[00:00.000 --> 00:01.900]  Speaking of videos, okay, we're going to pretend.
[00:02.060 --> 00:02.760]  Did you tell me when?
[00:04.220 --> 00:05.100]  No, hold on.
[00:05.160 --> 00:10.260]  What we're going to do is everybody start laughing really loud when he says go, like I just told a really funny joke.
[00:12.380 --> 00:13.400]  We're rolling now?
[00:13.660 --> 00:15.480]  Well, now you blew my whole plan.
[00:18.240 --> 00:18.680]  Great.
[00:18.680 --> 00:19.360]  All right.
[00:19.620 --> 00:24.920]  This is how to run an open-source hardware company with Lady Ada and Phillip Torrone of Make Magazine.
[00:25.300 --> 00:29.200]  I don't know if you have picked up a copy of this, but it's a fantastic magazine.
[00:29.720 --> 00:33.100]  I like to call it things I wish I could be doing instead of going to work.
[00:33.460 --> 00:35.440]  There's some fantastic projects in there.
[00:36.360 --> 00:38.760]  But let's give these guys a round of applause.
[00:44.600 --> 00:45.060]  Okay.
[00:45.280 --> 00:47.220]  Thank you for coming out this early morning.
[00:47.680 --> 00:48.660]  That's a good sign.
[00:49.160 --> 00:52.040]  The challenge of business is most of the time just showing up.
[00:52.260 --> 00:52.940]  That's our top.
[00:53.160 --> 00:53.340]  Goodbye.
[00:53.520 --> 00:53.540]  No.
[00:54.640 --> 00:56.060]  So I'm Phillip Torrone.
[00:56.180 --> 01:01.080]  I'm creative director of Adafruit Industries, and I'm also senior editor of Make Magazine.
[01:01.980 --> 01:02.700]  I'm Limor.
[01:03.060 --> 01:09.720]  I'm Limor Fried, also known as Lady Ada, and I'm the owner and engineer at Adafruit Industries, where we make open source hardware and sell it.
[01:10.600 --> 01:15.350]  And so today, our talk is going to be about how to run an open source hardware business.
[01:15.470 --> 01:18.220]  And we're going to... the phrase is like lift a kimono or whatever.
[01:18.350 --> 01:22.790]  We're going to show you from kind of start or top to bottom how we run a company.
[01:23.040 --> 01:24.760]  We're also going to talk a little bit about open source hardware.
[01:24.920 --> 01:27.560]  How many people here do electronics or build kits?
[01:27.850 --> 01:30.010]  Well, do some clapping so they can hear it on the video too.
[01:30.220 --> 01:30.320]  Yeah.
[01:30.620 --> 01:31.260]  Okay, great.
[01:32.290 --> 01:32.900]  That's good.
[01:33.350 --> 01:39.240]  And how many of you have either bought or are aware of open source hardware?
[01:40.440 --> 01:40.840]  Okay.
[01:41.000 --> 01:41.280]  All right.
[01:41.380 --> 01:41.850]  This is a good crowd.
[01:44.240 --> 01:45.260]  It's going to be pretty easy.
[01:45.960 --> 01:50.040]  So first, what we always like to do is start out and talk about what open source hardware is.
[01:50.340 --> 01:56.010]  And the big announcement that happened like 48 hours ago is we have an open source hardware definition.
[01:56.010 --> 02:02.460]  So just like there was an open source software definition that everyone agreed on, we're getting close to that with open source hardware.
[02:02.620 --> 02:04.400]  So the definition is now at 0.3.
[02:04.840 --> 02:09.500]  And in September, there is a Maker Fair New York City at the World's Fairground.
[02:09.620 --> 02:13.980]  We're taking over the World's Fairground just like people used to in like the 30s when we had video phones.
[02:14.020 --> 02:14.820]  We got video phones again.
[02:15.680 --> 02:16.420]  Sometimes they work.
[02:18.380 --> 02:22.840]  And we're going to make the final like 1.0 announcement there.
[02:22.960 --> 02:24.160]  And then after that, you'll see licenses.
[02:24.180 --> 02:26.380]  And that's one of the things that we'll talk about in a bit.
[02:26.680 --> 02:31.280]  But we like to talk about open source hardware in kind of three chunks.
[02:31.520 --> 02:33.200]  And Lamar's going to talk about that now.
[02:33.340 --> 02:37.380]  And this is basically what it is as far as a designer and a manufacturer is concerned.
[02:39.950 --> 02:43.440]  So we're just going to just go quickly over like what open source hardware is.
[02:43.520 --> 02:46.640]  Open source hardware, I mean, I'm sure all you guys know what open source software is, right?
[02:46.680 --> 02:48.180]  You're here at this hacker conference.
[02:48.640 --> 02:52.560]  And basically open source hardware is very similar.
[02:52.720 --> 02:58.460]  There are a couple legal differences about, you know, patents versus copyrights and, you know, mask rights and stuff.
[02:58.660 --> 03:00.520]  But for the most part, the idea is the same.
[03:00.540 --> 03:07.780]  You want to have a design for a project and release it in a way that anyone else is allowed to make it without restriction.
[03:09.380 --> 03:14.980]  So this is just sort of an adaptation of the open source definition, which I guess Bruce Perrins worked on.
[03:15.240 --> 03:16.820]  He emailed us to make sure we knew.
[03:18.020 --> 03:20.020]  And, you know, it's just a bunch of text.
[03:20.180 --> 03:22.360]  And, you know, you may want attribution.
[03:22.940 --> 03:36.380]  You might want something like share alike, the Creative Commons license definition, where, you know, if I release something under a Creative Commons license, you also, you can't make modifications and then keep them to yourself.
[03:36.380 --> 03:49.540]  And then the only things that are slightly different is because open source hardware is manufactured, one of the things that a lot of the companies that make open source hardware wanted to make sure of is we put in a clause that made sure that people didn't,
[03:49.660 --> 03:56.560]  you know, that there was a clause for trademarks because they're more important in hardware because there's actually a logo on it and who gets contacted for support.
[03:57.060 --> 03:59.540]  You know, I make kits and other people manufacture them.
[03:59.660 --> 04:04.960]  I just want to make sure that their customers don't come to me with the assumption that I manufacture that.
[04:05.080 --> 04:06.780]  And therefore, if there's a problem, I have to replace it.
[04:06.860 --> 04:08.840]  So that's just a very minor difference.
[04:08.960 --> 04:10.620]  This doesn't really come up with software so much.
[04:13.060 --> 04:17.770]  And so most of the time when people talk about open source hardware, there's only like a few things that are involved.
[04:18.020 --> 04:19.940]  It's commercial use allowed.
[04:20.060 --> 04:20.600]  You could sell it.
[04:21.540 --> 04:23.360]  Attribution, just credit me.
[04:23.620 --> 04:25.700]  And then share alike.
[04:25.820 --> 04:27.020]  If you make changes, put it out there.
[04:27.480 --> 04:34.540]  And I've been, I guess, assigned to kind of catalog what open source hardware has been over the last five years, six years now.
[04:34.640 --> 04:35.120]  It's been a long time.
[04:35.700 --> 04:41.580]  So in five... 2005, if you look on the far end of this chart, there's only a few projects and Limor had like both of them.
[04:41.780 --> 04:45.860]  And then as each year went by, more and more people started doing open source hardware.
[04:46.100 --> 04:49.580]  So we're up to like maybe 300 projects.
[04:49.830 --> 04:52.200]  A lot of them are Arduino derivatives.
[04:52.400 --> 04:55.060]  So that's kind of been a big chunk of it in the last year or so.
[04:55.330 --> 04:57.260]  But as you can see, it's going pretty well.
[04:58.640 --> 05:03.660]  And one of the questions we always get asked, and this is why it's good to do at a conference, well, who's actually doing open source hardware?
[05:03.740 --> 05:05.720]  What are the types of companies and what are they actually making?
[05:05.830 --> 05:10.400]  Because one of the kind of tests if something's a good idea is like, well, you know, no one's ever going to make a million dollars.
[05:10.960 --> 05:12.980]  Well, I emailed all the companies who do open source hardware.
[05:13.080 --> 05:16.220]  Turns out most of them are all of them making over a million dollars a year in revenue.
[05:16.440 --> 05:18.960]  And a few of them are making over 10 million dollars in revenue.
[05:19.100 --> 05:23.330]  And some of them, most of them are in the The middle, if you see, that's a chunky middle.
[05:23.860 --> 05:25.880]  And real quick, here's some of the companies.
[05:26.780 --> 05:32.080]  Adafruit Industries, that's Limor's company and the company that I spent some of my time working with.
[05:32.400 --> 05:37.940]  And we do educational electronics, and we also have weird stuff like culture jamming projects.
[05:38.120 --> 05:42.420]  Stuff that we don't sell, like the cell phone jammer that you can build.
[05:42.540 --> 05:48.940]  Just search for cell phone jammer kit or cell phone jammer wave bubble on Google, and you'll see the tutorial that Limor made.
[05:48.940 --> 05:51.040]  And we made a flashlight that's so bright it makes you vomit.
[05:51.260 --> 05:51.620]  That's fun.
[05:51.960 --> 05:53.120]  Maybe we'll show... Yeah.
[05:53.980 --> 05:57.960]  Homeland Security paid a couple million for one, and we made one for about $250.
[05:58.240 --> 06:01.160]  So, we'll get into that in our documentation section.
[06:02.100 --> 06:03.960]  And we're over the million dollar mark now.
[06:04.540 --> 06:07.280]  Arduino, how many of you are familiar with the Arduino project?
[06:07.420 --> 06:07.820]  A little clapping?
[06:08.080 --> 06:08.400]  Yeah!
[06:09.420 --> 06:09.780]  Alright.
[06:10.460 --> 06:14.680]  So, if you're old school, you remember like basic stamp and like doing things with a microcontroller.
[06:14.820 --> 06:16.260]  It was kind of hard, didn't work on all systems.
[06:16.260 --> 06:22.380]  Now, Arduino just kind of grew out of the processing world, which is an open source way to do visualization and graphics.
[06:23.120 --> 06:23.940]  Really took off.
[06:24.120 --> 06:28.100]  There's over 150,000 out there, and they're well over a million dollars in revenue.
[06:28.420 --> 06:31.360]  In fact, they're probably closer to like the five to ten zone.
[06:32.230 --> 06:34.740]  And everything that you see on an Arduino, you can make yourself.
[06:34.840 --> 06:35.920]  You can manufacture yourself.
[06:36.220 --> 06:37.400]  You can send the boards out.
[06:37.540 --> 06:39.580]  The only thing you can't do is call it Arduino, because they have the trademark.
[06:39.720 --> 06:41.640]  That's the only thing they ask that you don't do.
[06:41.640 --> 06:45.160]  They also prefer if you don't make the boards blue, but that's just a request.
[06:45.940 --> 06:46.380]  BeagleBoard.
[06:46.480 --> 06:51.020]  This is an effort from Texas Instruments and Digikey.
[06:51.120 --> 06:56.060]  They teamed up and they did an open source board, and they want people to use this OMAP chip.
[06:56.400 --> 06:57.560]  Kind of a cool project.
[06:57.980 --> 06:58.960]  Different than the Arduino.
[06:59.220 --> 07:04.580]  If you're interested in making like a portable laptop or a kiosk, this is the board for you.
[07:04.700 --> 07:06.240]  And over a million dollars in revenue.
[07:06.560 --> 07:07.840]  Some of you probably already have these.
[07:07.840 --> 07:09.860]  Bug Labs are based out of here in New York.
[07:10.120 --> 07:13.160]  They make LEGO computers, essentially is the best way to describe it.
