What can ES do to support open source ebike software?

neptronix

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Hey all. My company is currently developing the ultimate dev shop setup... and we have a dev server with a ton of horsepower. We also have extra front-facing hosting capacity, tons of linux knowledge, and a deep interest in improving and learning how dev shops should be run.

I currently donate these resources to ES because it's practically free for me to do so.

I would like to offer any developer of a bike-related open source project that the forum benefits from, a slice of these resources also.

Let me know if you need any of the following:
1) A couple 5ghz cores to compile/build/unit test things on.
2) Public facing hosting for the project's webpage, as well as advisement and the tools needed to build a 'project website' quickly.
3) A dev server, if you need one.
4) A free ride on the project management tools we eventually develop.
5) Something not on this list that an IT company can provide at a low cost.

Let me know what you need! i really want to support open source projects on ES in any way i can.
 
Cool move :bigthumb: Maybe consider open source hardware too? Git works ok for it, there are probably better options but it's certainly adequate and could work well with a suitable frontend.
EDIT: Might be worth taking a look at what's happening with blockchain based code hosting and version control, it's still in its infancy but there's a good chance it could replace centalised repositories at some stage.
 
fechter said:
Like a github for ebike projects?

That would be cool, but i think a few big companies have that whole code-hosting part down pretty well. Programmers might prefer that over the ES roll-our-own, i don't know.
 
The only thing I can think of not stated is not really practical, and is almost certainly not the kind of thing you're asking for ideas about:

Some sort of programming service (as automated as possible) that creates basic code based on detailed specifications of an idea, for non-programmers that want to make ebike-things happen, which can then be reviewed and "fixed" by actual programmers.
 
Trello can work well for that, starting with an idea and take it through all the necessary stages to a completed project. It's surprising there aren't a wider range of alternatives to choose from, they certainly exist but tend to be high priced or overly complicated business offerings, Trello isn't nice under the hood but the principle is simple and wouldn't be that hard to replicate, a slimed down multi-stage marketplace for example, get it planned, get it designed, get it QA'd, get it built, get it tested, etc.

Again, crypto is worth keeping an eye on. Several crypto projects are using Trello for community software development and are in the process of building more up to date platforms of the same kind, integrated payments being the obvious step with decentralisation and cross platform functionality as key goals. It relates to all the NFT stuff, blockchain based interoperable objects rather than database entries on a server.
 
stan.distortion said:
Trello can work well for that, starting with an idea and take it through all the necessary stages to a completed project.
I must be looking at the wrong "trello"
https://trello.com/en-US
because all I see when I look at their description is a service that "manages teams", not something that makes code for you based on an idea of what you want it to do. Their "pricing plans" page doesn't list any of the things I would need something like that to do. :( (I didn't look at the actual prices, so I don't know how expensive it really is, even if it did apply to my need. Just guessing, I'd expect that its completely beyond my means and probably that of most of the FOSS projects out there, unless it is a project popular enough to get a lot of donations).

Again, crypto is worth keeping an eye on. Several crypto projects are using Trello for community software development and are in the process of building more up to date platforms of the same kind, integrated payments being the obvious step with decentralisation and cross platform functionality as key goals. It relates to all the NFT stuff, blockchain based interoperable objects rather than database entries on a server.
I admit that I don't know much about any of that stuff, because I don't have any interest in any of it, but I don't see how any of it applies to me (or the idea I proposed) or anything I would ever want to do.

Maybe I just missed the relevance? Or maybe you were replying to someone else in the thread? Sometimes I am obtuse because my brain simply doesn't work like normal people's.
 
amberwolf said:
Some sort of programming service (as automated as possible) that creates basic code based on detailed specifications of an idea, for non-programmers that want to make ebike-things happen, which can then be reviewed and "fixed" by actual programmers.

That exists, but it's more of a prototyping tool for eventually building something in code, which is going to take time. No-code means no-performance, lol.

The next best thing is probably python, which is unfortunately too slow ( performance wise ) to build serious things on, but makes it easy to build non-serious things. And if you accidentally build something serious in that slow language, you can write C code for performance sensitive-areas and cover your ass for using a high level language fairly well.

Even better is if you get started with some good frameworks and libraries in python. There's plenty of them, and Python is very oriented around beginner to novice programmers.

