I’ve given that thought. There are downsides to doing a Kickstarter. One being having to promise to deliver on a schedule. Unfortunately this is impossible for me…
The best I can do is work on this between my career, my part time career, being married, and other projects. Maybe one day designing esk8 and other electric vehicle tech can be my full time gig!
I fixed your typo there, I have trouble carrying my evo + 13s5p around IE I don’t want too or enjoy it in anyway , screw double the weight lol
I’m planning to drag it around like a longboard cause I’m using DD’s so no reverse mounts preventing me from dragging my board
So in theory that splits the weight in half?
practically not if you listened a bit in your physics lessons 
I don’t have physics yet. 
But i do know weight does not split on half lol
Wow with those price points and vesc 6 I would definitely be in for a set. These could definitely be a game changer because people could really start to do some crazy batteries on these. When they get to the beta time I would definitely talk to @longhairedboy as he has been know to torture parts.
Yep. I have a list of people I’m going to offer the opportunity to beta test. @longhairedboy will be one of those that I offer this to.
@shaman if you’re thinking of making these for profit, are you concerned that with the gerbers and BOM easily available, random third parties will build and sell foccers with crap component undercutting your price and tarnishing the foccer brand?
While copying is inevitable, if he is even close to his guesstimated price point I believe majority who research anything before buying the cheapest thing they see would buy quality components from him.
I just want to reliably run above 10s foc without spending 300$ for it.
It’s a difficult path to tread, do you release everything and hope that your efforts are rewarded and rewarded justly? It’s a gamble.
If it’s going to run VESC f/w then the most closed you can go is release any modifications of the S/W just like Enertion. The gerber for the pcb does not need to be released, if pushed you can release a diagram… just like Enertion.
a) You can have the needed giveback included in the price of the kit, be it partially assembled or barebones or even just a PCB. Stewii did this and was not greedy, it was pretty community spirited.
Or
b) You go all in and release everything and depend on humanity to reward you with sparkles via a button. Risk unscrupulous companies reselling your work without consent or respecting any license.
While donations are good for running a forum and such you are bound to be exploited for releasing all your IP.
Vedder probably does ok with the button-donate given the business relationship /Trampa, the forum with donations for the tool and the sheer exposure to thousands of people some who would be quite generous no doubt, but I still doubt it’s raining $$ for him.
With open source, consent or respect is not required – it is “free”. That’s the point of the license. All that’s required is following the terms of the license – usually making changes available on request.
Some open source licenses specify non commercial ie thingiverse has different types of license- completely open, private use only and non-commercial
@deucesdown I have thought about this concern mainly surrounding possible safety issues. If someone replicates this with really low-quality components then that introduces a safety risk to the community. These new FOCers are a new realm of power/voltage and I don’t want to risk anyone’s well being.
@magharees considering my growing interest in making this part of a business, I may switch to only releasing the changes I have made like with what Enertion did and adhering to only the minimum amount of Open Source disclosure. After all, the Cheap FOCer is something I gave entirely for free with gerbers and everything. My position on this is undecided for now.
Sure, but if you disclose your invention without a patent or copyright, I’m pretty sure no one is breaking the law if they copy it. 
Even if you have a patented product, it really only protects you from being copied in your country within the reach of your same judicial system.
Then you have companies (like enertion) who disregard the law and do whatever the fuck they want, like not making changes available, not releasing source code, not following the terms of the license – just stealing it all.
That’s what @magharees was referring to, I think.
In fairness that’s old Enertion.
Change came in with the addition of Jeff. The only thing they do not do (and I feel it is completely fair) is release a gerber for a PCB design, that would be suicide.
And guess what…neither did Vedder, just a PDF schematic, AFAIK Jeff/Enertion released one too, a schematic. So if you were never provided with a gerber which you then modified is there an onus to release your gerber? I’m no lawyer but arguably I think not.
He has been uploading the Unity src in git too AFAIK.
I’m not an IP lawyer and could not tell you if any company using VESC & it’s associated licence are strictly adhering to the licence, but I feel that is fair.
You can’t release a gerber or kids with hot air stations never mind the Chinese take that & undercut you right out of business.
Sorry @shaman I was name checked, trying not to clutter your thread which should be about design rather than the ugly side of things
Vedder went that route with the Vesc6 cause he saw what happened with the hw4.x.
He said and I quote; “if someone is serious about making a business out of my design, they’re more then welcome to use it aslong as they follow the GPL. However, anyone profiting of hardware they dont not understand or can’t even make proper layout out of an already existing schematic. Probably shouldn’t be selling it in the first place.”
I’ll try to live up to Vedder’s expectations of understanding hardware and layout. I’m glad he defined what is considered fair and just.
