Hand illustrations to start, moving to 3D models in Sketchup. After the full patent, Sketchup is thrown over for Fusion 360 given the latter's support for Joints & Assemblies.

The Provisional Application kicks off a year of prototyping, counting down to the deadline for a Full Utility Application.

With little experience as a Maker (just SW), I dig in to Mechanical Engineering, Lean Manufacturing, and Electrical Engineering at Techshop. Prototyping feeds back to CAD, which advances to parametric and >5X geometry. Various CAD2CAM workflows are documented from model to part: 3D printing; wood CNC; metal CNC; JET mill & lathe; Al-TIG welding (frame).

With three months left on the Provisional, a law firm's retained for the Utility Patent. Their artist doesn't do Sketchup so I produce 17pp of figures: not fun! Made the deadline by three days. Slept for a week.

"Prototyping: each / problem opens the next one / Make, break, cry, repeat" (Maker haiku!) Mechanical components progress from single parts, to subassemblies, to full assemblies ready for motorization. With motors come a need for electronics & software control.

Birdhouse comprises 3 tiers: 1) a RasPi SBC for the event loop, 2) a mobile app for the UI, 3) microcontrollers for realtime stuff like motor control. 1&2 talk to each other via REST, 1&3 via I²C (poor 2&3 don't talk at all). The first "pave" includes a working HAL (hardware abstraction library) letting dev proceed with virtual HW as real HW catches up.

This first integration of HW and SW brings Birdhouse "to life". Parts are working, iterations are sorta-smooth ... the product and company seem "real". Interdrone 2017 is coming up so I head over to meet customers and explore use cases. Talked to 20-30 people, learned a lot, interest was strong. Need to build a web site, and talk to more people!

There's plenty of content already: project work in JIRA (tickets) & documentation in Confluence (wiki). To publish it, I'm using a CMS that re-skins the wiki as a web site. Heavy lifting up-front with HTML and CSS, but later updates are wiki'ty-quick. More to come, stay tuned!

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Birdhouse is being developed on a so-called "Agile Scrum" cycle like a software project. Out of each 2-week "Sprint" come three versioned artifacts, one each for software, hardware/mechanical, and the Customer Platform. Newsletters report on the last Sprint or two. Also the odd cut-or-keep survey to prioritize work.