Learning to program is the most valuable skill one could gain in the coming years.
 
Sure, but there are people that either can't (for any number of reasons) or don't have time to learn the programming, to implement the ideas they have. :)

(my own problem is partly time, partly that I spend the time I do have on other things I want to do, etc.. I just have too many things I want to do and too many ideas for things to get them all done, and my brain often flits between them leaving some of them gathering dust for a (long) while).

I figured that AI capabilities ought to be getting good enough fast enough at this point that someone should be able to start creating this kind of autocreation tool, even if it isn't "smart" enough to optimize itself, or even necessarily know what it's doing / do the right thing all the time.

But like most of my ideas, these are things not practical or possible unless I were to do them myself (but like the rest of the ideas, I don't know how...and like many people have said--ideas are worthless; implementations can be priceless. I'm one of those many that are more able to generate worthless stuff than priceless.

FWIW, reasons someone "can't" might include inability to self-learn but no capacity to hire someone to teach and tutor them, or unwillingness/inability of anyone else to work close-to-hand with them and teach them, or even that they simply aren't capable of understanding enough of how things must work to learn and do the work, etc...but they may still have brilliant ideas on how the end-product must work, even if they have absolutely no idea how the insides would make that happen. :lol: I'm sure there's other reasons I can't think of myself; perhaps physical disabilities that prevent them from doing the necessary things? Don't know.

Those without time might not have time because they already have work, life, etc., that uses up all their time, but still have ideas worth pursuing, just be unable to do it themselves....
 
This is very generous, my thoughts are:

1) Regarding computing resources, e-vehicle stuff does not generally need a lot of computing power to run or compile. With Github, and a 2012 core i5 laptop, I think most of my conceivable needs for code/knowledge hosting are covered.

2) Hosting for webpages, builds etc and quickstart "how to do it without the headbanging" that's kept up to date would/could be awesome.

3) The most valuable thing I think that could be done on ES is to have better and more up to date indexing of projects. There have been an awful lot of great projects for codebases, hardware, knowledge... but they are really hard to find. The search tool gets you a massive list to trawl, you kind of need to know what you are looking for before you start. There is an absolute ton of dross and opinion and anti knowledge to avoid before you get the gems of knowledge from the likes of Lebowski. Even after 2 years on here, I still find build threads from people overflowing with useful info..

The stickied threads are all quite out of date; Kingfish' "building the best motor controller" for example is kind of ancient and out of date; probably great for its time. The understanding of motor control and interfaces has come a hell of a long way since that thread.

The index of projects is a locked thread by Spinningmagnets and Amberwolf are the only authors...
 
Thanks for chipping in, mxlemming.

Point 1 makes total sense. We're gonna bow out of that one.

Regarding 2 about the website hosing, we do have an ultra-low resource tech stackand also one of the world's easiest website editors attached to it. The dev practically doesn't even need any training to use it., it's a visual drag and drop editor with all the functionality he/she needs. it would be ideal for having say, a single page website from a template that can be filled out in an hour or two. That, we can offer.

3) I agree that this is a huge problem. We have a wiki coming, and the coming xenforo software has a million times better search. Getting some feedback in how the wiki is set up from open source project developers would be great though while we're building it.

I agree that the sticky threads need to be totally nuked and rethought. We could absolutely give someone a moderator role if they wanted to go ham on fixing that problem. But it's a pain to work in in phpbb, so i'd like that project to happen when we get xenforo.
 
neptronix said:
I agree that the sticky threads need to be totally nuked and rethought.
Don't nuke them; we need the lists of references, etc. If you nuke them it could take forever to find all that stuff again.
 
Of course you wouldn't get rid of the bad ones. But that stuff needs some serious weeding.
 
I'd recommend just leaving the existing threads/posts/lists exactly as they are, and if you need to prune them, just make new posts/threads that have the new edited lists or info in them. Once the new forum is setup and working then we can see what tools it has to do this with. Most likely a wiki entry would be better than a sticky thread for that kind of reference anyway. Then a pointer at the top of each forum, etc., to that section of the wiki. ?

Then if I or someone else needs info that's in the old ones to answer someone's questions (because we happen to know the answer is in the list but not how to find it otherwise, for instance), it will still be there for us.

