Take over responsilibility for inverter development and support

[jrbe]

Is there a slack channel, Trello board, etc. that helps organize what's needed / what projects are being worked on and who is doing work / available to help?
If not, this is likely a good place to start.

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

I will, however, make the following commitments to the community:
- I will do my best to get a store set up by the end of the year as an additional source for OI related boards.
- I am actively working on getting the education I need to start helping develop new boards - specifically to work on stuff that's only or primarily available in the North American market.

Status update? How are things going with that and are there ways I/we can help?

Life In the Way but still planned, etc? That's why I was asking.

To answer these directly (good questions to ask)

Given current geopolitics, I think it is more important than ever that there are multiple sources for OI boards, however life has definitely gotten in the way on my end. I still intend to stand up a store to sell boards at some point, especially things that are currently only available from Europe, but I have been dealing with a lot since June. I won't go on complaining about things here, but let's just say Drag Week is the only thing that's gone right, only real point of light in the last several months. A few items might be close to resolved, but not confident about anything at the moment.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

My only useful skill is in helping coordinate different volunteers onto the same page...

Hi guys, I`m Karim

Bump.

Hey Karim, we haven't heard from you in a bit. Could you give us a status update on the transition plan from Johannes to you? Life, as always, intrudes, I know.

Any smaller obstacles that anyone else could help you remove? What kinds of things need doing before we can more formally direct people towards you?

[7yatna]

My only useful skill is in helping coordinate different volunteers onto the same page...

Bump.

Hey Karim, we haven't heard from you in a bit. Could you give us a status update on the transition plan from Johannes to you? Life, as always, intrudes, I know.

Any smaller obstacles that anyone else could help you remove? What kinds of things need doing before we can more formally direct people towards you?

Hi Guys, i got a private text on phone from someone here telling me about this thread specifically.
long story short, Life, getting married in couple of months, actual job is ramping up.

i did state that I'm a HW engineer, designing PCBs modifying components trouble shooting on the board/component level. I'm limited on SW and cant do much other than maybe help on the forum for setup issues and generic questions maybe minor code modes.

it seems all the work is needed is SW, Releases, Features and clean up. The first task that was assigned to me by Johannes and i failed to do is making a release and running GitHub repository. and it looked like this had been taken over by maybe Damien, others. not sure where this is now.

Matt I like your idea of coordinating the volunteers efforts. let me know how can i help when time allows in stuff that doesn't involve code, SW and GitHub?

HW wise if there is a common bug which i suspect there is in current HW i can fix it quick.
features update like better resolution better control, less consumption, sleep mode in all OI HW i can do that.
new complete HW project for a new inverter or charger. HW wise i can, BUT SW we need to secure that.
specific support that needs to be debugged/fixed, that will rely on availability on the forum but i can be pulled to it.
selling or maintain the shop i offered, and others did as well so not much i can do here and there is a deal between OI and a shop that i didn't see on the forum "contributing wise" but they are now handling all US sales for OI.

again the open tasks, or needed support are non of these.

i really try to spend time on the forum and interact but Life is pulling full Amps now between the government shutdown, GF want to be official and finishing new VCU and Battery Box and System integration for new project.

[nubster]

I know I’m a bit late to this thread, but I wanted to chime in. Things have been hectic with several ongoing projects and expanding my business into new services and platforms. As a result, OpenInverter has gradually become a smaller part of my work at Westside EV.

That said, I still plan to offer SDU and LDU boards from Los Angeles for the foreseeable future, as well as ready-to-run motors and chargers. While I don’t have the expertise to contribute directly to the software side of the projects, I’ll continue providing support for initial setup and troubleshooting.

I’ll also continue to develop enhancements for the core offerings to make adoption easier, including FREE shipping within the USA, pre-soldered connectors, pre-soldered current sensors (for SDU boards), starter bundles, fully labeled wiring harnesses, reverse-drive kits, and more. If you have any ideas or requests, I’d love to hear them.

[7yatna]

I know I’m a bit late to this thread, but I wanted to chime in. Things have been hectic with several ongoing projects and expanding my business into new services and platforms. As a result, OpenInverter has gradually become a smaller part of my work at Westside EV.

That said, I still plan to offer SDU and LDU boards from Los Angeles for the foreseeable future, as well as ready-to-run motors and chargers. While I don’t have the expertise to contribute directly to the software side of the projects, I’ll continue providing support for initial setup and troubleshooting.

