#SeeedRecipe Maker Story: JackRose, Presenting Product Ideas with Hardware

Playing with Arduino and other developement boards are so much fun. Not only because it has the simple programmable IDE with the capability to all kinds of sensors, but also because the simple connecting interfaces, modulized ready-to-use components that makes rapid prototyping so easy for us to present our creative ideas.

JackRose, who uses mostly Arduino and Grove modules to generate a lot of new product ideas, talks about his experience with boards and new product development.

When did you start using Arduino or open source hardware platform? What was it like before you work with any of these platform?

Just start in this year 2015.

At the very first beginning, I develop 10-axis sensor fusion on TI MSP430 using CCS compiler at previous job. At my present job function, I am kind of an idea provider to develop IOT related product around ASUS Routers.

Talking about how I started this journey: I prevoiusly had the TI MSP430 and Stellaris Launchpad Development board in hand, and were trying to seek some sensors for project demo, and then just found there a Grove kit for this platform from Seeedstudio.

Why would you start using Arduino and what do you think of it?

I develop prototypes to demo my ideas.

I start from TI Stellaris board used Energia IDE, then got Seeeduino Cloud from Seeedstudio and switch to Arduino IDE. I also got the Realtek Ameba, MTK LinkIt and ESP8266 these kind of IOT platforms.

Speaking of Dev Tools, Arduino IDE is very easy to build a draft project for a beginner or a developer who just want to demo an idea.

AICam Night Patrol

8×8 LED Matrix play background on ASUS Router

Nowadays people are enormously involved in IoT projects, what platform do you prefer? What do you think about it?

It’s hard to say! Platforms focus their superiority in different functionality. The IOT HW should depend on the application to choose a suitable platform. For real products to the market, the platform is chosen depending on what the application is, what resources the features need and the cost of course!

For example, ESP8266 is for very low power and simple applications.
Need Homekit support? Realtek Ameba & Marvell may be initial palyers.

MKT Linkit has more connectivity and sandbox cloud features, or you can try Raspberry Pi for Windows IOT core, and Dragonboard™ 410c for Google Brillo Weave.

For experienced programmer, the Dev Tools and IOT Platforms are usually chosen depending on the features, resources instead of easy to use or not. What’s more important is the cost from business point of view. Hardware cost is real but software development effort could be really pressed from engineers…(The voice of each boss, not from me ><)

You’ve done many recipes in the living scenarios at home or in the office. What do people think about your projects? Do you build projects for other people too?

The purpose I build the prototype project is to demo my idea and test the response. It’s a good way to show the result to my business dept.. My boss and colleagues love these projects and may collect these pieces of ideas and turn into an inovation product in the near furture I hope. It’s part of my job to present ideas for developing new products.