Future of Tesla Boards

[Jack Bauer]

And just because we publish our designs along with problems and solutions does not make us or the designs somehow subpar. The first microprocessor I coded for was a 6502. Needed a lot of creativity to get things to work. But it did. Johannes has FOC working on an stm32f103. Could he have gone off and done this with 10k worth of hardware? Of course. I for one am glad he didn't. Don't get me wrong. I'm happy with feedback and new ideas but this "Your design is crap because it's simple" is getting a bit tiresome.

[Kevin Sharpe]

"Your design is crap because it's simple" is getting a bit tiresome.

We're going to stick it in ~10 million Lexus/Toyota/Other hybrids... I think the story is about to change

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

I suspect many people don't understand that financing feature development is also an option (like the Zero EV dual throttle support)

Another open source community I participate in has a bounty program that might be worth considering. The logistics of it can get difficult however, and that community is still working through issues.

Essentially, if someone would like something developed that they can't do (whether tools, knowledge or time), they put forward a monetary/crypto amount that will be awarded to the first person to (successfully) complete it. Other people can contribute to make the bounty larger.

Setting it up is a bit beyond my current capabilities or time, but if people would like to see it, I can investigate it in a month or two when I have less work on my plate.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Essentially, if someone would like something developed that they can't do (whether tools, knowledge or time), they put forward a monetary/crypto amount that will be awarded to the first person to (successfully) complete it.

We already have that.

It's called: throwing money at Johannes or Damian.

There's no mysterious "Who could get this done?", we know who, and they're willing to be hired to add features. The only constraint is someone has to give them the money

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

Essentially, if someone would like something developed that they can't do (whether tools, knowledge or time), they put forward a monetary/crypto amount that will be awarded to the first person to (successfully) complete it.

We already have that.

It's called: throwing money at Johannes or Damian.

There's no mysterious "Who could get this done?", we know who, and they're willing to be hired to add features. The only constraint is someone has to give them the money

True.

It would seem to me the benefits of the bounty system are a) encouraging others to aid in development b) allowing multiple people to fund a desired feature c) by formalizing the process, the amount of money behind a particular bounty better indicates priority and/or community need/desire for something. ie one person might be willing to pay x for feature A, but three people might be willing to each pay 1/2x for feature B. Taken individually, it appears A is the "more desirable/valuable" addition, but pooled behind a bounty feature B actually has more funding/interest.

Again, just something we might want to think about in the future.

[Kevin Sharpe]

Essentially, if someone would like something developed that they can't do (whether tools, knowledge or time), they put forward a monetary/crypto amount that will be awarded to the first person to (successfully) complete it.

We already have that.

It's called: throwing money at Johannes or Damian.

There's no mysterious "Who could get this done?", we know who, and they're willing to be hired to add features. The only constraint is someone has to give them the money

This is it in a nutshell... if we want new features or in depth support we must find sufficient funds to encourage Johannes and/or Damien to do the work. In the future I hope this will change... that's one of the many reasons why we're 'teaching' ~100 people a year about electric vehicles based on open inverter hardware/software

[johu]

It would seem to me the benefits of the bounty system are a) encouraging others to aid in development b) allowing multiple people to fund a desired feature c) by formalizing the process, the amount of money behind a particular bounty better indicates priority and/or community need/desire for something. ie one person might be willing to pay x for feature A, but three people might be willing to each pay 1/2x for feature B. Taken individually, it appears A is the "more desirable/valuable" addition, but pooled behind a bounty feature B actually has more funding/interest.

Again, just something we might want to think about in the future.

So we would have a sort of mini-crowdfunding site with a number of features listed and the amount of money pledged for it.
So would there be a shared paypal account which is shared between the developers? I'm not super savvy with payment systems.

One important point: I don't want topics to be imposed on me. If I (or any developer) doesn't want to do a specific feature there should be a way to decline it.

[Kevin Sharpe]

So would there be a shared paypal account which is shared between the developers? I'm not super savvy with payment systems.

The cross border tax implications of this are horrible. We need to keep this simple and transparent.

One important point: I don't want topics to be imposed on me. If I (or any developer) doesn't want to do a specific feature there should be a way to decline it.

I think anyone who wants something developed writes a basic requirement specification and presents it to you, Damien, and anyone else who might be interested. Then you decide if you want to do the work and how much it will cost. Then the person who generated the requirement decides if they want to proceed and how they fund it. Simple

[Jack Bauer]

Before we put too much time into this its worth noting that when I introduced a charge for responding to emails I get about 1 in 20 willing to pay 10Euros for a response. This will be despite lengthy descriptions of grandiose projects for which they claim to be perfectly happy to pay me to do.