[07:13.500 --> 07:19.020]  Let's say if you wanted to make a GPS, camera, Wi-Fi connected thing.
[07:19.140 --> 07:20.500]  You could plug in these modules.
[07:20.680 --> 07:21.320]  It's all Linux-based.
[07:21.460 --> 07:22.700]  It uses Eclipse.
[07:23.240 --> 07:24.540]  And there you go.
[07:24.880 --> 07:25.940]  Rapid prototyping.
[07:26.100 --> 07:27.480]  They're approaching a million this year.
[07:28.500 --> 07:28.820]  Chumby.
[07:29.820 --> 07:33.080]  There are these little kind of ambient devices that you can put anywhere.
[07:33.140 --> 07:33.880]  It's a little screen.
[07:34.380 --> 07:35.880]  And it connects online.
[07:35.880 --> 07:39.880]  And it downloads a bunch of stuff that you set up in advance.
[07:40.080 --> 07:43.160]  It's kind of like a physical version of widgets on computers.
[07:43.620 --> 07:45.140]  And they're VC funded.
[07:45.420 --> 07:48.220]  Some open source hardware companies aren't just scrappy.
[07:48.320 --> 07:50.720]  Like starting this in their basements or their apartments.
[07:51.140 --> 07:52.040]  Like we have.
[07:52.520 --> 07:54.500]  They actually went out and got venture capital.
[07:54.880 --> 07:55.820]  And that's an interesting thing.
[07:55.920 --> 07:59.300]  Because venture capital, they want to buy something that they sell.
[07:59.480 --> 08:01.440]  So what does that mean for open source hardware?
[08:01.520 --> 08:02.900]  And we can talk about that in a bit.
[08:02.900 --> 08:04.920]  But Chumby does some cool licensing.
[08:05.080 --> 08:06.040]  They also have a Chumby patent.
[08:06.660 --> 08:13.340]  And Bunny, who's kind of a well-known hacker if you're into the hardware hacking scene, is working on a Chumby hacker board.
[08:13.460 --> 08:17.120]  So it's kind of like an Arduino plus the Beagle board.
[08:17.120 --> 08:20.080]  But it's really powerful.
[08:20.080 --> 08:21.660]  And we'll have that soon.
[08:21.660 --> 08:25.700]  It's a really neat kind of portable Linux computer for, you know, like a hundred bucks.
[08:25.920 --> 08:26.140]  Yeah.
[08:26.380 --> 08:26.500]  Yeah.
[08:26.900 --> 08:27.400]  And that'll be neat.
[08:27.900 --> 08:30.520]  Dangerous prototypes, they're a new entry.
[08:31.320 --> 08:36.050]  Ian, the maker of this, was a writer at Hackaday.
[08:36.170 --> 08:38.260]  And then decided to do a bus pirate.
[08:38.400 --> 08:40.420]  Basically, it's like a reverse engineering tool.
[08:40.420 --> 08:43.760]  If you wanted to figure out what's going on over USB or kind of hack something.
[08:44.350 --> 08:45.290]  And, you know...
[08:45.290 --> 08:46.550]  It's like a digital microscope.
[08:46.550 --> 08:46.950]  Yeah.
[08:47.210 --> 08:48.500]  That's a good analogy.
[08:49.570 --> 08:52.570]  Already, almost a million dollars in 2010.
[08:53.070 --> 08:53.790]  DIY drones.
[08:54.260 --> 08:56.550]  These are microsite civil UAVs.
[08:57.190 --> 09:01.670]  So if you wanted to make your own drone that flies around and take photos, this is a project for you.
[09:02.260 --> 09:06.610]  And one of the cool things is the editor-in-chief of Wired, Chris Anderson, this is his project.
[09:06.660 --> 09:09.380]  And he runs around the world and, of course, has to talk about Wired.
[09:09.470 --> 09:11.570]  But this is, it seems to me, this is what his passion is.
[09:11.610 --> 09:12.450]  And he started Geek Dad.
[09:12.760 --> 09:16.190]  And already, this is a hobby that turned into a really big enterprise.
[09:17.050 --> 09:18.420]  You know, drones are fun.
[09:19.040 --> 09:21.810]  One of the first things that happened is he accidentally flew it into Los Alamos.
[09:22.040 --> 09:22.930]  And like, you know...
[09:22.930 --> 09:23.790]  Oh, shit!
[09:24.290 --> 09:25.570]  You know, we're under attack.
[09:25.730 --> 09:26.070]  But it was...
[09:26.070 --> 09:27.160]  He's the editor-in-chief of Wired.
[09:27.290 --> 09:29.310]  So like, if it was one of us, it'd probably be a different story.
[09:29.550 --> 09:31.040]  But he's like, no, no, it's totally okay.
[09:31.280 --> 09:33.380]  Like, I'm just, you know, doing open source hardware, really.
[09:34.470 --> 09:35.930]  Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories.
[09:36.050 --> 09:37.780]  They do really cool clocks.
[09:37.920 --> 09:39.350]  Really interesting LED panels.
[09:40.030 --> 09:42.090]  Again, just a couple that does this out of their house.
[09:42.690 --> 09:43.640]  Perching a million dollars.
[09:44.130 --> 09:44.780]  MakerBot Industries.
[09:44.780 --> 09:47.090]  A lot of folks here are probably familiar with it.
[09:47.210 --> 09:49.540]  They're doing low-cost 3D printers.
[09:50.420 --> 09:51.660]  Under $1,000.
[09:52.050 --> 09:55.570]  And they have a cool website called Thingiverse that people upload all these files to.
[09:56.000 --> 09:57.950]  Already over a million dollars in revenue.
[09:58.780 --> 10:00.350]  MakerShed for Make Magazine.
[10:01.540 --> 10:05.880]  Again, you have a cool thing like Make that's a brand.
[10:06.040 --> 10:11.780]  It's the magazine that you'd rather be reading or building than doing work stuff.
[10:11.780 --> 10:13.880]  But they also have a store.
[10:14.070 --> 10:15.350]  And there's also a store at MakerShed.
[10:15.500 --> 10:17.090]  So it's kind of like the gift shop at the end.
[10:17.900 --> 10:22.210]  Parallax, for those who've been doing electronics for a long time, they've embraced open source hardware.
[10:22.450 --> 10:27.930]  And we've been working with them for them to label it open source hardware and actually kind of get the credit they deserve.
[10:28.050 --> 10:30.550]  They've always published a lot of stuff, but they didn't call it open source hardware.
[10:30.550 --> 10:32.290]  And they're working on that now.
[10:32.710 --> 10:33.160]  Seeed Studios.
[10:33.260 --> 10:38.070]  These guys are based out of China, which is kind of neat for them because they're closer to the supply chain.
[10:38.190 --> 10:43.330]  And we can talk about cloning and kind of the challenges of open source hardware.
[10:43.420 --> 10:46.550]  Because always people say, well, what if your stuff gets cloned in China?
[10:46.550 --> 10:47.500]  Well, it already happens.
[10:48.310 --> 10:51.140]  Seeed Studios develops their own stuff and they do open source hardware.
[10:51.330 --> 10:53.160]  Already over a million dollars in revenue.
[10:53.450 --> 10:54.160]  Solar Robotics.
[10:54.260 --> 10:57.590]  They do little robotic kits for kids mostly, but they also do open source hardware.
[10:57.590 --> 10:58.800]  Arduino derivatives.
[10:59.060 --> 11:00.380]  And SparkFun Electronics.
[11:00.500 --> 11:03.880]  They're kind of leading the pack right now with revenue.
[11:04.040 --> 11:07.000]  Over 10 million dollars in revenue based out of Boulder, Colorado.
[11:07.210 --> 11:11.260]  A lot of you who do electronics probably get those red boxes in the mail from them.
[11:11.440 --> 11:13.200]  And so that's just a few companies.
[11:13.330 --> 11:17.680]  And this is just, you know, one in the beginning of a talk just to show some idea of what's going on.
[11:17.820 --> 11:21.020]  So that's about 50 million dollars worth of companies right there.
[11:21.350 --> 11:23.780]  This is with about 200 projects altogether.
[11:24.230 --> 11:27.580]  And most of the companies, as I said before, are already approaching the $5 million mark.
[11:28.390 --> 11:32.320]  And so that's an overview of how all these, what all these folks do.
[11:32.460 --> 11:34.330]  And then what we wanted to do is kind of dig in.
[11:34.780 --> 11:35.610]  I want you to draw your hair.
[11:35.760 --> 11:37.780]  Is how we actually run an open source hardware business.
[11:38.730 --> 11:41.640]  And we'll bounce back and forth between the two of us.
[11:42.160 --> 11:43.470]  We're built on open source software.
[11:43.780 --> 11:46.820]  So one of the questions we always get asked is, well, what are you running?
[11:47.180 --> 11:48.730]  And Limor is the one who developed this.
[11:48.880 --> 11:54.970]  So why did you choose open source suite instead of like just, you know, a commercial package?
[11:54.970 --> 11:57.760]  Well, it's kind of, well, I, you know, I grew up like hacking Linux.
[11:57.920 --> 11:59.660]  This was actually something I was pretty comfortable with.
[11:59.850 --> 12:04.080]  And, you know, getting a server and running it myself was really an expensive way to start.
[12:04.080 --> 12:08.800]  Because you can get, you know, a virtual host for like, you know, 20 bucks a month.
[12:09.710 --> 12:16.000]  And then the web card itself, you know, I started with just PayPal buttons and like a simple HTML page.
[12:16.140 --> 12:18.200]  But then eventually it gets more complicated.
[12:18.380 --> 12:19.320]  You need shipping abroad.
[12:19.320 --> 12:20.470]  And you need reports.
[12:20.470 --> 12:21.680]  And you need invoices.
[12:21.680 --> 12:23.560]  And people want to buy more than one thing at once.
[12:23.560 --> 12:24.320]  And sales tax.
[12:24.500 --> 12:25.610]  And it gets very complicated.
[12:25.760 --> 12:37.940]  And one of the really nice things about having a LAMP system, especially with something like OS Commerce, which is the core shopping cart, is a lot of like the really annoying bullshit of a shopping cart has been taken care of for you.
[12:38.080 --> 12:43.180]  So I can go in and like, I've heavily modified the cart because it's a PHP in MySQL.
[12:43.720 --> 12:47.440]  So, you know, we, for example, we added like a carrot mod.
[12:47.640 --> 12:53.800]  So if people order more than $100 worth of stuff, you know, they get a free badge or some stickers or something, something extra.
[12:55.300 --> 13:04.230]  And most, you know, commercial carts that you would purchase, like online or rent online, you know, if they don't have a mod, you're never going to get it.
[13:04.330 --> 13:09.460]  So you can't do all of the, you know, the creative stuff that you may want to do with your shopping cart.
[13:09.660 --> 13:12.520]  And being able to differentiate yourself from others is really important.
[13:12.560 --> 13:14.320]  So that's why I suggest open source software.
[13:14.500 --> 13:14.710]  Yeah.
[13:14.780 --> 13:16.970]  And we'll show some of the examples of some of the mods that we did.
[13:16.970 --> 13:23.680]  And hopefully, we're almost at a good... you never finish a shopping cart.
[13:23.730 --> 13:24.380]  You're always adding things.
[13:24.540 --> 13:27.920]  But we'll be releasing our own mods and packs to the Zen Cart community.
[13:28.780 --> 13:32.160]  And the other question we get, well, what hosting provider do you use?
[13:32.200 --> 13:33.560]  Because your site is on Slashdot sometimes.
[13:33.560 --> 13:34.210]  You never go down.
[13:34.350 --> 13:35.180]  And we use Servant.
