?
to sell baubles on the internet? How can you charge the prices you do?
I was thinking that in this case, having ones family name first would bring some mirthful gazes.
You go girl!
That said, when I was a youngster, being a geek was nearly a death sentence. Especially in the rural jock culture where I lived. Now it seems geekdom is chic. Even though it is not as much a target of bullying as it was, it still seems that there is a lack of women in many geeky hobbies/fields.
My question is how do we change that and engage more females in our culture? What drew you to this, and can it be applied to draw in others?
Silence is a state of mime.
How did you get the money to start-up for Adafruit? Did you use VC, if so how did you avoid becoming their indentured servant?
As a happy owner of the Adafruit Blue&White 16x2 LCD+Keypad Kit for Raspberry Pi I have used and modified the software that originally came with this kit.
There are some obvious uses for this kit. Two examples would be displaying its IP address and using the keypad to shutdown the Pi.
However, when I was modifying the software I could not find specific instructions on how to contribute software back to your site. I just checked again this morning (even the FAQ), and, if these instructions exist, I could not find them.
How does one contribute back?
As a new parent of a 6 month old girl, I am hoping to expose her to as much S.T.E.M. as possible in her developing years. Few and far between are the programs that specifically focus on young girls to get them interested out of the gate where I live. But I'm hoping to foster her natural curiosity and encourage anything S.T.E.M. related, and I'm hoping she gets to grow up in an America that encourages more girls to pursue those interests and career paths, with a sense of true equity. Did you find through your journey, that success as a female engineer seemed to be more out of reach than your male colleagues and classmates? What advice would you give to a new parent who wants their little girl to never feel limited, who wants their girl to freely pursue any interest in STEM, in an environment where girls are inherently seen as "lesser"?
-STEM parent in the south
As the DIY electronics and robotics evolve, what do you see as the next logical progression?
Just wanted to say thanks, I have purchased some hard to find stuff from your site. I do not purchase everything that I could there though, sometimes your prices are unreasonable. Perhaps as you grow the prices will come down some due to economies of scale. Either way I have had good experiences purchasing from you so thanks, and good luck.
With all your accomplishments, how does it makes you feel that the introduction to this Q&A begins with your hair?
Seriously, would we do this for a male engineer?
Companies like "sparkfun" and the hordes of china knockoff makers must really take a bite out of AdaFruit's sales figures. I see a lot of times when you come out with a new product sparkfun copies it within a month, and china knockoffs are flooded on ebay within weeks. How does that affect your bottom line when you put all the hard work into designing it and even writing an entire arduino library for your product and then other companies come along and sell a knock off of your product?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No question, just wanted to say thanks for making a great product.
Twinstiq, game news
A very long time ago, there was a very active community of MIT IRC users on EFNet, including yourself - do you see that kind of community happening again, and if so, under what guise? Jabber? Continued on IRC (admittedly I've not used it much in the past decade)? Or something else?
Adafruit has been doing a lot of interesting stuff around wearable electronics recently, having hired Becky Stern. Do you have a vision for where you want to go with that stuff, how much of your own time is spent on wearables now?
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
Wikipedia says she graduated with her BS in 2003. Assuming she entered college at a usual age, she should be in her early thirties now.
I'm sure that she could engineer something for you. If you explicitly describe how you would like to be tied up and beaten, there is surely a well programmed robot in your future. Don't expect it to be cheap though!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
When people come to me with fairly basic questions or wanting to get started learning about electronics I always struggle to point them in the right direction. Most books seem to be either overly theory oriented or too dumbed down. The fact that most people don't have access to an oscilloscope doesn't help either.
Can you recommend anything? Obviously you make a lot of modules and platforms, but what is a good way for people to go beyond simply connecting things together and start really understanding how things work and designing their own circuits?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Your company seems to be slowing creeping towards being the small modern day equivalent of Heathkit or Radio Shack, both of whom have pretty much exited the hobbyist electronic kit/component shop business.
Where are you trying to take Adafruit? More specifically, are you trying to be the next Heathkit or Radio Shack, or are you simply trying to ride a hipster fueled wave of good fortune and "exit" the VC funded ride with as much as you can?
