Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “littleBits Hardware Development Kit”.
I’M here at makercon with aya badeer from littlebits, you just gave a talk and you talked about the uh, the hardware development kit. Can you tell us about a little bit about it sure? So the hardware development kit, um we just released yesterday, is basically um a set of components that makes it easier for you to prototype with little bits so that you can submit them to the bit lab. If you wanted um, which is our marketplace for user generated hardware, so um the hardware development kit basically comes with a few different things to make prototyping easier. The first one is the protobit, which is basically your connection to a breadboard. A second one is a perf bit, which is just a perf board or like a blank little bits. If you want um and also a dozen of the bit snap magnetic connectors um, that you could already sort of solder onto your different designs. And so you could get started really quickly.
Other people have also bought little bits and desoldered the magnetic connector it’s too expensive. So we don’t recommend that so that’s kind of the faster and easier way, the easier way to do it. So if i’m a maker – and i have an idea for a bit – i should start with the hardware development kit.
That’S the best way to start yeah, and then i can take it then, on to the bit lab, can you talk about what the bit lab is? All about and how maker can use it, so the bitlab is basically a marketplace for user-generated hardware. It’S we’re calling it the app store for hardware, so you can submit your bid and if you get a thousand votes, it goes into vetting by little bits and we vet for manufacturability for feasibility for costs and if it makes it through we’ll manufacture it and we’ll Give you 10 of the sales that come out of it not a bad deal. Can you show us what some people have already done with the hardware development kit sure so um? The first demo i have here is basically this: this module that was made by bear conductive.
So if you don’t know, bear conductive, they make uh well, you know them, but conductive inks um, and they make these wonderful installations for wearables and for spaces, and so they made this bare conductive bit called the touch sensor, which i’m going to snap into other little Bits here and snap a metallic surface on it, and now this becomes the sensor so now right away, i’ve turned any metallic surface into a sensor and you could also connect it to some conductive ink that they make as well. I could also make music out of just the any metallic surface, any conductive, ink, surface, etc. So the second demo um is basically a demo of the um of the bleep labs module.
They make basically a drum kit that they sell, and so we work together to make a module that works very well with the synth kit. It’S this gray, one right here. You have two of them, and so this is it in action.
Yeah me neither! I can’t help you there, so we can help you with electronics, but we can help you with the music. So i think that even for someone who has no plans to use the hardware development kit, they benefit as well, because there’s all these other ideas out there and all these other possibilities. Now you’ve got tons of people working on possible little bits, rather than just the people who work at little bits right. Yeah i mean essentially the exciting thing is that we’ve been for the past couple of years.
We’Ve uh we’ve had the dream bits page on the website and thousands and thousands of ideas have come in things that we never even thought of. We never imagined possible and really people have opened up our minds um, but you know you can come up with your own module, based on your own expertise, whether it’s in wearables, it’s sustainability. It’S in you know biological sensors, uh sort of things that we may or may not get into or know of and basically really serve your own community. So that’s what’s exciting is be able to sort of talk, have different communities talk to each other and really kind of play nice together. That’S great! Well! Thank you for uh coming by and showing us the the hardware development kit. It’S really exciting and we’ll have more videos from makercon coming on the youtube channel. .