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customer proof. We launched a Kickstarter campaign that July with a
goal of $50,000, but eventually got $90,000. It was a success!
At every step of the way, we made sure the project was open source.
I think the real reason we kept everything open was because one of my
whole points of making it into a kit was so my idea could “be out
there”—that is, so it could just exist in the world. The kit was geared
toward people who wanted to get their hands on something and experi-
ment with it or who were just starting and were curious. Keeping in-
formation closed and hidden can be really stupid, and it almost never
really works anyway. Making the hardware open source also meant that
we could borrow and use other ideas inside of the Watercolor bot. It's
like a pen plotter mixed with an Etch-a-Sketch made robotic, with a
paintbrush thrown in! It's not rocket science or brain surgery, but it's
still
my
idea: it's my very first “real” robot, and I'm proud.
Back in 2012, only two years after I started making my Super-Awe-
some Maker Show on YouTube, I was invited to talk at the Open Hard-
ware Summit. I got on stage and talked about something that is
really
hard to talk about or understand, especially if you're only 11 years old:
what open source hardware means to me. I hadn't made any open
source hardware yet, but with everything else I'd made, I tried to be
open source because that is what my dad and I learned from what
people were sharing online. Share what you can back to your commu-
nity and people will learn more, and maybe they'll want to share, too!
Copyright law? Patents? All of that seemed a little crazy when the an-
swer was right in front of us: sharing and openly building off the ideas
of others helps everyone learn and create things we could have never
dreamed up. And, of course, as long as your documentation has a home
on the internet, your creation can never truly die.
I'm 13 years old and only just getting started making hardware, but I
plan on releasing everything I do in the future as open and documented
as I can, and so should you. No matter how small a thing it is, it'll help
someone somewhere. What are you waiting for? Get out there and
make something … open source!