From your viewpoint what's the current state of licensing in the Open Hardware community? It seems to me that Hardware is far more likely to be encumbered by patents, licensing consortiums and other players in the ecosystem that are all about the Benjamins. It also seems like the hardware community doesn't have an outspoken advocate like Richard Stallman (or maybe that's a good thing).
It appears that way. For example:
http://www.adafruit.com/products/1535
No schematics. No BOM. Details for FCC certification were kept confidential:
https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Sum&calledFromFrame=N&RequestTimeout=500&application_id=375407&fcc_id=S6OBLUEFRUIT
So, is Adafruit still Open Source or not?
As someone who sucessfully founded and now runs an open hardware company, do you have any advice for people that want to follow your path? Anything from business tips to community, production or even engineering pitfalls to avoid? How about finding partners?
Your software support is based on Arduino, much to its detriment. For example you sell e-ink displays with only arduino drivers even though these processors are not available with enough RAM to actually support the display.
Why do you cripple your fine products by tying them to such and old and crufty architecture? Why don't you embrace ARM and the 3.3V world?
Can I be cynical and point out that you probably make more money selling 5 volt processors and then selling 3.3 volt converters than you would be selling 3.3 volt processors in the first place.
Hello Limor, I like what you made as ladyada and now at adafruit. what was the trigger so that you made of your hobby a business and a job from which you could make a living ? 2 questions in fact : what difficulties did you have to overcome when you started your bussiness ? Cheers, Fred
The Adafruit catalog has a lot of really nice kit for people like me who are taking the plunge into DIY in order to teach ourselves more about hardware. Something that seems to be lacking is the IC list. I know the IC list is geared towards usage with the various platforms that you offer as well, but are there any plans to expand the IC list to include chips like logic gates, flip flops, etc?
What do you find to be the most promising technology for embedding electronics inside 3D prints?
While waiting for this tech to arrive, have you tried emulating electronics with mechanical equivalents?
Hi Limor,
A lot of open-source supported don't appreciate that there is a large component of closed source hardware components supporting their favorite platforms. maybe the BIOS on a PC, CPU microcode, firmware for ethernet or RAID adapters, the internal CPU architecture, the chipsets that support the CPUs. Even when you have the full HDL source for the system (e.g the OpenRISC CPU or the ATmega compatible AVR8 core) converting that to working silicon is all but impossible unless you have won a lottery - and to do so you need to use closed source tools.
How does Adafruit balance its Open Source ideals with the realities of providing up-to-date, high quality and low-cost products? How do you draw the line to deciede when a product is open enough for you and your company?
Warmest regards,
Mike
This isn't a question, but I wanted to note that Slashdot linked to her work back in January 2005 (the Minty MP3 player -- a DIY MP3 player in an altoids tin) -- before her company existed and had $10M a year in sales:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/05/01/15/1828200/build-your-own-mp3-player
That was a real eye-opener for me. I previously had no idea that a hobbyist could make something like that; I figured it was only the domain of giant companies with huge teams of engineers.
Anyhow, I've been playing with microcontrollers ever since. Thank you Limor!
Given that over the last several years, several great RISC CPUs that used to be available - DEC Alpha, MIPS IV, PA-RISC - have died, and also that most of their patents are close to expiring, are you considering the possibility of getting those CPUs out again as open source hardware? Where their HDL models would be out & available to anyone who wants to fab them, and that anybody who needs them can then fund their development and produce them for whatever use they prefer.
Limor:
Congrats on the business; it's good to see the old Heathkit approach resurrected for a new generation. But I am afraid to say, you are shortchanging them in a big way. Why no magnetic circuits in any of these designs? I know why big manufacturers don't use them; but why don't you? Even your child educational series is glaring in it's omission of inductors. Already people think I am some kind of natural magician rather than an engineer when I work with air core inductors. You can't let this state of affairs continue to deteriorate...
Also: what happened to the Tree of Life antenna on your site? Always found that the most charming bit. Station to Station, and all that...
Ladyada would you like your violin back? I don't really need it anymore.
ou wouldn't tell a man in that position "... successful entrepreneur hunk. You're most geeks dream man! You go man!"
