You are on page 1of 23

Unit -2

Internet Principles and Communication


Technology

2.2 Prototyping

A presentation
By
G. ASHRITHA
Assistant Professor
Dept of ECE
CONTENTS
 What is Prototyping?
 Why Prototyping?
 Sketching & Familiarity
 Cost vs Ease of Prototyping
 Prototypes and Production
 Open Source vs Closed Source
 Disadvantages of Open Source
 Open Source as a Competitive Advantage
 Open Source as a Strategic Weapon
 Mixing Open and Closed Source
 Closed Source for Mass Market Projects
 Tapping into the community
What is Prototyping?
 IoT prototyping is the action of experimenting and
implementing design ideas into preliminary versions of a
finished product.

 Essentially, it involves trying out and testing different ways to


bring something from the planning phase to reality

 The most sensible approach to start creating an IoT device is to


make a Prototype, that has the same functionality as envisioned
by the design idea.

 IoT is all about doing 3 things in parallel: Physical thing,


Electronics to make thing smart and Internet service to connect.
Why Prototyping?
 Many IoT projects start with Prototyping

 Successful implementation of the prototype makes way for an


idea worth selling

 Early debugging is the primary benefit of prototyping

 Prototype is optimized for ease and speed of development and


ability to be modified

 The process of manufacture will iron out the issues of scaling


up and polishing
Why to learn about Prototyping?

 New microcontrollers are constantly coming into the market

 Popularity of server software stacks is ever changing

 Rapid prototyping continues to evolve


Sketching
 Sketching is the process of exploring the problem space; it is
the first step in exploring your idea

 It is the process of jotting down some ideas or drawing some


design ideas

 It focuses on ease and speed with which one can try things out

 It involves both hardware and software

 Hardware deals with physical design whereas software design


involves breaking the problem into parts and addressing each
individually
Familiarity
 The familiarity of the developer with the physical device and
the programming language influences the choices made in
hardware and software design of the prototype

 For example, if the developer is well-versed in Python, he can


choose Raspberry Pi unambiguously for designing the
prototype
Cost vs Ease of Prototyping
Choice Features
AVR microchip 3 pounds;
Difficult wiring

Arduino board 20 pounds;


Labelled headers, exposed GPIO pins,
Supporting IDE

Beaglebone 30 pounds;
Supports Linux, Javascript,
Available toolkit

Smart phone 300 pounds;


Internet connectivity, I/O capabilities,
C, Java, Python, HTML
PC 1000 pounds;
NIC , I/O capabilities
Cost and Ease Trade-off
 The trade-off can be addressed by “doing the sensible and
easiest thing that could probably work”

 The choices of hardware and programming language are based


on the skill-set of the developer

 There is “strictly no right answer” but there is “no wrong


answer either”
Prototypes and Production
 Building many thousands of devices based on the prototype
offers a new set of challenges and questions

 The following factors need to be taken into account during


mass production of product based on the prototype
• Changing Embedded Platform
• Physical Prototypes and Mass Personalization
• Climbing into Cloud
1) Changing Embedded Platform
 Cost/Size reasons

 Replicating compelling functionality on final target

 Re-writing code in modern high-level way

 Faster processor speed and more RAM

 Ramping-up time to learn new technologies or programming


languages
2) Physical Prototype and Mass Personalization
 Challenges in scaling devices to production

 Mass Personalization
• Targets specific user groups
• Offers something unique with accompanying potential to
charge a premium
3) Climbing into Cloud
 Run on server software

 Run on Cloud Computing Platform


Open Souce vs Closed Source

 Closed Source:
• Your assertion as creator of your Intellectual Property
Rights

 Open Source:
• Your users’ right to freely tinker with your creation
Why Closed?
 Asserting IP rights – copying the code infringes IP rights

 Suitable for large companies to keep their work confidential

 One has to reverse engineer the functionality of H/W and S/W


to know the details

 Closed to Open is possible but the reverse isn’t


Why Open?
 Sources used to create the project are released to the whole
world

 Reasons to give away your work


 Positive comments
 Public showcase of your talent & new opportunities
 People may fix bugs or make improvements
 Get support or mindshare of quality
 Get invited to conferences
 Gift economy
Disadvantages of Open Source

 People may steal your idea

 Releasing as open source takes time and resources

 Answerable to a community

 Being a good citizen: cachet associated with open source

 Poor quality publishing of your work may sound rude


Open Source as a Competitive Advantage
 Software tested, debugged and improved by many eyes

 Chance to gain mindshare – correct design mistakes

 Open source project easily gains goodwill and enthusiasm to


become a platform

 “Geek” community chooses you


Open Source as a Strategic Weapon

 Commoditizing complements – use of open source for


complementary products

 Risks and Opportunities – to undermine competitor


Closed Source for Mass Market Projects
 Can get existing supply and distribution chain on your side
- advantage of entering first into the market and doing
so cheaper

 Supply chain can affect other considerations of physical


device – cost , effort required in moving to mass scale
Mixing Open and Closed Source
 There always exists a trade-off between IP rights and benefits
of Open Source

 This calls for a blend of both – Open Source and Closed


Source

 It implies having control over “what to say?” and “how much


to say?”
Tapping into the Community
 Mind sharing is important as you scale up

 Allows for using a platform in which other people can monitor


you

 Have control over “how much to say” and “whom to say”

 Outpouring of creativity that changes the world by being in


touch with local/internet community

 Face-to-face meetings at hackspace


THANK YOU

You might also like