And any references pointing someone to some info in one in an existing thread won't be broken and made useless for future readers.
 
amberwolf said:
stan.distortion said:
Trello can work well for that, starting with an idea and take it through all the necessary stages to a completed project.
I must be looking at the wrong "trello"
https://trello.com/en-US
because all I see when I look at their description is a service that "manages teams", not something that makes code for you based on an idea of what you want it to do. Their "pricing plans" page doesn't list any of the things I would need something like that to do. :( (I didn't look at the actual prices, so I don't know how expensive it really is, even if it did apply to my need. Just guessing, I'd expect that its completely beyond my means and probably that of most of the FOSS projects out there, unless it is a project popular enough to get a lot of donations).
No, that's all it's intended for, managing teams. It's useful for taking a concept and breaking it down into individual tasks and stages and that's what we're missing here imho, there's an absolute wealth of individual talent on this forum but combined talent is scarce.

You'd easily find someone who could plan out the necessary steps to building, say for example, an automatic electronic gearchange and someone to design the electronic hardware, someone to assemble PCB's, someone to write the code, design the enclosures... and so on but you'd have a hard time getting the whole thing done in one go and would probably end up having to pay big bucks.

It's surprising tbh because it's obvious there are loads of great business opportunities in the space, things like Cycle Analyst and Nuclear controllers have a great following and their order books full but people and organisations willing to do that, the whole quality package from start to finish, seem few and far between.

Again, crypto is worth keeping an eye on. Several crypto projects are using Trello for community software development and are in the process of building more up to date platforms of the same kind, integrated payments being the obvious step with decentralisation and cross platform functionality as key goals. It relates to all the NFT stuff, blockchain based interoperable objects rather than database entries on a server.
I admit that I don't know much about any of that stuff, because I don't have any interest in any of it, but I don't see how any of it applies to me (or the idea I proposed) or anything I would ever want to do.

Maybe I just missed the relevance? Or maybe you were replying to someone else in the thread? Sometimes I am obtuse because my brain simply doesn't work like normal people's.

It's not really relevant yet, likely will be in the not to distant future. The term "cryptocurrency" is going to be a serious hindrance because of the "currency" part of the name. "Tokenisation" would be more accurate and monetary tokens, "coins" with a simple numeric value representing quantity are probably the most basic kind of token possible, things have come on a long way since.

Take the example above, the various tasks to creating an item of hardware. Each of those can come down to a job offer, "Wanted: Circuit designer" and "For sale: Electronic geegaw" for example. Historically that's been done with central services, ebay has heaps of electronic geegaws for sale on its servers and the same things are often for sale on amazon, a different server, different account and if a vendor wants to also list on craigslist that's another service, another account... and so on.

With tokenisation that just happens once, that item gets listed and maybe goes through various improvements (translated manual, better pics and description etc) and is available to any page that wants to show it with just a few lines of HTML, someone here comes up with a geegaw to sell and it automagically gets listed on all the commerce sites and anywhere else that wants to include that kind of item. Ads can be a token, an object in programming terms and they can contain an almost limitless amount of information (at a price, data storage has costs but that's another story, would be easily below $0.01 for an ad with the pics etc. as links).

What if that electronic geegaw was a controller and you wanted a config for a particular motor? If the controllers app stores the config as a token then all configs are available to everyone using it, no searching around discussions and emailing vendors, just pick the most popular from the list and tweak if needed. Tokenisation is what "the cloud" dreamed of being, far more than just a distributed payment system.
(Sry for the rambling and mostly irrelevant post)
 
stan.distortion said:
It's useful for taking a concept and breaking it down into individual tasks and stages and that's what we're missing here imho, there's an absolute wealth of individual talent on this forum but combined talent is scarce.

That's the ultimate problem i'd like to solve here. I just don't know how to do it. There's tons of potential for that collaboration to produce awesome products and technology that isn't being tapped.
 