[13:35.560 --> 13:38.970]  And we were on the $80 plan for the longest time.
[13:39.080 --> 13:39.970]  And then we just moved to...
[13:39.970 --> 13:43.560]  We eventually moved up to Dedicated because it was actually getting out of control.
[13:43.710 --> 13:46.900]  But for a really long time, I was actually on the least expensive, which is like $50.
[13:47.800 --> 13:49.920]  You can get it cheaper from like one and one.
[13:50.520 --> 13:54.060]  But what I really like about Servant, I mean, whatever you...
[13:54.060 --> 13:55.060]  There's other really good ones.
[13:55.210 --> 13:57.380]  But I moved from many hosting providers.
[13:57.540 --> 14:01.160]  And like, they actually like tell you before they go down for like two days.
[14:01.580 --> 14:03.830]  And like, you know, they actually do backups.
[14:04.090 --> 14:06.260]  And like, I've actually asked them to get...
[14:06.260 --> 14:08.420]  You know, like I overwrote my like HT access file.
[14:08.540 --> 14:10.610]  And I'm like, I'm never writing those mod rewrites again.
[14:10.640 --> 14:11.760]  I have to get that file back.
[14:11.920 --> 14:13.580]  And they actually got it back for me.
[14:13.680 --> 14:14.970]  And that's really impressive.
[14:14.970 --> 14:17.400]  And like, being able to undelete like one file.
[14:17.500 --> 14:21.560]  If that saves you a couple hours, that's worth a hundred bucks of your time.
[14:21.730 --> 14:23.060]  Because it's such a hassle.
[14:23.230 --> 14:25.940]  And if they go down, you know, you lose those days' sales.
[14:26.140 --> 14:40.660]  So even though a lot of people, I think, want to go with a $5 hosting, I think it's the one thing that if you're going to spend money on, get a good hosting provider, either Servant or some other place that, you know, won't screw you over and then like not answer your phone calls.
[14:40.660 --> 14:40.960]  Yeah.
[14:41.210 --> 14:45.820]  I mean, if you're living, if you make your living from an online store, it's, it is the most important thing.
[14:46.000 --> 14:51.830]  You know, in our studio, we have two Internet connections because like we figured out, like when our Internet connection goes down, we're kind of screwed.
[14:51.920 --> 14:56.440]  We won't even get a third because during the holidays and when it's mission critical, we really need to do stuff.
[14:56.590 --> 15:01.850]  So from hosting provider point of view and even in our own studio.
[15:01.850 --> 15:04.940]  So our shopping cart software, as Limor said, we use Zen Cart and...
[15:05.700 --> 15:07.320]  Which is a fork of OS commerce.
[15:07.580 --> 15:09.140]  And there's a couple of forks of OS commerce.
[15:09.230 --> 15:10.940]  So you can choose which one you want.
[15:11.040 --> 15:11.900]  There's like three or four.
[15:12.090 --> 15:15.090]  I like Zen Cart, but a lot of people use OS commerce.
[15:15.680 --> 15:15.880]  Yeah.
[15:16.440 --> 15:17.090]  They're pretty easy.
[15:17.230 --> 15:24.110]  I mean, they're not easy to modify, but if you've had any experience with, again, like MySQL or PHP, it's not too bad.
[15:24.560 --> 15:24.680]  Yeah.
[15:24.780 --> 15:31.230]  And then this is just a behind the scenes look and we'll have all these slides online and we also have an article that we wrote about this.
[15:31.230 --> 15:32.560]  But this is what it looks like behind the scenes.
[15:32.680 --> 15:33.280]  The orders come in.
[15:34.500 --> 15:35.700]  A customer places it.
[15:35.760 --> 15:36.330]  It says processing.
[15:36.740 --> 15:44.020]  We have pending orders for people who use a purchase order, or if they send a check or money order that just waits until we approve it.
[15:44.330 --> 15:46.700]  And from there, we've done some cool mods.
[15:46.800 --> 15:54.540]  One of the neat things that we did recently was when our staff comes in, they can press one button that prints all orders that aren't expedited.
[15:54.660 --> 15:57.090]  And then we have another button that prints all expedited orders.
[15:57.180 --> 16:01.580]  When someone orders something overnight, no matter what you say, if you say, well, you know, we don't ship every day.
[16:01.680 --> 16:03.110]  We ship... it takes two to three days or whatever.
[16:03.210 --> 16:03.520]  It doesn't matter.
[16:03.590 --> 16:07.730]  If someone orders something overnight, they actually think you're going to stop everything and send it overnight.
[16:07.780 --> 16:08.710]  So we do that.
[16:08.850 --> 16:12.660]  We prioritize the orders that have expedited shipping.
[16:12.700 --> 16:21.400]  And that's solved a lot of customer support issues because people will call us at three in the morning and say, you know, I ordered an Arduino and I really needed it by today.
[16:21.680 --> 16:22.350]  Like, where is it?
[16:22.460 --> 16:23.260]  And it is...
[16:23.260 --> 16:24.540]  Sometimes they say it's life or death.
[16:24.540 --> 16:26.540]  I'm not quite sure what they're doing with an Arduino, but...
[16:27.700 --> 16:28.780]  They say, no, you don't understand.
[16:28.850 --> 16:29.280]  It's life or death.
[16:30.610 --> 16:38.710]  And so because we use Zen Cart and because we use LAMP and because we have all this data, we developed an inventory system, a predictive inventory system.
[16:39.180 --> 16:40.470]  Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
[16:40.610 --> 16:42.530]  So one of the things that you'll...
[16:43.160 --> 16:54.710]  It doesn't really come up, but is really important, is like supply chain engineering, which is basically how Walmart makes so much money, is that you have to have just enough stuff that you'll be able to sell it, but not so much that you're sitting on piles of inventory.
[16:55.110 --> 16:58.060]  And the balance between the two is really, really hard.
[16:58.960 --> 17:12.860]  So one of the things that I did to help me, and you can keep it all in your head sometimes, but, you know, if you, again, if you have an open source cart where you can touch the database and grab data out, it's very easy to say, well, how many of like X did I sell in the last two weeks?
[17:12.920 --> 17:14.180]  And do I have that many left?
[17:14.180 --> 17:18.260]  If I don't, and I know it takes me two weeks to get, send me an email and warn me.
[17:18.260 --> 17:24.320]  And this is actually something that, you know, you know, MBAs, you know, contract out for $100,000.
[17:24.440 --> 17:28.340]  But it's really simple to do if you know even the most basic database programming.
[17:28.640 --> 17:36.660]  So this is like a report system, and you can see, you know, when the red marks mean you're not going to make it to the, you know, the next week or two weeks.
[17:36.800 --> 17:40.200]  So be sure to, you know, get that stuff in stock as quickly as possible.
[17:40.500 --> 17:43.840]  And also, you know, I can just look down and see like, am I okay for the next two weeks?
[17:43.900 --> 17:44.960]  Are there any red marks?
[17:44.960 --> 17:49.620]  Or when I want to order something, I want to keep, say, one quarter's worth of inventory in stock.
[17:49.780 --> 17:58.420]  I look on the very right hand side and there's a number and says, okay, you know, you need to get a thousand breadboard wires because you send, you know, sell a thousand bundles per quarter.
[17:58.780 --> 18:00.100]  It makes purchasing much easier.
[18:00.140 --> 18:06.500]  And that's another thing that's going to take up more and more time is just keeping track of inventory and purchasing and when to get and what.
[18:07.500 --> 18:09.380]  Psychologically, we kind of view this as a video game.
[18:09.520 --> 18:13.540]  We don't have a TV or play video games or play Farmville or whatever, but it's kind of like that.
[18:14.080 --> 18:18.420]  We're like, you know, oh crap, we need to plant more of these things because the trees need to come up because we have to feed the sheep.
[18:18.560 --> 18:20.360]  It is a lot like that.
[18:20.420 --> 18:26.100]  Maybe that's why we think it's fun because we're kind of playing this game and instead of getting coins, you actually get real money.
[18:26.360 --> 18:26.940]  So that's fun.
[18:28.460 --> 18:34.220]  The other thing that Limor worked on was the parts selector.
[18:34.220 --> 18:39.880]  So we get asked all the time, where do you get your stuff, where do you get your shipping supplies, where do you get everything?
[18:40.200 --> 18:42.260]  So instead of answering everybody, we just made a wiki.
[18:42.720 --> 18:44.040]  It's kind of like a defense mechanism.
[18:44.220 --> 18:45.380]  It's like, stop talking, here's a wiki.
[18:45.720 --> 18:49.060]  And we put all this stuff up there, and so that's another thing.
[18:49.180 --> 18:59.440]  Once the inventory system says, oh shit, you need switches fast, because too many people ordered the blinking wheels, we can go into our own parts selector that we use as a resource, and then we also released it for everybody else.
[18:59.440 --> 19:05.980]  It's so obvious that it took me forever to get done, but once I did it, it saved me so much time.
[19:06.080 --> 19:15.660]  It's actually just a list of every component I get, all the parts that make up the kits, and then a link to the precise page where to buy it.
[19:16.020 --> 19:28.300]  And then if I have multiple suppliers, that's something that's really important, is to have at least two or three suppliers for every item you need, because one will go on vacation, or go out of business or something, and you need to have a backup.
[19:28.800 --> 19:30.900]  Or they'll be out of stock, and it's like four to six weeks.
[19:31.160 --> 19:43.180]  And so, you know, I can quickly go through all of my suppliers, or even, you know, have an employee do it and say like, okay, we need to get, you know, like packing materials, get like 500 boxes, and then they just click the link and order it.
[19:43.340 --> 19:51.540]  And all these little things, which seem like really small details, they add up together and allow you to get so much more done.
[19:51.860 --> 20:03.520]  And again, it's like all of this stuff is like, if you can edit a wiki or if you can edit a spreadsheet, instead of keeping it all on little pieces of paper or stuck to your desk, which is what a lot of purchasing managers do, this will really help you out.
[20:03.580 --> 20:05.460]  And also, you know, this is also a public resource.
[20:05.580 --> 20:09.520]  Other people use this for when they want to find out where's the cheapest place to get a microcontroller.
[20:09.980 --> 20:12.320]  I did the research for them, and they can just click on that link.
[20:12.320 --> 20:12.620]  Yeah.
[20:12.860 --> 20:15.040]  I mean, the downside is our competitors use this, but like, whatever.
[20:15.320 --> 20:20.420]  Like, you know, they're gonna, they're gonna buy something from us anyways, and then figure out where we got it from and do this.
[20:20.540 --> 20:22.560]  So like, you know, why don't we just save them some time?
[20:22.700 --> 20:23.980]  They can compete with us on other things.
[20:25.240 --> 20:27.700]  Next up, this is what one of our invoices look like.
[20:28.540 --> 20:36.180]  When the customer places an order, goes into Zen Cart, we assign a barcode to it, and we'll show you our actual like off the shelf stuff that we bought off eBay.
[20:37.180 --> 20:40.960]  And one of the things that we do, that little green box, over time we figured...
[20:40.960 --> 20:41.460]  It's now red.
[20:41.620 --> 20:42.180]  Yeah, it's now red.
[20:42.540 --> 20:46.980]  One of the things that we figured out is, there's certain things that humans are really good at, and certain things that computers are good at.
[20:47.080 --> 20:51.960]  So what we do is, we look at the address, we look at how it matches up, we look, there's certain countries, there's certain things...
[20:51.960 --> 20:54.760]  We almost have like a no-fly list, with some filters.
[20:55.240 --> 20:59.620]  And it's basically, oh, shipping person, please stop and take a look at this.
