Project updates from Libre Graphics Meeting 2014 [LWN.net]

Project updates from Libre Graphics Meeting 2014

Posted Apr 10, 2014 18:40 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
Parent article: Project updates from Libre Graphics Meeting 2014

It would be interesting if Hughes did a Kickstarter to develop ColorHug+. It seems to me that he could probably recoup costs from people who don't actually want to own a ColorHug+, but want such a thing to be available for sale to others and might like a t-shirt. I wouldn't be surprised if there were 2000 people who would be willing to contribute $50 each so that they could say that the best equipment for professional visual artists supports Linux. And I'd enjoy having a ColorHug+ t-shirt and a set of ColorHug+ stickers whose colors match perfectly because they were corrected with ColorHug+.

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Project updates from Libre Graphics Meeting 2014

Posted Apr 10, 2014 23:55 UTC (Thu) by liam (guest, #84133) [Link] (1 responses)

I'd support this, for one. I'm sure he could get many more than the current 81 by going this route but I don't know how many he actually needs in order for it to make sense.

Project updates from Libre Graphics Meeting 2014

Posted Apr 17, 2014 9:35 UTC (Thu) by ssokolow (guest, #94568) [Link]

I wasn't even aware that he'd done any sort of poll/pre-commit thing for the ColorHug+ so that probably also contributed.

Project updates from Libre Graphics Meeting 2014

Posted Apr 11, 2014 23:06 UTC (Fri) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041) [Link] (3 responses)

Since it presumably was not clear from my brief summary, the full spectrograph option is not just more expensive from Richard's point of view -- it means a significantly more expensive device in the end. More on the order of $300.

There might indeed be thousands of people willing to pay $50 for the device, but there are surely fewer who would be willing to pay the higher pricetag that the more complicated hardware brings with it.

Although I'm not quite convinced that Kickstartering would provide a noticeably larger pool of potential buyers; Richard did focused polling to gauge interest in the device, just like he did for the ColorHug, and his ColorHug poll results were a clear yes, while this more recent one was a clear no. Hence the open question of what other groups of potential buyers he should be looking at (my suggestion was font designers suddenly worrying about all those color-OpenType formats, but I don't think I convinced him).

Nate

Project updates from Libre Graphics Meeting 2014

Posted Apr 12, 2014 1:26 UTC (Sat) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I was aware that the device would be more expensive (actually, his site suggests it would be over $650, but listed in GBP). My thought was that the project as a whole would be economically viable if the fixed costs were paid via Kickstarter and the per-unit costs were paid by the relatively small number of potential buyers. If he finds 81 people to buy the device at $650, and non-buyers who chip in a bunch of money in total, that could be sufficient to get the devices made and everything would be fine (moneywise) even if he ends up with a bunch of unsold inventory, since the loss on the actual devices can be covered by the donations. (Of course, if he then managed to sell the rest of the devices, he'd end up with a bunch of extra cash and no investors to return it to, which could be a bit awkward, but not exactly a problem.)

This is, of course, assuming that he can do a production run of hundreds rather than thousands, since thousands of units at hundreds of dollars each would be too hard to fund and too much to store.

Low cost spectrometer designs

Posted Apr 17, 2014 2:54 UTC (Thu) by mkli (guest, #84612) [Link] (1 responses)

What are the shortcomings of publiclab's low cost spectrometer design in this context?
http://publiclab.org/wiki/spectrometer

Low cost spectrometer designs

Posted Apr 17, 2014 17:05 UTC (Thu) by n8willis (subscriber, #43041) [Link]

As I understand it based on Richard's talk, a total lack of accuracy.

Nate