Bildr in Private Beta
Bildr - a new site for collaborative technical information on parts, modules, and technology. A wiki of sorts. Created by geeks, for geeks, for building cool stuff.
We're constantly banging our heads against the wall looking for a good solution to uniting the datasheet, example code, example projects, footprints, and gotchas with any given component or technology. I don't know if there is a total solution yet, but bildr is getting refreshingly close.
From Adam Meyer:
bildr is a community driven site for Artists, Designers, Makers, Builders, or anyone interested in the world between electronics and code. Simply put, bildr is all about getting your ideas working with less time and effort.
At bildr we are rethinking the ways in which DIY sites have previously approached this world. Typically, the approach has been to showcase an individual's project, while including full instructions that would enable a user to create a duplicate. bildr's method is quite different.
Instead of focusing on individuals' projects, bildr features community-written, collaborative articles that can be used as the foundation of an individual project. The articles come in three forms: Components, Modules, and Generic.
- Components - (example: ADJD-S371 Color Sensor) show you how to connect and use an individual component. These pages also include code when needed.
- Modules - mini-projects. These are all about how to do/make one thing. Like making an electro magnet, or sensing distance.
- Generic - basic articles on electronics (like "SMD") similar to what you would find in wikipedia but written to explain the concept quickly.
Because the articles are all single topic, they create a modularity of information so that, unlike other sites, the information is only written once, and is referenced anywhere it is needed. This enables the entire community to write and rewrite, yielding better, more complete articles. This also allows users to choose how much they want to read. Already know what a darlington-pair is? Skip it. But if you don't, and you would like to know, the article is waiting.
So that's bildr - you supply the idea, we supply the know-how.
bildr is currently in private beta, and is looking for anyone interested in potentially helping with the project. We need everyone from grammar spotters to graphic designers; from electronics masters to simply helpful people.
If you would like to help out, or just want to poke around, the invite code is bildrInvite76f3 - You can register at http://bildr.org/register
Great idea! Here is my vote for it to succeed also.
Sounds like a great way to roll Instructables and Thingiverse's inventory feature into one extremely useful, modular collection. Great idea! I just registered to help out.
I dream of a point where I could select a set of parts and click combine and it would show all possible permutations of those items into working devices including valid schematics and working example code. Glorious.
When I was younger (about 9 years old) with my boxes of resistors, diodes, transistors and caps I would go online to find some projects I could do. It seemed to me like I was ALWAYS missing at least one frustrating part, no matter how hard I tried to stock up. It made me stop messing with electronics for a year or two. Of course now, I can use micros and that simplifies the process a lot, but something like that would still be great. It would also be a great way to turn leftover parts into products.
part 2
or read tutorials out there and become a layer, but here you can read about a lot of stuff, and start building projects for industries and get money with it :S
don't know, let's just take a look at the future of eletronics... there are a bunch of open stuff on programming out there and computer science course didn't end up
part1
well, I think it will help a bunch of people, specialy the new ones in eletronics, that if this suceed, they will come up in a "world" that you can just search for stuff that you want to learn, and see codes for everything you have... like wikipidia today, we can remenber when we had to search for other peoples articles or stuff like that where on the internet, and now it's everything on wikipedia, in a detailed way...
So imagine learning how to make hard stuff, this guys will come up and find sdcard stuff, usb stuff, ethernet stuff, color lcd stuff, cmos camera stuff, wireless, batteries... etc, wich is nice...
the only bad point about this ideas is that some stuff aren't like that in other areas, and as you share your knowledge, it will worth less... so wikipedia for general knowledge, but this stuff will get like a bunch of technical information... you know, you can't read about medicine on the internet and go to work in surgery...
Very neat idea, though a bit idealistic. What they'll need to have unified VERY quickly in order to work correctly for the modular code stuff is a unified API per architecture.
For example: there are a million ways one can talk to the I2C peripheral on a dsPIC. If you want to you can have a single byte transmit method which blocks, a interrupt based method which doesn't block unless the I2C peripheral is busy, an interrupt based method with a buffer which never blocks but fails when the buffer is full, etc etc etc.
And a lot lot lot of peripherals will need to do something like send a series of setup commands over I2C. Unless someone writes a definitive I2C communication library all of those can't be integrated together, which kind of breaks the idea.
Some things, like Arduino will have this down with no problem, but others, like PIC18 or dsPIC, will have a lot of heavy lifting to be done beforehand.
Good luck to them though!
Not perfect, but it's a start!
My company just signed up to help.
I like this idea, and I think it would be especially useful if each project provided a code "overview", that gave users an understanding of what is taking place in software, and an ability to write the code themselves, in a language they understand.
Thought about this quite a bit.
Really it ends up being a way to organize the code. If you have code for XYZ Gyro written for a picaxe, and I have code for the arduino, We can put them in the same place.
Now when a user comes a long they may not see what they need, but they know right way. They don't have to search through their pages and not find it.
Robomaniac: if you think about it, it is like wikipedia. You click a link and you can learn what is LED or anything. Then people can edit the text and make it better. You can also find exemple of code.
There is a lot of potential but a lot of work because there is SO MANY things to build!
It might take a long time before you see the code example of every micro in asm or C for a specific project.
Think about it, jsut for the PIC, you asm, basic and C. Just for C you have more then 5 different compiler!
CCS, C18, HITECH,CC5X, etc.
Yes a FOR loop is the same for compiler, but setting the bits for interrupt,PWM and ADC is different, the function called are not the same. EE and computer science won't have trouble finding that out but we are talking about artist,designer, etc that need the answer now!
Just registered. I have a ton of code I want to upload for different projects I have worked on. Will start soon.
If you think about it, it is like wikipedia. You click a link and you can learn what is LED or anything. Then people can edit the text and make it better. You can also find exemple of code.
There is a lot of potential but a lot of work because there is SO MANY things to build!
It might take a long time before you see the code example of every micro in asm or C for a specific project.
Think about it, just for the PIC, you got asm, basic and C. For C you have more then 5 different compiler!
CCS, C18, HITECH,CC5X, etc.
Yes a FOR loop is the same for compiler, but setting the bits for interrupt,PWM and ADC is different, the function called are not the same. EE and computer science won't have trouble finding that out but we are talking about artist,designer, etc that need the answer now!
if you think about it, it is like wikipedia. You click a link and you can learn what is LED or anything. Then people can edit the text and make it better. You can also find exemple of code.
There is a lot of potential but a lot of work because there is SO MANY things to build!
It might take a long time before you see the code example of every micro in asm or C for a specific project.
Think about it, jsut for the PIC, you asm, basic and C. Just for C you have more then 5 different compiler!
CCS, C18, HITECH,CC5X, etc.
Yes a FOR loop is the same for compiler, but setting the bits for interrupt,PWM and ADC is different, the function called are not the same. EE and computer science won't have trouble finding that out but we are talking about artist,designer, etc that need the answer now!
I was just browsing Makershed when I came across a solar cell - "gee what could I use this for" - wonder what SPARKFUN has and here you go the answer is only a click away. Im in
Thanks guys!
I really hope together we can put an end to yak shaving.
Yak Shaving Explained:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=343
There's a blank page for Sparkfun! Someone get on that!
I really hope this comes together and takes off. It could be wildly helpful.
It's gonna take a lot of work to get even close to what the video is talking about. But if they can get there, it might be like the wikipedia of micros.