[Noisebridge-discuss] [hackerspaces] New Member Vetting

[Jake]

I think that "pet" hardware should be encouraged more, in the sense that 
people should share their unique skill sets with everyone by setting up 
infrastructure that, at first, only they fully understand.  They may need 
to maintain it themselves for a while, but hopefully others will catch on 
and they will also improve the design to be more "foolproof".

My favorite example of this is the Enlarge-O-Scope, which was built from a 
photographic enlarger, an old analog camera, and a monitor with 
composite-video input.  It has not been broken yet (thankfully) and I 
think a lot of people use it.  Carlos is in the process of making an even 
better one with much higher resolution and the ability to snap pictures or 
video through the network.  (Imagine being able to teach a surface-mount 
soldering class where dozens of people can watch the soldering on their 
own computer screen, in real time.)

Another example would me MC Hawking the robot wheelchair, which is 
theoretically available for anyone to use/work with, but is pretty complex 
and requires a bit of dedication to do anything useful with.  Also it has 
a decent rate of entropy and can be very destructive.  But a few people, 
mostly Hao, have really accomplished a lot with it.

(people interested in robotics can watch Hao and others speak about "The 
Future is Robotics" tonight in SF at 6:30):
http://www.meetup.com/software/events/48562212/

-jake

Danny / O'brien	wrote:

One of the consequences of this is that people's "pet" hardware --
things which they regularly use, but not many other people -- can
struggle. That is why, I think, we have to emphasize to people that
bringing in their own equipment to "share" with others isn't going to
end well (they aren't around enough to maintain it, while no-one else
is going to fix your shit to your satisfactoin, even if they broke
it).