Incentivisation might be key, putting up a reward. Not sure how though, crowdfunding is a step in that direction but it's a clumsy and stumbling first step, a bewildering array of unconnected platforms with no real means of spreading awareness... As a forum the latter is less of a disadvantage, lots of like-minded people looking for similar things but collecting and managing funds is still an almighty great pain in the bum :/
 
I personally get that kind of help - i work in a 'business incubator' and have connections to hundreds of people looking to fund things and work with others. I've had to turn down multiple 6 figure offers to invest in my software company that came without me even asking. I can walk out into the commons and ask pretty much anyone what they think of a business idea or technology i'm developing. There's more help and resources available than time to take advantage of all them.

I don't know how many complexes like mine exist around the world or if an engineer-type person would even be willing to walk into one and deal with people. But all the resources needed for a young buck looking to come up in the world are out there, you just have to ask. Get yourself embedded in a pro-business, high achieving environment, and those resources may come without you even asking.

Even without that place.. every state in the USA has a SBDC ( small business development center ). A SBDC is staffed by retired business veterans who love to help, and are funded by the taxpayer. A SBDC offers free advice, business planning, business case vetting, help with funding etc, no strings attached. Surely something like this exists in other countries.


In ES, we don't really want to get our hands tied into business much though. Things get complicated ( and bad ) if the staff here put their hands in the money pot. So as an organization, we could, but shouldn't support commercial efforts other than cheering them on. But the open source stuff... we can totally help someone out on.
 
Sorry, I derailed the thread a bit there. Posting mostly as a ping, would love to see open source working more effectively.

A community I'm in has a similar problem, it's roots are purely open source but it's become sidetracked to the point where open source is finding it hard to fit in. Awareness seemed to help, the community is spread out across many platforms (Forum, Telegram, Discord, Reddit, Twitter, etc) but are largely unaware of each other and many have a preference for a particular platform and no interest in running others.

Joining them up seems to help, announcing completions of Trello tasks on Telegram got a lot of new people involved in those projects. That dropped off in a big way after a few weeks but doing the same with tweets or on reddit would probably have about the same effect. That communities forum is pretty much dead, coding discussion seems to prefer Discord and Github, I'd have expected at least a few to prefer the forum.

Spreading awareness of other discussion groups is lacking there too, some from rivalry but mostly from forgetfulness or not wanting to get spamy with notifications, tough to find a balance sometimes.
 
neptronix said:
Hey all. My company is currently developing the ultimate dev shop setup... and we have a dev server with a ton of horsepower. We also have extra front-facing hosting capacity, tons of linux knowledge, and a deep interest in improving and learning how dev shops should be run.

I currently donate these resources to ES because it's practically free for me to do so.

I would like to offer any developer of a bike-related open source project that the forum benefits from, a slice of these resources also.

Let me know if you need any of the following:
1) A couple 5ghz cores to compile/build/unit test things on.
2) Public facing hosting for the project's webpage, as well as advisement and the tools needed to build a 'project website' quickly.
3) A dev server, if you need one.
4) A free ride on the project management tools we eventually develop.
5) Something not on this list that an IT company can provide at a low cost.

Let me know what you need! i really want to support open source projects on ES in any way i can.
As you may remember I built an entire FOC controller from scratch, including software and sensorless full torque start from standstill

I have no clue what any of the words in the OP mean... or why I would need that ?
 
Lebowski said:
...
As you may remember I built an entire FOC controller from scratch, including software and sensorless full torque start from standstill

I have no clue what any of the words in the OP mean... or why I would need that ?

It would be worth crowdfunding a professionally published book/manual on that, there would be plenty of demand! Hard to see how the same kind of thing could be done on the internet, cover the costs of professionally documenting a project but there are certainly worthwhile examples.

Edit: Not saying anything was done unprofessionally ofc but open source projects come in every variety (untanglable mess of folders and files here)... we've not quite got magic computer pixies to write code for us yet but I hope there are magic documentation pixies too!
 
stan.distortion said:
but I hope there are magic documentation pixies too!
I've been one of those, on occasion. As long as I understand the material and have something basic to work from, from whoever created whatever is being documented, I can do a fair job that can then be reviewed by the creator and given basic notes on fixes I can revamp sections as needed.

My biggest problem is time; I have a lot of things to do that are "fun" that don't earn me anything, so I have had to learn to balance reward with which activity(ies) I focus on.
 
Lebowski said:
I have no clue what any of the words in the OP mean... or why I would need that ?

Hm.. you probably don't need them if you're not familiar with those terms.

Well, i tried!
 
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