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

So we would have a sort of mini-crowdfunding site with a number of features listed and the amount of money pledged for it.
So would there be a shared paypal account which is shared between the developers? I'm not super savvy with payment systems.

One important point: I don't want topics to be imposed on me. If I (or any developer) doesn't want to do a specific feature there should be a way to decline it.

This other community I believe uses a crypto wallet, again logistics of it are not entirely simple. Certainly nothing imposed.

Here's an example that might help clarify the concept:

Let's say I, for whatever reason, need to put two Tesla drive units in one car. I say to the person running the bounty, through a form or such, that I am putting up $1000 for software and/or hardware development to make that happen. That money gets put in a wallet that essential acts as escrow, for lack of a better term, until someone claims the bounty or I withdraw the bounty. Someone else sees the bounty and says "hey I'd like that to happen too, I'll put some money in as well", raising the bounty.

Now you, Damien, Kevin, or anyone else can chose to put time towards this or to ignore it. Hopefully, if the usual people don't pick up on it, it encourages someone else to say "hey I can do that" and put the time in. In theory, it provides a easier way for not-the-typical-people to have a monetary incentive to develop a solution.

Again, there are a lot of logistical challenges, and I fully admit this may not be the right solution or even a good idea for this community. The other one is just starting to get traction after nearly a year. I just thought I'd put it out there for consideration. Sort of throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks.

[57 Chevy]

I like the bounty idea and would definitely support it, or any form of engineer-for-hire that may work better. OTOH I'm not that much of an open-source geek so just donating regularly to somebody to support their hobby doesn't really hold that much appeal.

Buying proprietary hardware that is tied to the whim of one company/an individual which may be gone in a few years is something I'd like to avoid, hence supporting a project that will exist for as long as there is a need for it has a lot of appeal- on the proviso that it complies with the regs and is of sufficiently robust design to protect the hardware against any reasonably foreseeable events. If I have to pay for some of these improvements if/where necessary then we all get better product.

Thinking a bit further ahead, with ~2000 Model S's selling new per month, there are going to be a lot of used Tesla's on the market soon and not all of their owners will want to use them as lifestyle accessories. Hotrodding factory Tesla's could well become more of a market than modifying other cars to use the motors. It'd make sense to have the logic board drop-in for a factory car and offer the ability to abuse the motor/hotrod it until the gears break off if that is what the owner desires. If I were to propose a future for the LDU board, this would be it. Aftermarket plug-in fuel injection ECUs were a big thing for the last 20 odd years, let's do the same for EVs rather than limiting the project to a few hundreds people each year who can afford to and want to go to the trouble of building an EV from scratch.

[57 Chevy]

As I have said before, and this can be found by spending a few minutes looking through the parameters,the current firmware and hardware does support a dual channel throttle.

Thank you, I wasn't aware the hardware supported it and will look further into it.

[bulletbug]

"We're solving this problem wrong. 'Go search the forums' is a terrible solution. If we get the same questions so often, the solution is to put all the answers in the same place. If we're writing the same answers repeatedly, why not just write it up really well once, and post it?"

I agree. I'm also reminded of my business experiences between Tech Departments and Marketing Departments.

Tech Department - Great answers to technical problems, often given in technical language. Typically these individuals don't want to slow down their brains long enough to figure out why the "standard" human isn't understanding them.

Marketing Department - Bridges the gap between technical speak and something the products end consumer will really be able to digest.

I'm one of those people that doesn't claim expert status in either domain. But I'm quite good at being the connective tissue between those areas.

So I ask the admins (Johannes, Damien, Kevin and others) to consider the following:

Create a section on the Forum wherein you ask for our help on task/issues/research that aren't the "highest and best" use of your time.

Each request for help from you could then be picked up and worked on by individuals or small groups towards creating the solution.

As an example, I'd really benefit from having access to a well drawn schematic of the components and wiring diagram used in a tesla small drive unit conversion.

So the request from one of the admins would be "Create wiring diagram for Tesla Small Drive Unit". Several of us "marketing" sided guys could get together and work on iterations of a diagram. Once completed we have one of the "tech" guys review it for accuracy and completeness. Once fully completed, it becomes a wiki element which can be referred to as a "really well done" answer to the question.

Rinse. Repeat

This allows those, like me, that are anxious to help the entry point to do so. It also would help reinforce with the Admins that there are helpful people out here ready to carry some of the load to help the overall mission.

What sayest thou?

[johu]

Lets try it: viewforum.php?f=18