Vipul Gupta
Vipul is a software engineer at balena and a documentarian running his docs initiative called Mixster. He advocates strongly for open-source, cheesecakes and party parrots.
@vipulgupta2048
Pains, Processes & the Eventual Gains building hardtech projects in the open
I am Vipul!
@vipulgupta2048
We-pull
- Product Owner & Documentation Lead at balena
- Wearing multiple hats (Growth, hiring) when I consult
- Runs Mixster that "rights" the docs for startups
- Pronouns: He/him/his
@vipulgupta2048
This is a Raspberry Pi
@vipulgupta2048
It ain't much ...
@vipulgupta2048
Devices like these power...
CO2 sensors, farms, smart dustbins, cars, locks, your room, home devices...
@vipulgupta2048
and more like this...
Underwater drones, satellites, parking, and your talking wireless speakers
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
The challenge
With smart cities & even your toaster running applications.
The stakes have never been higher
While building software is hard.
@vipulgupta2048
Building hardtech projects
are painful
@vipulgupta2048
Hardtech project
- Hard as in difficult to build
- Hard also as in physical hardware.
- Involves hardware + software to create physical products
- Solves real-world problems
@vipulgupta2048
Challenges
- Projects have to be feature-complete at launch.
- Tough to get started as investments are required to get over MVP, safety, testing & regulatory hurdles.
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Customer conversion at the start is essential for survival.
- Each iteration can be slow, expensive & deadly.
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Requires full-stack teams to tackle technical complexity and R&D requirements.
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Scalability, IP protection & mass production.
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Supply chain issues & chip shortage
@vipulgupta2048
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If "software eats the world"
Hard tech gives the teeth
@vipulgupta2048
How to
Build for
Hardtech?
And, not burn down.
@vipulgupta2048
The journey of open-sourcing our hardtech project
A journey of 5 years, multiple maintainers and half million dollar in R&D spending
@vipulgupta2048
Balena has an OS called
BalenaOS
We support over 100+ embedded devices.
Testing Operating Systems
(Not ideal)
- Manually flashing OS on the device
- Running tests
- Reporting back results to Test DB
- Takes a week or more to test a release
@vipulgupta2048
The Tester
@vipulgupta2048
2016
- Proprietary hardware, test framework, and jig firmware
- Nonstandard connectors
- Custom test board designed by the Resin team
- Testing on the Raspberry Pi
@vipulgupta2048
DEVICE UNDER TEST
THE TESTER
called Autokit (prev. Testbot)
2020 (I joined Balena!)
Open Source Hardware
- Open Source Hardware involves:
- Hardware design: mechanical drawings, schematics,
- Bills of material, PCB layout data, HDL source code
- In addition to software that drives the hardware are all released under free/libre terms.
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
Current Stage: Open-Source Hardtech
In peak Covid, we build a hardware testing rig
The results?
Benefits of OSH
Tooling makes iterations easier
- 3D printers prices had dropped from $20,000 to $200.
- Circuit board print & design services exist to make and ship components overnight.
- Similar to the rise of APIs, AWS and “no-code” that unleashed new applications for software, similar revolutions are the backbone of the new hard tech world.
@vipulgupta2048
Onto building software
for the hardware
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
Reproducible Self-Healing Setup
- Recovery of the device is better than crash looping
- Proper crash reporting pays dividends
- If you have to reboot, then you are doing wrong
@vipulgupta2048
Building Fault-Tolerant
Applications
- Handle intermittent network issues gracefully.
- Prevent excessive bandwidth consumption.
- Don't be using your swap memory.
- Connect your peripherals on runtime, not bootime
@vipulgupta2048
But Vipul, how can I use this now at work?
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048
It's not going to be easy.
- No one wants to give away a competitive advantage.
- Not for free, anyway.
- Take steps to become open-source friendly in your team.
- Start a conversation about the benefits you can get from creating a community around your hardtech projects
- Do incremental changes show tangible value which will be the real changemaker.
@vipulgupta2048
Software may kick off opportunities,
but industrial revolutions come from innovation in the physical world.
@vipulgupta2048
And, that's about it!
Questions? Collaborate? Work with us? Reach out!
@vipulgupta2048
Reviews cheesecakes, solves GitHub issues & "rights" docs
Credits
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_hardware_projects
- https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/12/the-rapid-hard-tech-emergence/
- https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/hard-tech-startups
- https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/reproducible-research/open/open-hardware.html
- https://www.mhubchicago.com/blog/17-hardtech-terms-you-need-to-know-for-product-development
- https://medium.com/@OneInchHW/hard-tech-startups-and-the-challenges-they-face-67c08427b434
@vipulgupta2048
@vipulgupta2048 Building Open-Source Hardtech projects Pains, Processes & the Eventual Gains building hardtech projects in the open
[FOSS India 2024] Pains, Processes & the Eventual Gains of Building Open-Source Hardtech projects
By Vipul Gupta
[FOSS India 2024] Pains, Processes & the Eventual Gains of Building Open-Source Hardtech projects
A brief overview on building an open-source hard tech project from scratch.
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