[20:59.700 --> 21:11.200]  If someone's ordering something overnight, and their billing address is in Uzbekistan, but they wanted to go to LA to a hotel, and it's like $1,000 worth of Arduinos, we should probably ask them questions.
[21:11.440 --> 21:13.660]  And it turns out, every single time, it's been true.
[21:13.980 --> 21:19.600]  Well, it's interesting, because fraud prevention, like credit card fraud prevention, computers are really, really bad at it.
[21:20.300 --> 21:29.820]  So if anyone out there wants to start a company, make a lot of money, this is actually a really good idea, because credit card, like Authorize, and other credit card companies have a fraud detection suite, and it's crap.
[21:30.140 --> 21:31.240]  It's like the worst thing ever.
[21:31.340 --> 21:32.460]  It doesn't do a good job at all.
[21:32.460 --> 21:34.320]  And even PayPal isn't that great.
[21:34.520 --> 21:36.280]  But humans are really good at it.
[21:36.940 --> 21:43.220]  And I don't completely know why, but like, we can quickly look at addresses and say like, oh, this person is just shipping it to their work address.
[21:43.340 --> 21:45.820]  I can tell because like, it's, you know, it's close.
[21:46.040 --> 21:47.480]  It's the zip code is really close.
[21:48.220 --> 21:50.040]  And you know, obviously, this is a business address.
[21:50.160 --> 21:56.960]  It's like, you know, circle drive or something or, or, you know, people use names like FUBAR, like, come on, like, come on, credit card thief guy.
[21:57.100 --> 21:58.300]  Like, come on, try a little harder.
[21:58.600 --> 21:59.780]  Sometimes they use celebrity names.
[21:59.980 --> 22:02.400]  I'm like, no, you're not Brad Pitt.
[22:02.620 --> 22:03.720]  Brad Pitt does not want Arduinos.
[22:05.140 --> 22:05.580]  So...
[22:05.580 --> 22:06.960]  Or like, or like Hotmail address.
[22:07.100 --> 22:10.160]  Like, it's like little things, like, there's little things like what kind of email address.
[22:10.320 --> 22:18.360]  If it's a name at gmail.com, it's actually less likely to be fraud than like, you know, spritzy49sparkle at like hotmail.com.
[22:18.720 --> 22:26.000]  That like sends off alarms for people, but computers don't know that a hotmail address is less reliable than a university address.
[22:26.240 --> 22:31.900]  Not everybody who uses PayPal is a credit card thief, but every credit card thief we've had uses Hotmail.
[22:33.900 --> 22:35.700]  And here's the, I'll go back one more.
[22:35.820 --> 22:39.020]  Here's another kind of fun, because you guys are all security freaks.
[22:39.460 --> 22:43.120]  So someone was using our shopping cart to test if credit cards were stolen.
[22:43.320 --> 22:50.940]  So what they would do is buy these list of credit cards, enter it into our cart with fake names just to see if they could get the authorization.
[22:50.940 --> 22:54.560]  Like it would say like, sorry, your address doesn't match, and our cart wouldn't pass it through.
[22:54.780 --> 23:00.280]  But then once in a while we get people calling up and say, hey, I saw a charge from Adafruit that came and then one way, what happened?
[23:00.620 --> 23:01.420]  And I'm like, okay.
[23:01.420 --> 23:03.600]  So what we did is we actually set up our shopping cart.
[23:03.720 --> 23:09.640]  If people attempt to use credit cards from the same IP address more than a couple times, it text messages my phone.
[23:09.780 --> 23:14.880]  I go online and then I have an automatic script that goes to see where their IP address is from.
[23:15.000 --> 23:17.680]  And most of the time it's like little villages in China or India.
[23:17.680 --> 23:18.700]  And then we banned that.
[23:18.820 --> 23:21.420]  So it took just one week and we just started to ban...
[23:21.420 --> 23:23.780]  But I've never heard of a single shopping cart that has that built in.
[23:23.920 --> 23:24.160]  Yeah.
[23:24.400 --> 23:26.960]  Even though it's like such an obvious thing you'd want to defend against.
[23:27.300 --> 23:33.540]  So if you have a commercial cart, you still have to pay a fee every time somebody declines a card.
[23:33.620 --> 23:35.040]  You still have to pay that decline fee.
[23:35.500 --> 23:38.680]  It's like 20 cents, but if they're doing 100 cards, it can add up.
[23:38.680 --> 23:43.020]  But, you know, it took us like half an hour, you know, a simple little like check.
[23:43.180 --> 23:47.140]  How many, you know, failures has this person had in sending an email via PHP?
[23:47.380 --> 23:48.220]  We were just annoyed.
[23:48.360 --> 23:50.480]  We didn't want someone to use our cart for that.
[23:50.620 --> 23:52.340]  You know, go use someone else's who doesn't care about the stuff.
[23:53.240 --> 23:53.980]  Amazon or something.
[23:54.620 --> 24:04.060]  And then the other thing that we did was because we have a shopping cart system that we can completely modify, one of the things that started to take up all of our time was resellers.
[24:04.280 --> 24:08.480]  If you're selling electronics and you're doing a good job, other people want to sell the stuff for you.
[24:08.480 --> 24:09.120]  And that's really good.
[24:09.220 --> 24:10.840]  And we'll talk about margins in just a few minutes.
[24:11.460 --> 24:14.740]  But we decided, well, you know, there's resellers and people have businesses.
[24:14.940 --> 24:16.320]  There's also a lot of hackerspaces.
[24:16.440 --> 24:20.820]  In fact, later on today, there's a great talk from, I think, Mitch and some other people who talk about hackerspaces.
[24:21.020 --> 24:23.240]  We decided, you know, we should make hackerspaces resellers.
[24:23.460 --> 24:27.280]  So what we did is we made a special flag on an account.
[24:27.280 --> 24:32.980]  And when someone says they're a hackerspace and tell us that they have like 50 people, they want to sell kits, we make them a reseller.
[24:33.080 --> 24:35.320]  And when they log in, they get a different little banner.
[24:35.420 --> 24:36.980]  So it says wholesale club up at the top.
[24:36.980 --> 24:41.300]  If you look at the bottom, it says, oh, your price is now as low as $51 instead of $85.
[24:41.700 --> 24:45.340]  So as they're shopping, they can actually see the discounts that they're going to get.
[24:45.500 --> 24:46.760]  It's the same shopping cart.
[24:46.880 --> 24:49.660]  It's just a different level of discounts applied.
[24:49.660 --> 25:00.380]  And so instead of people faxing stuff on the education side or companies having to fax stuff, the purchasing lady named Ethel, she can just go and put it into the shopping cart.
[25:00.540 --> 25:07.600]  And then they check out and it saves us probably two or three staff positions just to have a shopping cart that can do resellers.
[25:09.060 --> 25:12.340]  Some other cart systems online that use OS commerce and Zen Cart.
[25:12.500 --> 25:13.000]  Spark fun.
[25:13.360 --> 25:14.440]  They've really tweaked theirs out.
[25:14.900 --> 25:16.040]  And they use OS commerce.
[25:16.540 --> 25:18.940]  Seeed studio, one of the other companies I mentioned before.
[25:19.720 --> 25:20.680]  They use OS commerce.
[25:21.000 --> 25:21.440]  No, I'm sorry.
[25:21.560 --> 25:22.000]  Zen Cart.
[25:22.180 --> 25:22.760]  They use Zen Cart.
[25:24.360 --> 25:26.500]  And that kind of moves us along to payments.
[25:26.500 --> 25:29.560]  Well, taking money is probably the most important thing.
[25:29.660 --> 25:32.440]  So for a card processor, we use Authorize.net.
[25:32.680 --> 25:35.320]  And one of the things that... there's probably some security folks.
[25:35.500 --> 25:37.100]  How many here have heard of PCI compliance?
[25:37.840 --> 25:39.140]  Yeah, wow, you guys are like...
[25:39.140 --> 25:39.520]  Wow, okay.
[25:40.380 --> 25:43.340]  We are at a credit card convention.
[25:44.440 --> 25:45.820]  So PCI compliance is neat.
[25:45.900 --> 25:51.780]  If you store credit cards, if you have the customer data, you have to follow all these things.
[25:51.920 --> 25:56.100]  So what we do is we do an authorization and Authorize is owned by Visa.
[25:56.860 --> 25:59.420]  Yeah, it's about to or just got purchased or something.
[25:59.560 --> 26:01.620]  And they come up with the PCI compliance standards, of course.
[26:02.120 --> 26:02.920]  They're all connected.
[26:03.520 --> 26:06.900]  And what we do is we use Authorize to authorize the charges.
[26:07.060 --> 26:08.580]  And we don't store any credit cards.
[26:08.860 --> 26:09.800]  Now, there's a few good things.
[26:09.940 --> 26:12.740]  No one can kind of hack us just for this credit card information.
[26:12.940 --> 26:14.280]  It hasn't happened to us.
[26:14.320 --> 26:15.980]  There's always a method of attack.
[26:16.280 --> 26:19.200]  But we don't have credit cards on our servers anywhere.
[26:19.280 --> 26:20.980]  And so we don't have to worry about this as much.
[26:21.400 --> 26:22.200]  Authorize is a problem.
[26:22.640 --> 26:23.720]  They do an authorization.
[26:23.900 --> 26:25.500]  They tell us how much money we can charge.
[26:25.500 --> 26:26.860]  We can't charge over that amount.
[26:27.020 --> 26:29.040]  And that's pretty much what we decided to do.
[26:29.100 --> 26:29.840]  And it's worked out so far.
[26:30.040 --> 26:32.100]  Yeah, I mean, like, you know, there's a couple of downsides.
[26:32.200 --> 26:35.040]  Like, you know, you can't have back orders and then ship the back order later.
[26:35.280 --> 26:35.640]  And, like, you can't...
[26:35.640 --> 26:36.060]  Can't do one click.
[26:36.200 --> 26:37.920]  You can't, you know, like, yeah, do one click.
[26:38.100 --> 26:40.700]  And, you know, people have to enter in the credit card data every time.
[26:40.700 --> 26:46.540]  But we found that, you know, if we tell customers who complain about that, we say, look, it's, you know, for your safety.
[26:46.800 --> 26:51.700]  We don't even want to touch this data and have it in our database because we don't want that risk.
[26:51.920 --> 26:54.680]  You know, we think that we've secured our server pretty well.
[26:54.680 --> 26:57.680]  But, you know, why have this stuff hanging around?
[26:57.780 --> 26:59.160]  Why have this for the taking?
[26:59.440 --> 27:01.440]  And so far, we've had almost, you know, no problems.
[27:01.500 --> 27:04.000]  And it's not like... I don't think that our sales have hurt at all.
[27:04.080 --> 27:13.460]  So if you're setting up a store, I strongly encourage people not to store credit card data, even though it's tempting and, you know, for, you know, chargeback verification or whatever.
[27:14.160 --> 27:22.400]  It's not worth it, even if you would make a little bit more money because of the extra hassles, time of PCI compliance, which is now required of everyone.
[27:22.400 --> 27:22.780]  Yeah.
[27:23.080 --> 27:30.400]  And just as far... kind of on a side note, we never allow people to pay us money if we're not able to ship something immediately, for the most part.
[27:30.520 --> 27:32.040]  And we learned this lesson a few times.
[27:32.780 --> 27:39.840]  If someone orders something and we don't have it in stock, even if it takes a few days, we decided not to allow that recently.
[27:40.200 --> 27:41.860]  For some items we will, but most we won't.
[27:41.940 --> 27:45.580]  Because once you have someone's money, the first thing is like, I paid you and you didn't send me my thing.
[27:45.920 --> 27:48.160]  And so we've decided that we're not going to do that.
[27:48.240 --> 27:50.020]  And that solved a lot of customer support issues.
