A few of my favorite things 🎶🛠️

A simple one today - a list of tools

Tools for building your first prototype.

Tools that strike a balance between cost💰(often free!) and effectiveness 🚀.

These are preferences of course, but if you don’t know where to start, take a look at these:

Flow Charts and Diagrams - drawio.com

Mechanical CAD - Autodesk Fusion

Schematic Capture - KiCad

Wire Harnesses - RapidHarness

Data Analysis - Python / Pandas

Data Driven Web Apps - Python / Plotly Dash

Mechanical Prototyping - 3D Printers (Prusa)

Edge Computing - Raspberry Pi

Embedded Computing - Arduino and derivativesRough System Modeling - Excel! (and a solid understanding of physics 😉)

Complex System Modeling - OpenModelica

None of those options are necessarily the best in class, but they all provide a great value, and will take you a long way, quickly - If you know how to use them!

-Brian Schoolcraft

How big is your toolbox? 🛠️🪚🪛✂️

"It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."

-Abraham Maslow

Let’s say we’re working on our Proof of Concept. 

What’s the best way to build it? 

How do we decide?

There are many factors, but I bet this has the biggest impact:

What tools do you have (and know how to use)?

If you’re in a woodworking shop, your prototype will probably be made out of wood.

If you’ve got a plasma cutter and a welder, it’s probably steel.

If you’re really good at writing C code, it’s probably running on a microcontroller.

Is there a “best” way to build your prototype? 

Probably.

Will you find it if you only have one tool in your toolbox?

Probably not!

Of course, you can’t know everything by yourself, but you don’t have to do it alone, either!

How can you make your toolbox bigger?

-Brian Schoolcraft

What are you mastering? 🎯

The simplest path to something new isn’t always obvious from the start.

We iterate until it starts working. 

Then we start refining.

Locking in the complexity of our first path to success.

We become experts at our self-defined complexity.

And congratulate ourselves on how well we know our product.

But what if we had taken a step back?

And simplified.

And become experts in something more useful?

Complexity is not the goal.

It's not useful to your customers.

It's not a badge of honor.

Don't master your complexity Eliminate it!

And master something that matters.

-Brian Schoolcraft