I’ll also continue to develop enhancements for the core offerings to make adoption easier, including FREE shipping within the USA, pre-soldered connectors, pre-soldered current sensors (for SDU boards), starter bundles, fully labeled wiring harnesses, reverse-drive kits, and more. If you have any ideas or requests, I’d love to hear them.

Hey there, Westside EV is the shop i mentioned in my comment if you are in LA im actually in Orange Country "Irvine" i would like to get together and discuss what sort of support/ collaboration we can work together. since Im offering and helping over HW and you are mainly dealing with HW selling for now but upgrades and technical support or features addition i think it will be very productive if we can see what can be possibly done.

[nubster]

Hey there, Westside EV is the shop i mentioned in my comment if you are in LA im actually in Orange Country "Irvine" i would like to get together and discuss what sort of support/ collaboration we can work together. since Im offering and helping over HW and you are mainly dealing with HW selling for now but upgrades and technical support or features addition i think it will be very productive if we can see what can be possibly done.

Hey! Sure, I'd love to meet and see how we might coordinate efforts. Shoot me a message via my Contact Us page, or an email to support@westside-ev.com.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

long story short, Life, getting married in couple of months, actual job is ramping up.

*bangs fist on desk*

No! Volunteering is the priority! :p

i did state that I'm a HW engineer, designing PCBs modifying components trouble shooting on the board/component level. I'm limited on SW and cant do much other than maybe help on the forum for setup issues and generic questions maybe minor code modes.

I obviously know the difference between hardware and software, but, in terms of the big picture of, what Johannes wants to step back from, and what various people want to step up to do, I don't really have a grasp of what's covered, what's not, or even what's needed.

Going back to the first post, Johannes said:

"I want to step back from inverter development completely. So I would be happy to hand over
- Responsibility for stm32-sine and FOC firmware repository
- Responsibility for inverter-hardware, Tesla-Large-Drive-Unit and Tesla-Front-Drive-Unit repository
- Drafting of new releases, integrating PRs etc.
- Maintaining boards
- Optional: Selling boards
- Doing support on the forum
- Doing payed support"

Let's revisit that, and try to be more clear about items and who might help and what we need:

1 - Responsibility for stm32-sine and FOC firmware repository

What does this entail? Dumb it down.

By repository are we talking about someone having the password for the Github who will be able to log in and update things, or, are we talking about some bigger file collection of the project and its management?

2 - Responsibility for inverter-hardware, Tesla-Large-Drive-Unit and Tesla-Front-Drive-Unit repository

What does "responsibility for the hardware" mean?

Like, someone has a physical place that is ordering hardware and storing actual hardware for sale, putting items into boxes, and shipping them? (Which may or may not be the same person with the website selling them, but probably would be?).

Likewise, with the repository. Development, or, just a Github babysitting if/when updates need making?

3 - Drafting of new releases, integrating PRs etc.

This seems like a huge piece of the work. I imagine this is actually leading the OI project, getting feedback, and doing development work? New boards, bugfixes, new designs, new software features, etc?

4 - Maintaining boards

Define "maintenance".

Are we talking warranties, or something else?

5- Optional: Selling boards

Someone making money, with a website to order from?

I presume this is:
- Nubster, via WestSide EV, though less than he would be, and
- 7yatna, via some unmentioned website perhaps, though he may or may not be interested in this if WestSide is going to be competing with him?

6- Doing support on the forum

Is this, support of OI products in threads, or, is this supporting the forum as in making sure the OpenInverter website is running the forums are patched, etc?

Ideally, the community handles the support (same as before), in reality, Johannes ended up doing a lot of it because he understands it best and, if there was any money being made, he was making it.

I'm a big proponent of, the better something is documented, the lower the need for support there will be, and the more interesting support questions will become because they'll be novel undocumented problems, not just, people not understanding what was already (not well enough-) explained things.

7 - Doing payed support

Seems this was a small portion of time. Johannes often helped people for free when he could've put his foot down and asked for paid support. But, a few people who could say "I'm willing to be paid to be abused by your ignorance" i.e. troubleshooting would be a nice option. At the end of the day "Can I please just throw money at this?" is a nice option to rescue volunteers and frustrated novices.

...

Have any new tasks appeared?

It would make sense to me that, as only someone selling the boards would be making money off of this, that it would be difficult to officially step up to be responsible for some part of this project without being tied to financial reward. Some volunteering is great, but if there's any expectation of work being done rather than a volunteer's "maybe this year if I feel like it", they should get a cut of the pie. The community can do all the rest.