[27:50.680 --> 27:55.120]  If there's products that we have that are really popular, some people are like, well, can't I just pay now and you send it whenever?
[27:55.320 --> 27:55.780]  It's tempting.
[27:55.960 --> 27:56.620]  No, we don't do that.
[27:56.820 --> 28:03.300]  The number one lesson of business, I'd say, is do not take people's money unless you have something to ship them within, like, two days.
[28:03.780 --> 28:08.660]  And even credit card companies will punish you if you don't capture an authorization within, like, one or two days.
[28:08.700 --> 28:09.560]  You have to pay a little more.
[28:09.560 --> 28:09.800]  Yeah.
[28:10.060 --> 28:16.020]  And even though it's tempting to say, oh, ships to 46 weeks, I need that money to help me fund the, you know, manufacturer, just don't do it.
[28:16.060 --> 28:20.160]  Because I've actually never seen anyone who didn't say afterwards, I completely regret doing that.
[28:20.460 --> 28:22.260]  I was greedy and I wanted that money quickly.
[28:22.520 --> 28:22.800]  Yeah.
[28:22.900 --> 28:25.760]  But I spent all my time dealing with pissed off customers.
[28:26.340 --> 28:26.440]  Yeah.
[28:26.460 --> 28:29.580]  Some people are like, oh, I'll just take $5 just to prove that they want it.
[28:29.820 --> 28:30.240]  It's a nightmare.
[28:31.240 --> 28:32.640]  So next up, we also take PayPal.
[28:33.580 --> 28:37.140]  And that's how Lamar started with Adafruit.
[28:37.280 --> 28:38.520]  There's just a buy button on a page.
[28:38.740 --> 28:39.680]  PayPal makes it really easy.
[28:39.960 --> 28:42.780]  International customers, they can use PayPal a lot easier.
[28:43.000 --> 28:46.040]  A lot of them want to do bank transfers and that's always, there's fees and everything.
[28:46.540 --> 28:51.440]  We suggest when you start out, if you just have a web page with a button, PayPal is the way to go.
[28:51.580 --> 28:54.660]  And then a pro tip, when you get a PayPal account, get one of these.
[28:54.780 --> 28:57.200]  They have a little e-ink card and then they have a little dongle.
[28:57.200 --> 29:00.340]  You have to put in your password and then you also have to use this dongle.
[29:00.500 --> 29:01.920]  It's just, it's another layer of security.
[29:03.160 --> 29:08.520]  It's probably harder to crack all this than just getting someone's PayPal password.
[29:08.680 --> 29:14.560]  And when we see theft and fraud from PayPal, it's usually when a customer, they get their password stolen.
[29:14.780 --> 29:20.920]  And we had a customer who said, oh, I live in this apartment building and someone got on my Wi-Fi and figured out my login and password.
[29:21.420 --> 29:22.740]  And this has happened a bunch of times.
[29:22.820 --> 29:23.600]  Like, where do you live?
[29:23.720 --> 29:25.520]  Like, can't, you know, really?
[29:25.520 --> 29:27.520]  Like everyone around you, they're doing this constantly.
[29:27.720 --> 29:30.040]  Like maybe figure out another place to live.
[29:30.160 --> 29:34.680]  But that was their biggest problem is someone kept getting their PayPal password and buying stuff.
[29:34.840 --> 29:37.400]  And they'd have it shipped to the same place because they all live in the same place.
[29:37.500 --> 29:39.160]  I'm like, don't you ever run into someone with your package?
[29:39.440 --> 29:39.760]  No.
[29:40.180 --> 29:40.500]  Anyways.
[29:41.100 --> 29:41.920]  So get one of those.
[29:42.040 --> 29:42.980]  I think it's like a couple of bucks.
[29:44.300 --> 29:48.780]  And then as far as kind of falls in the marketing side.
[29:48.840 --> 29:49.560]  We don't do marketing.
[29:50.810 --> 29:57.580]  But we did decide to try to make the best electronics blog, whatever you want to call it now, online.
[29:57.580 --> 30:00.380]  And in order to do that, we wanted to have a really good system.
[30:00.420 --> 30:03.460]  And so we embedded WordPress directly inside our site.
[30:03.740 --> 30:05.320]  And that worked out really well.
[30:05.320 --> 30:13.160]  So anytime you're looking at cool electronic projects online from us, even if it's not something we sell, you're in the Chrome of the store.
[30:13.300 --> 30:16.180]  And you're able to see products that we sell.
[30:16.320 --> 30:18.300]  And we've seen sales increase because of this.
[30:18.380 --> 30:19.480]  We also did this with our forum.
[30:19.620 --> 30:21.380]  So everything is inside the store.
[30:21.480 --> 30:22.580]  And we like that a lot.
[30:22.660 --> 30:26.180]  And WordPress, it's a little tricky, but we hacked on it.
[30:26.200 --> 30:28.360]  Just keep it updated and don't steal credit cards.
[30:28.360 --> 30:29.080]  Yeah.
[30:29.740 --> 30:33.080]  And we do things like customers send us emails.
[30:33.420 --> 30:38.940]  Hey, I ordered something today and you guys shipped it in 20 minutes and it's 2,000 miles away.
[30:38.960 --> 30:44.280]  And I got my Arduino and I saved my grandfather's life because his Arduino is his pacemaker or something like that.
[30:45.520 --> 30:47.380]  And so we put those up online.
[30:47.600 --> 30:50.240]  You know, we have customer feedback that goes directly on our blog.
[30:51.100 --> 31:00.140]  One of the things that we suggest though, if you're going to have a content destination, if you're going to do documentation, if you're going to have something for people to return to every day, measure it.
[31:00.280 --> 31:10.760]  I mean, we didn't really set out to have any specific goals with traffic, but starting the Adafruit blog, it already went up to a million page views in a month.
[31:10.800 --> 31:12.260]  And that does equate to sales.
[31:12.580 --> 31:13.900]  Same thing with make.
[31:14.680 --> 31:19.200]  Zero to five or six million page views in less than a year when we started a few years back.
[31:19.740 --> 31:23.400]  And if you're not measuring something, there's really no way to improve, I think.
[31:23.400 --> 31:25.900]  So there's free tools, you can use any of them.
[31:26.060 --> 31:28.140]  We use Google Analytics, whatever.
[31:29.100 --> 31:31.540]  There's probably other ones or other companies.
[31:31.680 --> 31:33.920]  They make good graphs and they can tell you where people are coming from.
[31:34.180 --> 31:34.540]  I like it.
[31:35.640 --> 31:37.700]  The other thing we do is we have forums.
[31:37.820 --> 31:41.540]  So if you have a product and you need to support it, you can do it over email.
[31:41.960 --> 31:43.820]  But all that knowledge is lost.
[31:43.940 --> 31:45.180]  It's going from email to email.
[31:45.280 --> 31:48.900]  Maybe if they're on Gmail, Gmail makes some money because they'll put some ads around it.
[31:48.980 --> 31:51.880]  But that knowledge that you're transferring to that person is gone.
[31:51.880 --> 31:58.940]  So although it would be nice to answer every email individually, what we do is we have the customers post up in the forums.
[31:59.440 --> 32:07.060]  And recently we added a mod that when you start an account on Adafruit to order something, you automatically have an account in the Adafruit forums.
[32:07.200 --> 32:08.360]  And that's worked out really well.
[32:08.560 --> 32:09.800]  And we do have moderation.
[32:09.800 --> 32:13.220]  We hired someone to go and make sure that there's no spam, first off.
[32:13.220 --> 32:17.220]  And we did a mod to PHP BB, which is kind of neat.
[32:17.300 --> 32:18.880]  We have a little skull just for the administrators.
[32:19.160 --> 32:22.360]  So when someone does spam or does something wrong, we have a skull and you press it.
[32:22.600 --> 32:26.440]  It bans their username, their IP address, their email address.
[32:26.800 --> 32:28.260]  And then it says, I destroyed them.
[32:28.400 --> 32:32.680]  So we try to make moderating fun for our moderators.
[32:32.680 --> 32:34.080]  Because it is neat to get a spammer.
[32:34.080 --> 32:36.500]  And it is kind of fun that you know that they're never going to visit the site.
[32:36.680 --> 32:38.160]  Once in a while, there's collateral damage.
[32:38.300 --> 32:40.500]  We'll get someone from Indonesia or something like that.
[32:40.560 --> 32:42.020]  It's like, I can't post on the forums.
[32:42.080 --> 32:42.840]  It says I'm a spammer.
[32:42.900 --> 32:45.820]  And it's like, okay, well, last week your IP address someone was.
[32:45.940 --> 32:47.720]  And they're like, oh yeah, oops, you know.
[32:49.120 --> 32:51.620]  So they're like, oh yeah, my company does that once in a while.
[32:53.100 --> 32:54.300]  But I want help with my Arduino.
[32:56.380 --> 32:57.980]  So PHP BB is what we use.
[32:58.140 --> 32:59.860]  There's other open source forum software.
[33:00.140 --> 33:02.400]  But it's the one that we like the most right now.
[33:04.300 --> 33:06.060]  Documentation, we're going to spend a lot of time on this.
[33:06.120 --> 33:07.500]  Because we think this is the most important thing.
[33:07.640 --> 33:08.460]  This is kind of our advertisement.
[33:09.160 --> 33:11.620]  We think if you put out good information, that is your advertising.
[33:12.600 --> 33:16.500]  We have, we think some of the best tutorials online, maybe about 100.
[33:16.800 --> 33:17.480]  Over 100.
[33:17.620 --> 33:18.660]  Over 100 right now.
[33:19.320 --> 33:20.780]  And there's no ads on them.
[33:20.980 --> 33:23.940]  There's, you don't need to buy the electronics from us necessarily.
[33:24.440 --> 33:26.320]  And we show you, we teach people.
[33:26.420 --> 33:28.280]  And we think if you teach people, they'll reward you.
[33:28.500 --> 33:30.380]  So if you go to our tutorial section, you can see them.
[33:30.520 --> 33:31.940]  But that's what we spend a lot of time on.
[33:31.940 --> 33:35.220]  In fact, you spend more time on documentation than designing electronics.
[33:35.460 --> 33:37.140]  Yeah, the engineering takes a couple days.
[33:37.280 --> 33:38.740]  The documentation takes weeks.
[33:39.100 --> 33:41.300]  And then once you're doing the documentation, you realize you made a mistake.
[33:41.460 --> 33:42.500]  And then you have to do some more engineering.
[33:42.720 --> 33:43.840]  And then it's a cycle.
[33:44.680 --> 33:50.580]  And one of the other things we do is once we think a tutorial is done, finished, complete, we put it in other places like Instructables.
[33:50.600 --> 33:55.200]  Because they have just a massive amount of people that are looking at their pages.
[33:55.200 --> 33:59.380]  And so we'll just basically copy and paste our documentation directly into Instructables.
[33:59.620 --> 34:01.060]  And that's another great thing you can do.
[34:01.140 --> 34:03.480]  If you do documentation once, it can go different places.
[34:03.640 --> 34:04.540]  You can turn it into an article.
[34:04.900 --> 34:05.840]  You can turn it into...
[34:05.840 --> 34:06.840]  If it's a helpful how-to.
[34:06.980 --> 34:10.820]  If it's not just like spammy about your product, you can actually do more with it.
[34:10.960 --> 34:13.070]  And so I don't know if it's because you get...
[34:13.070 --> 34:13.900]  It's not laziness.
[34:14.040 --> 34:17.090]  It's just like if I do something once, I want to be able to do it in multiple places.
[34:17.610 --> 34:22.730]  Speaking of, if you get a digital camera, one of the things to look into is a wireless card for it.
