Assignment:
Individual assignment:
- Develop a plan for dissemination of your final project
- Prepare drafts of your summary slide (presentation.png, 1920x1080) and video clip (presentation.mp4, 1080p HTML5, < ~minute, < ~10 MB) and put them in your root directory
License
I studied different licenses for my Fab academy projects and it seems that most of the licenses are meant for software purposes like MIT or GNU general public license (GNU GPL). With both of these licenses it is allowed to redistribute free software and there is no warranty to shared software. With MIT license user is allowed to: "to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software." (The MIT License 2018)
Under GNU GPL license you can copy, distribute and modify the software as long as the changes/dates in source files are tracked. Any modifications to software must be available under the GNU GPL along with build & install instructions.
Basically in GNU GPL there are more rules for the modifier of the code and with MIT license there is very little strict instructions what the user should do. For the general purposes I would say that GNU GPL is harder for the modifier, but better for the user, as they have to write the instructions for building and installing code. I would probably choose GNU GPL for my purposes for that reason.
I decided to go with Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0, which is for any creative work. Under this license you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The terms are that you have to give credit, provide link to the license and indicate if changes were made. This has to be made in a way that it does not suggest that the licensor endorses you or your use. These are the only restrictions and of course no warranties are given.
Sharing
All of my projects are available for free use and I also encourage you to develop them further and improve them.
Income and future opportunities
I have no interest in making any income with this project. It would be likely too expensive for most of the people and not sophisticated enough for commercial use. I'm able to use my skills for the benefit of university projects and especially peristaltic pumps are very interesting tool. They tend to break often and cost about 1000-3000 € for laboratory use. The pH meter would be interesting, if I could build the electrode as well. Unfortunately, it is quite complex process to build viable electrode, but it would be intersting to try. The EC meter is also something that can be utilized in water research as I work in the environmental and chemical engineering. Michael Ratcliffe claims to have made simple yet accurate enough EC electrode from a type A two prong American plug. I'm intriqued to try that out after, I have my EC meter running.
To commercialize this product, I would need to re-design most of the parts. It would have to look attractive and to be really sturdy and reliable. It should be easier to maintain and to make an application for user, where the user could modify the pH and nutrient balance of the hydroponic solution and to have history data of the operation.
Ivan suggested that I could create a KIT to be built in Fab lab and the instructions could be for free, but I could make workshops on how to build them and this way the final project could be used to make money. It sounded like a good idea.