- It seems like 7yatna is okay doing hardware fixes to the hardware design, maybe not full board developments? If/when being married isn't too much time. So he could maybe be relied upon, but, it would be fair to me to give him a cut of sales. It seems like it would never progress out of maintenance role, i.e. no new board designs is my guess?

- I know a few people in the community have significantly contributed to software, though, that seems to me to be more nudging someone else's vision along, less than saying "I'm holding the reins now" type of thing. Or maybe it was 99.9% Johannes, not sure.

- Damien has taken over some things, but by Damien's own admission, he is NOT a software guy. Damien also undersells himself by 90%, he's plenty capable, but he is much more hardware than software and without someone software-brained leading the charge, I think best practices might slip a bunch. Also, he already does so much, I don't like dogpiling duties onto one person.

- These are just guesses, don't jump at me if they're wrong, I'm in a position of ignorance.

...

Anything I miss?

[uhi22]

1 - Responsibility for stm32-sine and FOC firmware repository

What does this entail? Dumb it down.

By repository are we talking about someone having the password for the Github who will be able to log in and update things, or, are we talking about some bigger file collection of the project and its management?

The "beauty of open source" is, that there is no need to share a password for github. The github repository is available for everybody to use and to make an own copy ("fork" in git terminology). Github shows, that https://github.com/jsphuebner/stm32-sine has 72 such forks at the time of writing. From github perspective, each of these 72 persons are able to maintain the software, make changes, discuss them, make releases. So from github perspective, there is no need to define a dedicated hand-over procedure.

The "taking over responsibility", from my point of view, is that someone has a vision about the goal, the next steps, has a personal motivation ("my car needs to run"), and the feeling about which changes will be benefical and which are not. Someone who invites others to make code proposals ("pull requests") and has the time, the equipment, and also the gut feeling to make sure that certain changes do not break too much. This is what also "making a release" means: To create a release on github, is just a few clicks. The much more effort is, to be sure that a release fulfills a certain quality: The changes need to be picked carefully. They should be tested. It needs a clear communication about what the "users" can expect from each release, to avoid disappointment.

The good news is: The project will further live, also without a central maintainer. Even if single persons just make their personal improvements in their personal github repositories, still "everybody" can pick the best out of these, and maybe over time the development will concentrate on one repository, or maybe not, both is fine.

[tom91]

Key thing not to loose sight of it the many and I many, more like uncountable, configurations and setups that people will run utilizing the code bases.

I have taken over the Zombie VCU code base responsibility:
1. in which I have had to take a lot of time learning and understand all the various interactions
2. Clarify how others should and can contribute
3. Police and negotiate implementation of any PRs, making sure to keep old features and functions maintained always (unless this is a bug or a safety critical issue)
4. Prepare releases for validation by various members, due to not being able to have 101 combinations of hardware
5. Try and utilize the issue tracker within github to review ideas or potential bugs.

And that is just the none "end user" facing jobs.

Challenge in something with so may applicaitons/variants a person(s) need to maintain the overview to ensure compatibility so an update/pr does not ruin another persons setup.

[johu]

has a personal motivation

That's the thing, I have reached my personal goal with the inverter firmware. It takes my car down the road in a stable and predictable way and offers features around that. And it works likewise for many others. Now I want to move on to other topics and just wanted to make people aware that I will no longer be pushing further development of the inverter firmware and inverter hardware. ONLY THESE 2 THINGS! All else stays unchanged, so please stop propagating that "Johannes is stepping back from OI completely". I'm still here.

And I want to make one thing clear: I didn't make any profit off OI for the first 12 years. It started as an enthusiast project. And it can continue as one. I'm not putting anyone on my payroll as the "pie" Matt is talking about is not very big. If you want to make money, offer support or sell hardware, perhaps with added value like Nubster is doing.

[7yatna]

4 - Maintaining boards
Define "maintenance".
Are we talking warranties, or something else?

As the deal always this is open source there is no warranties unless it is sold through commercial and is offering warranties, (WestSide) or some others. Maintaining is keeping up with history of the Board, taking feedback from the forum, keeping track of what's needs to be done and doing it actually.

5- Optional: Selling boards

Someone making money, with a website to order from?