[34:22.730 --> 34:28.290]  So when we take a photo in our studio of a product for documentation, it uploads to Flickr.
[34:28.500 --> 34:31.040]  It tweets to all of our Twitter followers.
[34:31.230 --> 34:33.210]  It goes onto our blog now.
[34:33.340 --> 34:35.320]  And it goes into our documentation system.
[34:35.540 --> 34:39.110]  So that's one click, one photo, and it's out.
[34:39.320 --> 34:42.480]  And that's kind of a fun thing.
[34:42.630 --> 34:44.190]  We get customer feedback immediately.
[34:45.110 --> 34:46.460]  We're kind of over...
[34:46.460 --> 34:48.730]  We don't keep stuff in secret anymore.
[34:48.840 --> 34:50.400]  If we're working on something, we put photos out there.
[34:50.520 --> 34:51.230]  That builds demand.
[34:51.520 --> 34:52.050]  People like it.
[34:52.050 --> 34:53.130]  And it's been working out.
[34:55.470 --> 35:00.790]  The iFi manager is something that you can configure to go just about anywhere, including your own site.
[35:00.880 --> 35:01.820]  It doesn't have to be Flickr or whatever.
[35:02.470 --> 35:04.670]  And it goes to our photo stream, like I said.
[35:04.750 --> 35:09.070]  And we also have a Flickr photo group that customers put their stuff in.
[35:09.880 --> 35:11.320]  And so they'll build something.
[35:11.480 --> 35:14.110]  And then they'll put it in the Flickr photo pool to show other people.
[35:14.320 --> 35:16.270]  And then kind of making begets making.
[35:17.110 --> 35:19.070]  And already we have a few thousand people.
[35:19.070 --> 35:21.250]  They're putting all their projects in with the kits we have.
[35:21.420 --> 35:22.610]  And they're sharing that with all their friends.
[35:22.820 --> 35:26.150]  And this is kind of like good information is advertising for us.
[35:27.650 --> 35:30.250]  And every time we do something, we try to make sure it goes everywhere.
[35:30.540 --> 35:33.130]  So we don't really like Facebook or Twitter that much.
[35:33.210 --> 35:34.730]  But they are kind of useful for some folks.
[35:34.730 --> 35:40.040]  And so we make sure that when we put a blog post online, it goes to our Facebook group page.
[35:40.040 --> 35:40.820]  It goes to Twitter.
[35:40.940 --> 35:42.000]  It goes to all these different places.
[35:42.190 --> 35:43.190]  But we only do it once.
[35:43.250 --> 35:44.400]  We don't actually spend our time on this.
[35:44.500 --> 35:48.980]  There's tons of free web services that people got venture capital for that will eventually die.
[35:49.210 --> 35:50.820]  That we should totally take advantage of.
[35:51.500 --> 35:53.590]  Uploading videos is subsidized by all these companies.
[35:53.710 --> 35:54.650]  They just want your content.
[35:54.960 --> 35:56.360]  None of the content is great.
[35:56.590 --> 35:59.290]  But they can host your awesome HD product videos.
[35:59.460 --> 36:01.400]  Because they're just dying for good stuff.
[36:02.750 --> 36:03.550]  So that's us on Twitter.
[36:03.550 --> 36:04.360]  Can you watch the video now?
[36:04.860 --> 36:05.210]  Yeah.
[36:06.000 --> 36:08.190]  And speaking of, we'll go back one.
[36:09.050 --> 36:11.020]  Oh, no, we'll save the video just for a couple more slides.
[36:11.270 --> 36:11.380]  Okay.
[36:13.710 --> 36:16.250]  We also had a product that went on Twitter.
[36:16.320 --> 36:20.960]  So we had this kilowatt device that keeps track of how much power usage you have in your home.
[36:21.040 --> 36:24.290]  And we decided to turn it into a tweeting power meter.
[36:24.520 --> 36:27.590]  And so we entered in design competition.
[36:27.590 --> 36:29.480]  We won and we said, whoa, this could be a pretty cool kit.
[36:29.480 --> 36:39.270]  So every time, usually every 24 hours or so, our Twitter followers of this Tweet-A-Watt know how much power we've used.
[36:39.440 --> 36:46.190]  And people who want to do power grid analysis, Google announced a product that they're not really doing much with called Google Power Meter.
[36:46.320 --> 36:47.820]  We use a Google App Engine, which is kind of neat.
[36:48.980 --> 36:53.550]  But we turned a product into, or an idea into a product.
[36:53.550 --> 36:56.550]  And so now you can see how much power we use.
[36:57.150 --> 36:57.790]  And people follow it.
[36:57.860 --> 36:59.940]  They just want to know how much power the Adafruit Studio uses.
[37:00.050 --> 37:03.550]  And they're like, oh, you know, I'd like to buy one of those and hook up my apartment.
[37:04.550 --> 37:05.610]  And then we have our videos.
[37:06.770 --> 37:08.150]  We got a new pick-and-place machine.
[37:08.480 --> 37:10.920]  A really cool machine that places little tiny microscopic parts.
[37:11.150 --> 37:14.880]  And that's around the same time that we decided to do a video show called Ask an Engineer.
[37:16.070 --> 37:17.340]  We do a weekly video show.
[37:17.550 --> 37:18.380]  We're going to do it tonight.
[37:19.020 --> 37:21.000]  We don't know if we're going to do it here at our studio.
[37:21.340 --> 37:24.400]  And it's an hour of asking engineering questions to more.
[37:24.630 --> 37:27.880]  Because asking engineering questions in person is pretty hard.
[37:27.900 --> 37:30.650]  But people can spend a little bit of time, ask very specific questions.
[37:30.690 --> 37:32.690]  Then we can use a whiteboard and show stuff.
[37:32.820 --> 37:33.920]  And it's been pretty successful.
[37:33.920 --> 37:36.670]  So every week we have up to a thousand people who ask questions.
[37:37.310 --> 37:39.520]  And we have someone who records it in California.
[37:39.520 --> 37:40.480]  They upload it for us.
[37:40.520 --> 37:42.500]  Kind of like what's going on with the videos here at HOPE.
[37:42.860 --> 37:44.730]  That's really useful if you were to try to do that yourself.
[37:44.730 --> 37:45.520]  It's actually pretty hard.
[37:45.630 --> 37:48.040]  And it takes a lot of time to move videos around online.
[37:48.210 --> 37:50.980]  So we started doing that in addition to all the other videos we do.
[37:51.090 --> 37:54.570]  And as far as the medium goes, it used to be like having lots of photos helpful.
[37:54.690 --> 37:56.500]  Now we actually think videos are helpful.
[37:56.690 --> 38:00.420]  And like I said, you don't necessarily need to do videos about your product.
[38:00.900 --> 38:02.650]  One of our more popular videos right now.
[38:02.750 --> 38:04.610]  And we're going to just take a quick video break so you can see it.
[38:04.840 --> 38:06.420]  Is a project we did.
[38:06.670 --> 38:08.050]  And we put this video up.
[38:08.150 --> 38:09.900]  And you can't buy anything that you see here.
[38:10.110 --> 38:12.230]  But it was one of our biggest days in sales.
[38:12.460 --> 38:14.090]  So I'll hop over to this video real quick.
[38:18.150 --> 38:21.230]  And I'm going to share with you some information about my latest project.
[38:21.480 --> 38:24.590]  But before I get into the technical details, I'd like you to watch this video.
[38:24.880 --> 38:26.860]  It's from a conference I attended two years ago.
[38:28.630 --> 38:31.690]  And I'm from Washington and I'm here to help.
[38:32.250 --> 38:39.710]  You probably saw on YouTube, there's a video going around and it says, Don't tase me, bro.
[38:42.190 --> 38:49.360]  Well, non-lethal weapons are really pretty critically important.
[38:50.170 --> 38:53.860]  And so what I have with me is a Dazzler.
[38:54.090 --> 38:56.820]  So the Dazzler is a seasickness machine.
[38:57.540 --> 39:01.840]  And what it does, it uses LEDs and it's a random generator.
[39:02.540 --> 39:04.980]  And it affects your equilibrium.
[39:05.380 --> 39:07.050]  I'm not going to point it at you.
[39:07.150 --> 39:11.170]  I was with a group of GE executives yesterday and I held it up like this.
[39:11.170 --> 39:13.690]  And just the reflection made them nauseous.
[39:13.860 --> 39:20.840]  We're trying to change from don't tase me, bro, to Dazz me, bro.
[39:25.290 --> 39:26.270]  And that's it.
[39:28.770 --> 39:30.530]  Let me know when you're feeling bad.
[39:31.150 --> 39:31.790]  Thank you.
[39:31.890 --> 39:33.130]  Anyway, thank you so much.
[39:33.550 --> 39:35.870]  So we decided to look online to find out more information.
[39:35.870 --> 39:37.850]  And we ended up finding some news stories.
[39:38.130 --> 39:44.070]  Sam, tonight Homeland Security has spent close to a million dollars on a flashlight that can stop you in your tracks.
[39:44.430 --> 39:47.470]  Even law enforcement says it is going to be controversial.
[39:47.870 --> 39:50.710]  We wanted to see just how effective the light is.
[39:51.070 --> 39:52.210]  Okay, that's a lot brighter.
[39:52.210 --> 39:56.750]  Those blotches in my vision stayed with me for about a half hour after the test.
[39:56.890 --> 39:59.450]  And then a strong headache kicked in.
[40:00.130 --> 40:01.530]  It's still a little blinding.
[40:02.990 --> 40:08.630]  Like most government projects, the Dazzler was actually invented and developed by an outside consulting firm.
[40:08.830 --> 40:15.910]  So we looked up some information about this firm, found the patent, and looked up exactly what it is that they did.
[40:16.350 --> 40:19.890]  The portable flashlight flashes green LEDs at about 10 hertz.
[40:19.890 --> 40:26.710]  This causes flash blindness, startling, disorientation, vertigo, and occasional vomiting.
[40:27.710 --> 40:30.110]  We thought we could probably do that for under a million dollars.
[40:30.210 --> 40:36.190]  So we put together this project for about 250 bucks, and are publishing all the information so that you can build one of these at home.
[40:36.570 --> 40:38.510]  Here is the project enclosure.
[40:38.870 --> 40:42.070]  So I reused a flashlight that I got from Sears.
[40:42.890 --> 40:46.330]  So this is the head, which holds the LEDs and electronics inside.
[40:46.330 --> 40:49.590]  This push button is how we activate it.
[40:49.730 --> 40:51.230]  It's not turned on right now.
[40:51.790 --> 40:54.650]  And here is a lead acid battery that provides power.
[40:55.270 --> 40:57.330]  Up here we have 36 LEDs.
[40:57.630 --> 41:00.630]  Each one has a lens that focuses the optics.
[41:01.350 --> 41:09.490]  So I'm going to remove just the lens, and you can see that there's a basic heat sink with a fan on the back to help with a little heat sinking.
[41:10.390 --> 41:12.950]  Here we have the circuit board.
[41:13.130 --> 41:17.270]  We have six driver FETs, two for each color, red, green, and blue.
[41:17.570 --> 41:28.550]  We have an Arduino clone here, which I use to basically do the pulse width modulation, the randomization, and mode selection.
[41:29.730 --> 41:32.930]  And there's a wire that travels down the body to the battery.
[41:34.410 --> 41:37.990]  Then behind here, we can remove this plate.
[41:38.410 --> 41:41.470]  There's a 9-volt battery that powers just the Arduino.
[41:41.470 --> 41:46.250]  It's a separate power supply to avoid noise that comes from the pulse width modulation.
[41:46.950 --> 41:50.170]  A reprogramming header for updating the firmware.
