Article on espruino and @Gordon in make magazine

[espruino-discuss]

Posted at 2017-06-29 by Wilberforce

Article on espruino and @gordon in make magazine...

Maker Pro News: An Open Hardware Exposé, Changes at TechShop, and More
http://makezine.com/2017/06/13/maker-pro-news-open-hardware-expose-changes-techshop/

http://makezine.com/2017/06/01/espruino-open-for-business/

[gfwilliams]

Posted at 2017-06-29 by @gfwilliams

Thanks - I didn't realise they'd actually put the article online as well as in the magazine :)

[espruino-discuss]

Posted at 2017-06-29 by Trisk3lion

Really interesting article, I can definitely see the problem with generating sales when ESP8266 boards are so easy and cheap to get a hold of.
But I'm loving my Puck.js, so fun to play around with and try different things. Probably going to buy a pico soon as well. Maybe more "unique" boards as puck.js is the way to go?

[gfwilliams]

Posted at 2017-06-30 by @gfwilliams

Thanks! Yes, it's particularly frustrating because I really like the idea of the ESP8266, and would love for there to be a way to pay for me to work on Espruino for it. Starting a Patreon page was one way to help with that, but as it happens a significant amount of my supporters there are folks that own Espruino boards and/or have supported me through the KickStarters, which I feel a bit guilty about!

I'd like to offer a paid web service for Espruino/ESP8266 programming & management, but it's quite a big undertaking (ensuring that I maintain an uninterrupted service for the next X years). I'm also not 100% sure it'd be worth it - there are loads of IoT web service companies around, but to me it feels like most are VC funded and aren't actually breaking even.

I guess KickStarter would be a good way to test the waters there. Something like the Ghost blogging platform has been a massive success.

I'm definitely looking at producing other boards though. I really like the Puck's nRF52 chip, and given the amount of effort that's gone into the port I would really like to offer some more things around that soon...