I presume this is:
- Nubster, via WestSide EV, though less than he would be, and
- 7yatna, via some unmentioned website perhaps, though he may or may not be interested in this if WestSide is going to be competing with him?

I have no interest in ripping people work, my Office job is important and it is financially stable and allowed me fund 3 projects so far, but i will have my store open soon to showcase my actual full on Karim`s design EV designs some would be doing motor controls and some other related things., i could have the OI, Zombie, Damiens designs, Tom`s designs upon agreement and approval from their designers, side by side and be another portal to be sold. in the US at least since DHL/shipping and tariffs is unknown for now. i have more details that i can talk privately with the designers and the owners of the design and we can work it out.

- It seems like 7yatna is okay doing hardware fixes to the hardware design, maybe not full board developments? If/when being married isn't too much time. So he could maybe be relied upon, but, it would be fair to me to give him a cut of sales. It seems like it would never progress out of maintenance role, i.e. no new board designs is my guess?

That is not RIGHT, HW fixes, brand new PCBs and designs full PCBs design and source i have no problem working that at all, and i dont know why it seems that I'm looking at a piece of the pie, i know there isnt, and i know whatever there is it is not making anyone a fortune.

talking about that if i ever wanted to be part of the sales im actually think it the other way around. I source, i advertise, i flash i support i sell on my store and a percentage of the existing designs goes to either the OG designer Maybe Johannes if he is the designer or even just the OI (through Johannes) to maybe cover Server cost, forum cost hosting or just only giving back to the original designer. all this with NSA agreement. meaning no emails, or support to the buyers that bought the OI boards but from " My shop" i will handle everything and send a percentage of the pie back to OI i look at this is taking over, helping to keep legacy, im making money by selling products and owning the whole process and since these had been designed and stamped with OI part of giving back a "pre determined percentage" will go on each sale to the OG Designer or the owner. this deal is open to anyone actually if any interested.

Key thing not to loose sight of it the many and I many, more like uncountable, configurations and setups that people will run utilizing the code bases.

I have taken over the Zombie VCU code base responsibility:
1. in which I have had to take a lot of time learning and understand all the various interactions
2. Clarify how others should and can contribute
3. Police and negotiate implementation of any PRs, making sure to keep old features and functions maintained always (unless this is a bug or a safety critical issue)
4. Prepare releases for validation by various members, due to not being able to have 101 combinations of hardware
5. Try and utilize the issue tracker within github to review ideas or potential bugs.

And that is just the none "end user" facing jobs.

Challenge in something with so may applicaitons/variants a person(s) need to maintain the overview to ensure compatibility so an update/pr does not ruin another persons setup.

I see Tom`s work on Zombie, i think this quality of work is brilliant and what OI requires and maybe Johannes hoping for. I definitely cant do that on SW. Toom`s enjoys it so much but for me and probably others it will get them in trouble probably with Tom . it isnt easy, and it needs all around the clock work. i dont have the skillset or time to do so, heck my zombie fork isnt even up to the standard that it might be considered to be part of Zombie code.

And I want to make one thing clear: I didn't make any profit off OI for the first 12 years. It started as an enthusiast project. And it can continue as one. I'm not putting anyone on my payroll as the "pie" Matt is talking about is not very big. If you want to make money, offer support or sell hardware, perhaps with added value like Nubster is doing.

I`ve never seen it that i will be on anyone's payroll, if any payroll i thought of it would be you on my shops payroll and/or the forum as i explained in this comment.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

The "beauty of open source" is, [...] 72 such forks at the time of writing.

Likewise, it's a curse of open source.

It's a wonderful fantasy. How practical is it? Hey, you're new to this hobby, you want to convert an EV. Here's 72 different almost-zero-documented forks of a project that you may or may not find useful, or complete. No way to know who might answer you if you have a question. Isn't that easy?! No, it's obviously not.

It's like seeing 72 different brands of milk on the shelf, most of the cartons are empty, 2/3 are rotten and unsuitable to be drank, most are unlabelled.

Most core open source projects are just not used by anyone, despite someone putting a ton of work into them. I always look to, in what way can we bridge the gap between the effort, and the people who would use it. Because that's a wonderful feedback loop where people will want to put more effort in, knowing that it gets used and appreciated. It's the same effort whether many people or no one ever use it.

The "taking over responsibility", from my point of view, is that someone has a vision about the goal

I agree. Before you even have the problem of who might help, there really needs to be a leader with a vision, or an effort is headless.