[41:50.430 --> 41:53.710]  And a mode button, which lets me change what kind of display it is.
[41:54.610 --> 41:55.890]  Want to make one yourself?
[41:56.250 --> 42:04.270]  Well, we've got the schematics, source code, and circuit board layouts all available online at ladyada.net slash make slash bedazzler.
[42:05.050 --> 42:07.350]  You may be wondering, does it really work?
[42:07.990 --> 42:09.670]  Bedazzler human subject test.
[42:09.970 --> 42:14.090]  Ready in three, two, one.
[42:32.210 --> 42:35.190]  My eyes, the goggles, they do nothing.
[42:36.150 --> 42:37.790]  Well, turns out it doesn't work that well.
[42:38.010 --> 42:39.430]  But it is great for raves.
[42:46.080 --> 42:46.440]  Okay.
[42:46.800 --> 42:48.300]  So that day, a lot of people bought Arduinos.
[42:50.100 --> 42:56.720]  But we actually sold nothing, none of that stuff that we have, other than like the Arduino chip itself, is for sale at our store.
[42:57.020 --> 43:01.320]  This was just a project that we wanted to do because we really hate the Department of Homeland Security, but...
[43:01.320 --> 43:02.640]  Well, actually, no, it was just that guy.
[43:02.780 --> 43:03.580]  It was actually just that guy.
[43:03.600 --> 43:04.480]  He was such an asshole.
[43:04.500 --> 43:05.140]  He was so creepy.
[43:05.580 --> 43:07.020]  But the video went everywhere.
[43:07.500 --> 43:10.900]  People went to lady.net, found the instructions, were like, this is really cool.
[43:11.100 --> 43:15.400]  And then, you know, they started looking around the site, and then they, you know, they were like, TV, going, well, I want one of those.
[43:15.720 --> 43:21.100]  And then before you know it, you know, we had a record sales day, even though there was nothing in that video for us to sell.
[43:21.680 --> 43:21.960]  Yeah.
[43:22.480 --> 43:22.760]  Okay.
[43:23.160 --> 43:23.740]  Let's wrap up.
[43:24.000 --> 43:24.260]  Yeah.
[43:24.380 --> 43:26.160]  We have just a few more slides, then we're going to take some questions.
[43:26.380 --> 43:27.460]  So we do this live show.
[43:27.600 --> 43:28.220]  We do those videos.
[43:28.760 --> 43:30.440]  We kind of, we do track everything you saw.
[43:30.600 --> 43:32.120]  You know, we try to measure this stuff.
[43:34.560 --> 43:36.740]  Our wiki has a lot of this information.
[43:37.320 --> 43:44.780]  One of the things that we did is when we buy weird new equipment that has a bunch of people who don't like sharing information, we put all the information up online.
[43:44.920 --> 43:46.380]  So we bought this pick-and-place machine.
[43:46.380 --> 43:49.420]  It's this $30,000 machine that makes a little, puts little tiny parts.
[43:49.660 --> 43:53.240]  We could make an iPhone in our apartment now if we really wanted to.
[43:53.660 --> 43:55.840]  But none, nobody used to share this information.
[43:55.840 --> 43:59.640]  So now in our forums and our wiki, we have the best information about this.
[43:59.640 --> 44:03.720]  Now everyone goes to our forums first, because they search online, because Google loves good information.
[44:04.000 --> 44:08.480]  And they come to our forums and they're like, I'm thinking about buying this machine, and I want to know what you guys think.
[44:08.520 --> 44:13.960]  So all these old-timers who have these machines are kind of coming out of their shell, literally, and putting up information.
[44:13.960 --> 44:16.240]  They're like, well, just watch out for this and watch out for this part.
[44:16.280 --> 44:17.700]  So we were able to do that.
[44:18.040 --> 44:25.100]  We have a laser cutter that we got a few years ago, and we put up all the information about how to use a laser cutter, and then people started businesses recently.
[44:25.320 --> 44:37.920]  A company sold for $10 million, and all they did was follow our wiki on what laser to buy, the templates for laser etching, gadgets, MacBooks and iPhones and all that, and they sold it to another company, which is kind of neat.
[44:38.840 --> 44:43.880]  Our other kind of basic tools that we use, a lot of it you're probably familiar with.
[44:43.980 --> 44:50.640]  So we use Gmail for a lot of stuff, because we have multiple people answering some customer support issues that are order-related.
[44:50.640 --> 44:53.040]  So more than one person can do it.
[44:53.740 --> 44:55.260]  We use the Google Merchant Center.
[44:55.260 --> 45:04.000]  You just need to make sure, and this is something supported in Zen Cart, that your products are in an XML file, and you can upload it, and people find it easier through Google.
[45:04.580 --> 45:10.360]  We use Google Voice because it transcribes voicemail, and that's a lot better than listening to voicemail.
[45:10.420 --> 45:11.600]  You can just look at the words real quick.
[45:12.880 --> 45:17.760]  For shipping, we use the United States Postal Service for half-hour orders, and the other half is UPS.
[45:18.080 --> 45:22.480]  We use FedEx, but UPS has a better API, so we're able to do things quicker and easier.
[45:22.480 --> 45:29.180]  We use Indesha for our postage that prints out automatically, and it weighs it on our scale that we got off eBay.
[45:30.200 --> 45:36.960]  And for Postal, we have a daily pickup that you can set up in a web form, and for UPS, we have a daily pickup, and that saves a lot of time.
[45:37.060 --> 45:39.280]  If you do international sales, you'll be stuck at the post office.
[45:39.400 --> 45:40.500]  Try not to do that.
[45:41.620 --> 45:42.460]  This is what we use.
[45:42.580 --> 45:47.060]  We have a shuttle computer, a scale, a barcode reader, and a label maker, and this is all, of course, on our site.
[45:47.060 --> 45:52.820]  And those things are all commodity off-the-shelf stuff, and it costs, like, maybe $1,000 at the most.
[45:53.220 --> 45:58.840]  We did a talk somewhere, and Pitney Bowes, who makes those big mail machines, kind of freaked out, and they asked if they come to our place.
[45:59.000 --> 46:01.360]  And it was just, like, no smiles all around.
[46:01.520 --> 46:06.100]  Like, our little $1,000 system blows the $100,000, like, giant mail things.
[46:06.240 --> 46:08.720]  And they're like, shit, you know, what are we going to do?
[46:09.580 --> 46:11.080]  This is the future, you know?
[46:11.240 --> 46:13.960]  And we're like, yeah, we put it all online, and anyone can build it just like us.
[46:13.960 --> 46:15.660]  And they're like, uh...
[46:15.660 --> 46:26.520]  And it's basically all, again, it's commodity hardware, the scale talks, serial, the USB barcode reader spits out HID that Python can very easily parse.
[46:27.140 --> 46:31.040]  The printer, you know, there's some Python libraries out there as well.
[46:31.280 --> 46:39.900]  And then, you know, you scan the invoice, it weighs it, you know, talks to the UPS or USPS API and prints out the label.
[46:39.940 --> 46:44.080]  So basically, you can ship in, like, five seconds, you know, the exact amount necessary.
[46:44.680 --> 46:48.400]  So usually, if you go to Pitney Bowes, like, they don't actually, they just say, like, call for a quote.
[46:48.560 --> 46:54.780]  But it's, like, $10,000 to $20,000 per station worth for us to duplicate this station.
[46:54.780 --> 47:00.100]  If we need, like, two shipping stations for the holidays, it's, like, another $500 of eBay stuff.
[47:00.380 --> 47:03.940]  And during the holidays, we have a live web camera where people can see us ship orders.
[47:03.980 --> 47:05.200]  And I didn't think it was going to be popular.
[47:05.420 --> 47:08.300]  No, turns out there's people who just want to watch us ship packages.
[47:10.080 --> 47:12.840]  And they'll place an order, and they'll say, hey, can you ship my package?
[47:12.940 --> 47:13.460]  And I'm like, yes, I will.
[47:14.800 --> 47:16.200]  And so this is what it looks like every day.
[47:16.240 --> 47:17.980]  This is just our little cart.
[47:18.000 --> 47:20.360]  And we fill this up until it gets about this tall.
[47:20.460 --> 47:22.840]  And then the postal or the UPS person shows up.
[47:24.160 --> 47:25.760]  And that's how we run our kit business.
[47:25.920 --> 47:30.220]  And we're going to spend just one more minute on telling you just some quick bullet points.
[47:30.260 --> 47:31.040]  Again, this is all available.
[47:31.260 --> 47:35.520]  And then if you want to start lining up for questions while we read this, we still have 10 minutes for questions.
[47:36.020 --> 47:41.480]  These are the 15 things you need to do if you want to start an open source hardware business after you leave this session.
[47:41.780 --> 47:42.740]  Want to do them really quick?
[47:42.900 --> 47:42.980]  Okay.
[47:43.040 --> 47:43.600]  This is very...
[47:43.600 --> 47:45.940]  Usually this is itself its own 30-minute presentation.
[47:46.500 --> 47:49.880]  So the first step is you just need a skill or an interest or something that you're really good at.
[47:50.440 --> 47:53.000]  If you're not sure what it is, ask your friends, and they'll probably tell you.
[47:53.180 --> 47:56.580]  And it probably isn't the thing you wish you were really good at, but it's the thing you're really good at anyways.
[47:57.920 --> 47:58.960]  It just seems to be true.
[47:59.340 --> 48:01.440]  And then think of a good name for your company.
[48:02.100 --> 48:03.240]  Make sure it's easy to spell.
[48:03.240 --> 48:07.840]  I've noticed a lot of people like to throw a lot of A's and E's in there and it's very hard to spell something like that.
[48:08.060 --> 48:11.300]  So it's something you can say over the phone and people will remember.
[48:11.540 --> 48:12.540]  It just comes in handy.
[48:13.060 --> 48:23.420]  Once you have thought of a name and you've done like the most basic trademark search and just like, you know, checking with your city or state, they have a database you can look to see if there's any registered companies with that name.
[48:24.040 --> 48:27.840]  Then register their domain name and of course get, you know, all the .NETs and any variation of spelling.
[48:28.020 --> 48:29.360]  So it's $6 a year.
[48:29.460 --> 48:30.360]  You might as well just get them all.
[48:30.820 --> 48:33.140]  Then file a DBA with your city or state.
[48:33.140 --> 48:34.900]  This costs you about $30 to $50.
[48:35.560 --> 48:36.700]  It takes a couple hours.
[48:36.860 --> 48:37.300]  It's very simple.
[48:38.060 --> 48:39.320]  And then that's your business name.
[48:39.660 --> 48:39.740]  All right.
[48:39.840 --> 48:43.100]  So now your Adafruit Industries and not just, you know, Lamar or Phil.
[48:43.660 --> 48:44.700]  Next digital camera.
[48:44.940 --> 48:45.900]  Don't use a camera phone.
[48:45.960 --> 48:47.060]  Getting actually pretty good camera.
[48:47.140 --> 48:48.780]  It doesn't have to be like a DSLR.
[48:49.220 --> 48:51.520]  I used like a Canon snap and shoot.
[48:51.660 --> 48:53.920]  That was $200, you know, five years ago.
[48:54.020 --> 48:55.380]  And I used that for many, many years.
[48:55.520 --> 48:56.160]  And it's fine.
[48:56.260 --> 48:58.520]  A tripod will help a lot in getting some good lights.
[48:59.480 --> 49:07.540]  There's thousands of tutorials on how to do like $50 softbox light setups on Instructables or on like Lifehacker.
[49:08.400 --> 49:08.700]  Okay.
[49:08.800 --> 49:10.700]  So now you have to have a couple projects that you're going to make.