Oh, really? Meet Bobak Ferdowsi, who generated endless amounts of fawning and creeper comments from women when he showed up on TV screens, and whose rise to stardom was almost entirely derived off him being accomplished...AND attractive. "Oh look, a guy geek who's a hunk!", everyone said, breathlessly. Can you imagine how all his other male colleagues, who contributed to the rover landing, feel about this? I imagine quite a few of them were pretty offended or hurt. Go google his name along with "girlfriend" or "wife" and see all the articles where the reporter says "Sorry, ladies, he's taken!"
In general, I was with you right up until you demonstrated complete ignorance of the male experience here while stating definitively what it is. Funny how if I, as a man, presumed to speak of what things are like for women, I'd be ridiculed as a mansplainer. Yet every day I hear women open their mouths and say the stupidest stuff about How It Is for men. Which is odd, since women's voices are by far the loudest in terms of gender issues. Anyway.
The stereotype for nerds/geeks is that they're socially clueless, fat, smelly, sweaty, badly dressed, and physically vulgar in appearance. When a man who is a geek/nerd/scientist gets covered by a journalist and is not the stereotype / is reasonably attractive and well-dressed, it's pretty goddamn common for the reporter to go out of their way to note it with a backhanded complement. Something along the lines of "not your typical (insert insult here)-looking nerd, either!" I've watched reporters zoom to a guy whose role in a project was minimal, but they're the most photogenic, so they're the one who gets interviewed. The same thing happens when there's a woman in the group; the reporter goes "OMG OMG WOMAN IN STEM" and practically lunges for them.
It's been unthinkable (or at least worthy for popular condemnation and mockery) for a reporter to say that a female scientist is "not homely, fellas! She's not just a rocket scientist, she's cute and looks great in a dress too!" Yet the same shit happens to men and nobody says a word about it, not even in, if especially not in, the most ivory-pillar circles of gender studies. It's also extremely common for the nerd/geek/scientist's clothing and physical appearance to be considered comment-worthy if it fits the stereotype; "Joe Shmoe looks the part of an astrophysicist; his shit isn't tucked in, his hair is astray, and his glasses are perched at an angle, covered in smudges." Awww, look, isn't it endearing? Meanwhile, how the hell does it make Joe Shmoe feel that his appearance and dress was apparently worthy of comment when he thought the interview was about his amazing research?
Please help metamoderate.
There are some electronics projects for young (4-6 yro) children out there, but besides building a few pre-set projects, how do you get kids interested and excited about building things? They might think some blinking lights are cool, but how do you put a narrative around it? I've found toddlers and younger kids love toys, and the entire fantasy world surrounding them, that correspond with books and TV shows. Is there something equivalent for electronics?
When there are at least two good choices for open source electronic design automation tools (gEDA and KiCAD, maybe others), why is it that Adafruit uses closed-source and cripple-ware EDA tools for their open hardware? Linux has proven that open source tools, not just open applications, are important in maintaining healthy open ecosystem. Adafruit seems to be missing an opportunity to provide leadership in this area.
"Robot Stop"
DOES NOT COMPUTE! *smack* *smack*
"Robot Stop"
DOES NOT COMPUTE! YOU LITTLE WORM! *smack* *smack* *smack*
"Stop robot, Im bleeding... oh god"
DOES NOT COMPUTE! YOUR GOD IS NOT HERE! *smack* *smack* *smack*
I am worried that the USA is not going to figure out how to reduce CO2 emissions fast enough to avert an global warming and oceanic acidification crisis. I have a daughter a few years younger than you. I worry that 8 years of jellyfish oceans and hurricane/drought summers will exhaust everyone's stash of brown rice.
I think part of the excitement about AdaFruit is the business sells the tools and toys of a low CO2 emission future.
So how goes the battle at your level?
Have the investment bankers got hold of your priorities yet?
What direction do you want to go with AdaFruit to make the crusty old assumptions fall away?
Would you agree, the rate of change is inversely proportional to the debt level of the business and it's employees?
Hi, I loved SpokePOV. Have you attempted to improve upon it, perhaps adding support for multiple images, and therefore, animated GIFs?