The good news is: The project will further live, also without a central maintainer. Even if single persons just make their personal improvements in their personal github repositories, still "everybody" can pick the best out of these, and maybe over time the development will concentrate on one repository, or maybe not, both is fine.

I'm more pessimistic than you. Code never dies, sure.

But if we measure instead by the number of people who USE the project, it's massively more dependent on who is running the project and its place in the community.

Challenge in something with so may applicaitons/variants a person(s) need to maintain the overview to ensure compatibility so an update/pr does not ruin another persons setup.

I thing you've done a great job, and I think without you in this role, it would fall apart.

I will no longer be pushing further development of the inverter firmware and inverter hardware. ONLY THESE 2 THINGS! All else stays unchanged, so please stop propagating that "Johannes is stepping back from OI completely". I'm still here.

Well, 1 - that wasn't clear, sorry if I've put words in your mouth, but, this is why I'm asking these questions. The items on the list on your first post are more than just those 2 things for example, and, 2 - it's still kind of not clear, to me, what you want your role to be.

OpenInverter, to me, is 95% inverter firmware and inverter hardware. So when you say you're backing out of those two things... those are the things. Maybe there's a lot more I didn't know were things.

I guess the forums here are another big piece of it. Are you going to keep running the forums here? Are you looking to hand that off?

Are you still going to be making and selling boards? From the content earlier in the thread, I thought you were looking to hand that off to someone else as well.

And I want to make one thing clear: I didn't make any profit off OI for the first 12 years. It started as an enthusiast project. And it can continue as one. I'm not putting anyone on my payroll as the "pie" Matt is talking about is not very big. If you want to make money, offer support or sell hardware, perhaps with added value like Nubster is doing.

I thought you were looking to get out of this as a career. I'd asked you a few years ago about what your goals were, and it seemed like you had modest goals for this project to support you. And then, you wanting out of that except for BMS and CCS. So I presumed you were walking away from the pie.

My perspective was that, since no one person was looking to take over from you (we can see that by how this thread has stalled out multiple times), that a group would have to figure out how to collaborate and share all the work that you used to do. And, if I can't do that, I might try to help lay out the pieces of what that work might be and how they might make that effort seem fair to everyone.

I haven't (yet) seen anyone say that they're interested in taking over for development responsibilities for the love of the project itself. So I'm guessing that a small, fair amount of financial motivation might carry people over from "Maybe I'll do it" to "I will commit to being responsible for it."

That is not RIGHT, HW fixes, brand new PCBs and designs full PCBs design and source i have no problem working that at all, and i dont know why it seems that I'm looking at a piece of the pie [...] i flash i support i sell on my store

I'm glad I'm asking, because it's hard to tell what people's interests were.

Almost everyone who has offered to take over responsibility, or part of it, has mentioned having a store and wanting to sell things in a store, etc.

But then you're confused why I would think you were interested in being financially compensated for efforts. Even here, you said the same thing. Right after saying you don't know why it seems like you're looking for money, you talk about selling boards and support.

...

Anyway, I still don't understand what different groups have for motivations, responsibilities, and how they might take over where Johannes left off, including Johannes, but I guess the ball is rolling again for a bit. Sounds like you guys can hash out among yourselves what you'd like that to be.

[johu]

Shiiiet Matt you got stuck in 2018 Yes back then openinverter was mainly "inverter". The name became inappropriate soon after, but hey the "brand name" was set. Look at all the stuff we've got now:
- Reverse engineering of chargers, heaters, compressors, BMSes, DC/DC converters, gear sticks, gauge clusters, power steering racks, and yes, inverters
- All that accumulated in ZombieVerter
- All of it is documented in the wiki
- It is discussed on the forum
- A friggin botwall that ruins it all
- Various BMS implementations both standalone and in conjunction with OEM cell boards
- General EV conversion advice
- Renewable energy systems
- CCS rapid charging
- A common user interface for all of it
- And finally the open source inverter implementation that started it all.

Do you realize how small a portion the inverter part has become? Only that last line do I want to hand off.

I guess the forums here are another big piece of it. Are you going to keep running the forums here? Are you looking to hand that off?

What spawned the idea that I want to hand that off? Inverter Matt, the piece that runs a motor. Nothing else.

The monetary discussion takes place in a vacuum until some maintenance flow is established.