[49:10.800 --> 49:13.960]  And it's good to have a little bit of variety because you don't know what people are going to end up wanting.
[49:14.120 --> 49:15.640]  So I say like two to four is a good idea.
[49:16.340 --> 49:21.200]  And then take all these photos and then find one photo that's like a really iconic photo.
[49:22.000 --> 49:25.020]  You know, something that sort of explains everything that it does.
[49:25.320 --> 49:27.280]  And, you know, don't take a photo of like the parts.
[49:27.620 --> 49:29.160]  Take a photo of it doing the thing it does.
[49:29.360 --> 49:31.660]  Like for example, Mitch here who has TV-B-Gone.
[49:31.820 --> 49:35.080]  You know, if you're going to have a photo of a TV-B-Gone, it should be someone turning off a TV.
[49:35.480 --> 49:35.760]  Right?
[49:35.900 --> 49:40.340]  I mean, you might not be able to see the TV-B-Gone as their hand, but the action of what they're doing, which is important.
[49:41.060 --> 49:42.500]  Now you put all your documentation online.
[49:42.680 --> 49:48.640]  If it's open source hardware, you can, you know, publish some schematics and CAD files and, you know, all these photos and everything.
[49:48.640 --> 49:50.300]  And now you have to figure out your pricing.
[49:50.920 --> 49:55.680]  And this is something that slips people up because they just say, well, I'll just charge a little bit more than what it costs me.
[49:56.120 --> 50:00.680]  But that's actually, you're going to end up ruined because it's never as little as you think it is.
[50:00.760 --> 50:05.340]  There's all these other little things like taxes and fees and shipping costs.
[50:05.520 --> 50:08.720]  So, you know, some people say, well, I'll just double the parts cost.
[50:08.860 --> 50:14.280]  And even that's not enough because if you do that, you're okay, but you'll never be able to expand to having resellers.
[50:14.280 --> 50:20.100]  And unless you're going to, you know, ship internationally for the rest of your life, you won't have distributors.
[50:20.260 --> 50:23.200]  So be sure to add two margins of 40%.
[50:23.200 --> 50:25.300]  So that's 60% markup.
[50:26.260 --> 50:27.200]  Get some inventory.
[50:27.520 --> 50:30.260]  Put some PayPal, buy it now buttons on your website.
[50:31.000 --> 50:33.780]  And then, you know, start emailing people that you think might be interested.
[50:33.920 --> 50:38.700]  Like, don't be spammy, but just, you know, blogs or forums that are interested in this sort of stuff.
[50:38.800 --> 50:39.720]  Just say, hey, this is really cool.
[50:39.780 --> 50:40.220]  Check this out.
[50:40.220 --> 50:41.720]  Let me know if you're interested in purchasing it.
[50:42.820 --> 50:43.900]  You know, make a website.
[50:44.420 --> 50:46.800]  You know, you guys know how to do that or WordPress or whatever.
[50:47.640 --> 50:51.040]  Of course, have a way to contact you and maybe even a photo of who you are.
[50:51.100 --> 50:52.500]  So it's not like some creepy website.
[50:53.780 --> 50:59.840]  And then just watch your web stats and see what people say on these blogs or these forums and how people respond and email you.
[51:00.000 --> 51:02.400]  And they'll find out what it is that they want.
[51:02.480 --> 51:07.900]  They'll email you repetitively saying, sell me this thing, sell me this thing, sell me this thing, and then that's your product.
[51:07.900 --> 51:08.800]  So you can start with that.
[51:09.280 --> 51:12.780]  And then you basically just repeat it and try to come out with, like, two or three things a year.
[51:12.980 --> 51:15.800]  And that'll keep interest high so you don't end up stagnating.
[51:15.940 --> 51:18.240]  Yeah, and you'll know when you have success because it feels just like panic.
[51:19.520 --> 51:20.160]  Same emotion.
[51:20.600 --> 51:22.000]  Okay, so we're going to take some questions.
[51:22.200 --> 51:23.360]  We'll go through them as fast as we can.
[51:26.600 --> 51:31.120]  First thing, I'm going to say, Limor, your documentation is what I consider a high watermark.
[51:31.160 --> 51:35.860]  And I've actually held it up a number of times for people saying this is what really good documentation should be.
[51:35.860 --> 51:36.480]  Yay!
[51:36.660 --> 51:37.240]  So thank you.
[51:41.060 --> 51:42.800]  Other question is, like, I'm from Canada.
[51:43.100 --> 51:49.520]  And any time we order anything from the States, you know, SparkFun, you guys, whatever, shipping is always such a pain in the ass.
[51:50.400 --> 51:53.840]  I know you ship UPS and, you know, they'll be standing at your front door with your package.
[51:53.980 --> 51:56.460]  It's like, yeah, I want 30 bucks or else I'm not giving you your package.
[51:56.580 --> 51:59.540]  Yeah, UPS and FedEx, they don't even really warn you about that.
[51:59.540 --> 52:04.160]  Although now they have a service where you can pay that up front, but that's why we don't suggest UPS.
[52:04.340 --> 52:10.220]  It's kind of a nightmare because UPS will get there in one day and postal will take two weeks, but postal doesn't rip you off.
[52:10.660 --> 52:14.380]  Yeah, but is there a reason that you guys don't offer FedEx?
[52:14.500 --> 52:17.740]  Because typically with FedEx, everything is in the end cost.
[52:17.960 --> 52:19.400]  You're not standing there in a bathrobe.
[52:19.720 --> 52:20.480]  That's not true, actually.
[52:21.040 --> 52:25.500]  They actually do mail you a letter later, and if you don't pay it, I have to pay it.
[52:25.880 --> 52:28.560]  So that's why I don't offer FedEx because, like, I sent one package.
[52:28.640 --> 52:30.220]  You know, I only had to send two packages to Canada.
[52:30.760 --> 52:37.880]  They have recently, very recently, like the last few months changed this, but sending packages, someone didn't pay it, I got hit with a couple hundred dollar bill.
[52:38.780 --> 52:43.480]  And so, like, luckily that person was very nice and they did pay it, but there's always...
[52:45.560 --> 52:46.700]  Talk to FedEx and UPS.
[52:46.700 --> 52:50.420]  They want $30 from somebody, it's just not clear who.
[52:50.880 --> 52:51.280]  Ah, okay.
[52:51.360 --> 52:55.320]  You know what, that said, I'm going to take the snippet of video and send it to the Small Business Association in the U.S.
[52:55.420 --> 52:58.560]  Because they should know, like, they should see, like, you want to buy stuff, Canada.
[52:58.700 --> 52:59.980]  Like, I thought NAFTA solved this, but...
[52:59.980 --> 53:00.960]  Yeah, free trade my ass.
[53:01.260 --> 53:04.460]  But we do, you know, but that's why having distributors is really important.
[53:04.720 --> 53:11.340]  Because, you know, if you have a Canadian distributor, because it's very cheap to send tons of stuff and there's NAFTA agreements, there's no tariffs.
[53:13.120 --> 53:13.800]  Okay, well, thank you.
[53:13.920 --> 53:15.480]  All right, we're going to try to get through these as fast as we can.
[53:15.480 --> 53:18.440]  So there's a lot of intellectual property involved, obviously.
[53:18.760 --> 53:20.780]  How much legal support have you needed?
[53:22.000 --> 53:22.740]  So far, none.
[53:23.900 --> 53:27.700]  But we did have, we run into a problem with Vellmen.
[53:28.100 --> 53:31.560]  We had an image on our site that says we don't sell blinking Christmas trees.
[53:31.980 --> 53:33.480]  And they sell blinking Christmas trees.
[53:33.480 --> 53:37.540]  And they got one of these, like, mall lawyers to send us, like, a cease and desist, like, letter.
[53:37.540 --> 53:39.260]  So we had to contact the EFF.
[53:40.260 --> 53:41.460]  And then they went away.
[53:41.780 --> 53:45.080]  So, like, they got annoyed because I think we're doing well.
[53:45.200 --> 53:47.980]  But they were upset that we said that we don't sell something of theirs.
[53:48.380 --> 53:50.300]  Because we think blinking Christmas trees are kind of dumb.
[53:52.760 --> 54:00.640]  So, do you ever have situations where somebody makes something interesting, but they don't want to set up a store and then come to you and say, hey, can you sell this for us?
[54:00.780 --> 54:01.460]  And do you do that?
[54:01.600 --> 54:01.800]  Yeah.
[54:01.920 --> 54:02.580]  Yeah, all the time.
[54:02.780 --> 54:04.620]  Yeah, in fact, that seems to be our new business model.
[54:04.760 --> 54:07.960]  They're like, I saw your presentation about what it's like to run a store.
[54:08.240 --> 54:09.380]  I do not want to do that.
[54:11.540 --> 54:13.520]  Can I just hand you stuff and you send me a check?
[54:13.680 --> 54:14.280]  And I'm like, yes, we can.
[54:14.840 --> 54:16.020]  But we have a pretty high standard.
[54:16.080 --> 54:16.860]  It has to be open source.
[54:17.420 --> 54:19.440]  It has to be, you know, kind of a cool maker.
[54:20.260 --> 54:24.500]  One of the things we learned by talking with Mitch, who has a great talk, don't do business with people you don't like.
[54:24.660 --> 54:28.700]  Like, no matter how much money you think you're going to make, yeah, don't do it.
[54:29.960 --> 54:31.100]  You mentioned suppliers.
[54:31.140 --> 54:38.780]  And I was curious, in order to maximize margins and whatnot, do you have any tools to scrape your supplier websites or any APIs you guys use?
[54:39.160 --> 54:40.860]  No, I mean, I just do it by hand.
[54:41.020 --> 54:43.140]  I mean, when we do purchasing, sometimes I just check really quickly.
[54:43.300 --> 54:44.820]  But, you know, there's only three suppliers.
[54:44.920 --> 54:47.420]  You just check their price and then, you know, you do the purchase.
[54:47.840 --> 54:48.480]  Okay, thanks.
[54:48.480 --> 54:50.320]  But there's also, like, findchips.com.
[54:50.360 --> 54:52.580]  There's a bunch of people who, and Octopark.
[54:52.700 --> 54:54.400]  There's a bunch of people who kind of do that.
[54:54.500 --> 54:55.160]  They scrape for you.
[54:55.160 --> 54:56.340]  No, I do use findchips.
[54:56.440 --> 54:57.480]  I mean, they definitely help.
[54:57.580 --> 55:02.160]  But there's sometimes, it fluctuates depending on, like, so many different things.
[55:02.260 --> 55:03.020]  It's always good to check.
[55:03.280 --> 55:03.580]  Okay.
[55:03.600 --> 55:06.660]  So there's no good API or anything that you guys can integrate with?
[55:06.980 --> 55:07.760]  There's no API.
[55:07.760 --> 55:08.380]  Okay.
[55:08.540 --> 55:08.640]  Cool.
[55:08.720 --> 55:08.940]  Not yet.
[55:09.340 --> 55:09.740]  Okay.
[55:09.960 --> 55:12.120]  And I think we're finishing exactly on time.
[55:12.580 --> 55:13.500]  Thanks so much, everybody.
[55:13.720 --> 55:15.260]  We are, we have a vendor booth downstairs.
[55:15.440 --> 55:17.280]  So feel free to come by and buy some kits.
[55:22.930 --> 55:23.330]  Yay.
[55:23.550 --> 55:24.790]  We finished exactly on time.
[55:24.930 --> 55:25.090]  Yeah.
[55:25.270 --> 55:25.530]  Those are coming.
[55:25.530 --> 55:25.550]  Alright.
[55:25.810 --> 55:25.990]  Yeah.