I attended the Bug Labs get together last night and while in its current state their “open source hardware device” isn’t much to look at, the potential of what they’re offering is pretty exciting.
The ‘BUG’ consists of several connected circuit boards – a motherboard with a CPU and WiFi capability, one board with a motion detector and one with a camera. Add-on modules will include things like a keyboard, monitor, GPS and whatever else a developer would want to add to a specialized device.
It’s a simple idea, and surprising it hasn’t been done until now. At a price of several hundred dollars Bug Labs will offer a modular alternative to starting from scratch for building electronic devices and a cost-effective method of reproducing them. Take for example one of the most hacked devices, the DVR.
Programmers with the technical know-how to create these devices have done so for years by pulling apart an old computer for parts or starting from the basics and soldering components onto boards.
What Bug Labs is doing is bringing the long tail to hardware and making it possible to create useful electronic devices on a personal scale. But while BUG can be useful to many people, the tricky part will be matching non-technical individuals with problems with the developers who can use Bug to solve them.
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