Let's make it even bigger

[Soloam]

I've been on MySensors for some time now, and during this time I "evolved" from a guy that normally added a new outlet to my house, to someone that now understands a "bit" more of electronics and even developed and build my own IOT devices/nodes. This has been a hell of an experience, and I only have to say thank you to all the staff, developers, and community members that help not only this project grow but also all of us (intellectually and in this hobby).

I know that the main focus of this community is not to make a profit, but lets face it, every thing in this world needs a bit of juice ($$$) to make it flow. So I came up with an idea, why not add a way to sponsor this project? Something like Patreon or a membership? It would be totally optional, but the members would have access to for example give aways or something. And what would you guys do with a money? Easy free beer... ...

The money could be used to pay for hosting (damm this things can get expensive when a community grows... respect @hek) or to help guys like @tbowmo (sorry to all others just the first name that got to my mind when I was typing) to develop new prototypes and get them at low prices to all of us!

Basically this post is only to say thank you to all of you guys that helped this community get where it is, by developing the software or by developing the hardware (too many people to name in openhardware.io.

255;255;3;0;18 (this is nerd...)

[tbowmo]

@soloam

You always have the option of donating to the upkeep of the project, with the use of Paypal.

I don't feel that it's optimal to spread across too many platforms for donations.

[Soloam]

@tbowmo yeh I know that! The main purpose of this topic was to give out my thank you to all the community. I remembered the "subscription" (I didn't wanted to use this work because it sounds like obligation, and that is not what I intended... but I think that my English vocabulary is starting to fade out... ) because I had a active role one a community a long time ago and from my opinion it was always better to have a 10 users subscribing 1 dollar monthly, that 1 user donating 50 dollars randomly! Membership its always a way to bring people closer to the projects and helping out

[hek]

Thank you for the warming post @Soloam.

I've tried to keep the monthly costs to run the community as low as possible (~150 USD/month for hosting, domains and email services).

The paypal donations is a welcome income, but as you say it's very sporadic. The last 12 months , we received 18 donations with the total sum of $369. From what I've seen, many of them is from reoccurring donors.

The community wouldn't be able to cope with the costs solely on donations. But luckily the google ads gives ~2-300 USD/month. (even when ~50-70% of our techie user base have ad-blockers enabled, rendering us nothing).

So my suggestion is that everybody who enjoys this community makes sure to whitelist it in their ad-blocker.

And of course... I hope everyone wants to be added on the hall of-fame! (let me know if you want to use your forum handle instead of real name in the support page)
You can also choose "reoccurring payment" when doing a paypal donation if a $1-month-model suits you better.

[franz-unix]

@hek Hi hek, very interesting argument.

I have a similar "problem" (it is not properly a problem, but english is not my native language, so this is the best word that I know) with my d-diot project (see here).

How is possible to keep an open source project sustainable and self-sufficient from an economical point of view?

For my project a viable solution is to sell some boards to generate some income that can cover, at least, the hosting cost.

I have some other ideas that can be suitable also for MySensors and that can improve the experience of the others members of the community.

If you are interested we can start a discussion here.

[hek]

@franz-unix
What keeps you from having it open source and still sell assembled boards? I truly believe 90% of the audience would buy it pre-made from you, if the price in resonable. Ordering a pcb, all components and then soldering it is quite a barrier for "ordinary" people.

You will also be able to receive bug fixed/pull requests from other community members if you keep your project on github/openhardware.io.

Here's an example for the MySensors Micro: https://github.com/mysensors/SensebenderMicro/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed

[franz-unix]

I agree you have centered all the critical points:

• Ordering a pcb, all components and then soldering it is quite a barrier for "ordinary" people. Absolutely true! In fact my plan is to start a second Kickstarter campaign to sell some pre-assembled boards, if there are enough people interested and the feedback form the first campaign (not assembled pcb) is good. I have opened the d-diot website Friday, so the entire project is still a baby and I don't have a clear view of the next steps . In any case a final goal could be also a full finished product (case + board + Raspberry). For the ordinary user this will mean "plug in, take out your smartphone and play"

• What keeps you from having it open source and still sell assembled boards? In this moment only one "irrational fear" (please note the "" ).... loosing the possibility to keep the project sustainable and self-sufficient from an economical point of view (chinese clone, in other words). But I agree opening the hardware will improve and speed up the development and, at the end, the quality of the final product. The open source model works and this is a a fact (see Linux and Arduino). I think that a viable solution for me in this moment is to open at least the schematics; I'm evaluating this possibility from two days.

• 90% would buy a pre-made board from you. Yes I believe that too. Unfortunately the final price of a fully assembled board will be not so low, probably around 40-50€ (estimated), because today the assembly is not so cheap as the pcb manufacturing and the value of the components + radio modules is around 25€ (see here). So I prefer to keep also the DIY way open. Of course the price of a fully assembled board will drop with a massive production.

Sorry for the long post but I think that there are great possibilities around the open source home automation, which is a good thing also for privacy and security, especially now in the cloud era, but, in my opinion, the problem is that the various projects (and there are many!) are fragmented and not integrated in a simple and plug&play solution for the normal user. In fact d-diot is born from this consideration.

I have not talked about the other ideas / consideration to improve the experience of the others makers and that can generate some incomes to support the development, but for this post, I have already wasted enough bits with my bla bla bla, so I will proceed, if some other people are interested.