I`ve never seen it that i will be on anyone's payroll,

I know, Matt made it all up

Now, BTT. Maybe it's easier if there is a bespoke task:
Inverter firmware has progressed since 5.35.R but there hasn't been a release thereafter that has been tested to work with "legacy" hardware, i.e. not Tesla M3. It be cool if someone could jump on it. I'll happily add you as a contributor to "my" repository so it shows up at the usual place. It means
- You need to be able to test in a car
- You then put together a release description from all commit messages since v5.35.R. Of course compile this to information that is meaningful for users. Many templates in previous releases
- You upload the .bin and .hex files for both SINE and FOC bulds
- You announce it on the forum
- You take care of the comments following up on the release

Yes I could do it in about the time it took to write this text. But I want someone to get their feet wet.

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Shiiiet Matt you got stuck in 2018 Yes back then openinverter was mainly "inverter". [...] Look at all the stuff we've got now:
- A common user interface for all of it

Ahh, so I call the common user interface for all of it... the SW development part.

I'm not the only one who's thought this, btw. People have already been talking about OI like it's not even an option anymore, since, there's been no one obviously taking over.

- And finally the open source inverter implementation that started it all.

I understand the inverter part of the OI project is a smaller piece. Likewise, the standalone hardware, before we have the surplus of riches of junkyard hybrid and EV parts to parasite into, being an increasingly small piece of the puzzle.

How about, say, all the replacement controller boards you've made over the years? The Leaf, the Prius, etc? Do you group those as inverter HW you want to back away from, or not?

The monetary discussion takes place in a vacuum until some maintenance flow is established.

It's not my business, but, there's probably a chicken and egg problem there.

[ianlighting]

I was very unsure whether to comment at all because I consider myself still very much in newbie territory, but Matt’s ‘curse of open source’ comments resonate with me.

Am I the target audience? Or is being off putting to someone with less knowledge and skill a feature and not a bug of OI? This is in no way a complaint. I’ve hung around here for a while and regularly check out what’s happening. Every time I do I learn something new. But if I did a second project, would I dive into OI this time instead of the previous controller? I’m still in 2 minds about that. Perhaps that’s a good safety barrier to prevent people getting in too deep and sinking instead of swimming.

If I had a magic wand, it would be great to see a packaged up, early learner, very solid and robust OI and predefined set of related devices that are not going to need much in the way of support. Maybe I’ve missed it, and it’s there if you look for it. Or maybe that’s not at all in line with the ethos or objectives of what OI is about. But if the stated objective was to encourage more users and more conversions, that might go a long way towards getting people onto the platform. Once you’re familiar with OI and with the basic setups, it’s a foundation you can use to stretch out into more particular setups. But currently I would be concerned I’d get myself stuck and despite some great people able to provide guidance, it seems to me there are so many variables it’s a big risk to someone less skilled.

If that kind of package of hardware / software / configs and step by step guide for predefined set of devices had an increased cost I think it would be attractive to people (like me!) and could help fund other aspects of OI if necessary.

Don’t know if I’m going off topic with all this, but thought it might be useful to get another perspective. And BTW, my thanks for all the help and comments from experts that kept me going in the right direction in project #1!

[P.S.Mangelsdorf]

Almost everyone who has offered to take over responsibility, or part of it, has mentioned having a store and wanting to sell things in a store, etc.

But then you're confused why I would think you were interested in being financially compensated for efforts. Even here, you said the same thing. Right after saying you don't know why it seems like you're looking for money, you talk about selling boards and support.

I just want to jump in here on this point: I talked about setting up a store because I think that there has to be a source of these boards, and its been worrying when there's been talk of ending production of a board, whether from Damien or Johannes. (for the record, I fully understand why both have/want to discontinue some products, this is not a critique of those decisions but rather an explanation) When I first found OI, I looked into getting boards made myself from Damien's LDU design, and realized that was so very far beyond what I knew at the time, that it would be impossible to get right. I knew I had the skills to build a car, but I did not have the knowledge to get a PCB custom made and programmed. The fact that a store existed was key to getting my project off the ground. I would strongly suspect that there are a TON of people in the same boat. Not to mention the benefits of making larger bulk purchases.

So to be clear, my offer to figure out how to build and distribute boards is not some money grab, but rather something I see as a critical link between open source designs and long term utilization of the designs.

Now, so it doesn't get twisted in the future, I do think that if I am able to get this set up, it would be part of a larger automotive business/project where there would be an intention to make money. But on the production/sale of OI boards, the desire there is to make sure that they remain available to the community.