in pursuit of simplicity

a few years ago (7 to be accurate), i had developed a piece of hardware, controlled by @arduino bootloader that would allow you to take control of you super awesome colored fighstick button

ound one

the first generation was branded Sparky Jr, and it was a beast of a learning for me; electronics, microcontrollers, machine language, assembler, compiler... ...needless to say, i learnt a lot! I even built a configurator in #Java, for fun! talk about rabbit hole.

Sparky Jr was well received by the #FGC (fighting game community) as well as other Arduino enthusiasts alike. it had brought the simplicity of input output driven by a great user experience

round two

the second generation of Sparky Jr was shortly after the first. i had moved into product owner / production manager with timelines and orders to fill. eventually i had collaborated with a few online arcade parts shops to distribute the product under open source licenses

and then i took a break, because support for the product became a full time job

during the course of the 'break' i decided to build a google chrome app to support the original Sparky Jr and it still exists today, supporting the legacy community that fell in love with the blinking leds

third parties and support

there where other third parties that picked up where i left off, and you can still see 'traces' of my original hardware design, and continued the development of arcade fightstick specific led companion products, but they reached the same pivot where escape velocity was impossible based on the support requirements.

support had to cover everything from hardware, firmware, software, bootloaders, wiring, coding, power source... ...and it goes one, and all the time the audience just wanted some cool colors and patterns to their leds

round three / four

i quietly designed, developed and coded the fourth generation of Sparky Jr hardware, and third generation of the interface based on a new microcontroller chipset, to compete with the third parties, but all it did was give me a headache

but herein was the silver lining, i got to present my creation at #FITC in 2014 and my presentation still lives on slideshare, although without the animations, it's just a vanilla slide show

fast forward to my 40th birthday.

this year (2016), i turned 40! and i had realized that i had been fortunate enough to be gainfully employed, in an industry sector i love, where hobby, became job, became career... ...for 21 years. that was more than half my life, doing what i love, for money. and then i got laid off.

as an active member of the FGC, OSH and OSS communities, and with much deserved rest and time on my hand, i started playing again, and reading the forums, and catching up on new hardware, but still i noticed that support for the third party hardware distributors was still a major headache. being one who does not sit idly by, i decided that i can contribute to the community by giving back

the moledcule bucket list

i knew that this time, my approach needed to be different. rather than trying to do everything (hardware, firmware, software, product, production...) the decision was made to focus on the experience, remove the barriers, and enable anyone (even non tech individuals) to: contribute, participate, author, enjoy

realistic timeline

the first thing i did was set myself a realistic timeline. 9 months! this timeline came from a result of an ongoing industry joke that "9 women can have 1 baby in 1 month". and since i am one, i will need 9 months to birth this baby

the first trimester

research, research, research. i looked at all the support issues again, or at least the ones that seemed to recur over and over. no code skills, no hardware skills, no interest in learning, listening or reading, you know. everyone wanted set and forget, plug and play. so that is what i focused on resolving.

the result was that this was going to be a behemoth of a project, but, hey, i had time, for now.

the second trimester

it got bigger. bigger than i thought. with no clue if this thing i am building will even get traction, but it was mine, and i owned it.

the project, like a baby in the second trimester started developing distinguishing bits

2 aws ec2 instances. one for the community and users, the other a dedicated compiler as a service (that right, a CaaS), i even opened it up for you to play with

the third trimester

the chrome app itself, the companion web site, and what would be an FGC community endeavour without a forum thread on SRK where all release in the late second trimester

this thing was ready to breathe on its own, and with significant testing, security, hardening, cleaning, trimming, pruning, moledcule came to life, and it was time to let it go, into the wide world of connected technology

v0.9.8

this is the current release of the app on the chrome store and here are it's magical results
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=79&v=fS_z9_u8IUc

results

with the successful release, and launch, i've learnt a lot more than i ever expected to. i learnt about amazon web service in depth, more efficient c++ code than one could ever need to, but i learnt much more about myself, i became happy

rewards

i look forward to the ongoing growth of the community, i look forward to being able to contribute to those communities, and ultimately, the reward, was letting the beast into public

thank you for reading, insert coin, I GOT NEXT!