SPARKTop
Meet the maker, Jason
Hotchkiss of Sixty‑Four Pixels
Middle^
Le Strum allows you to play
your synthesizer as though
it’s a guitar, by strumming the
stylus across the notes
Above
Connect your MIDI signals
to synth control voltage
with CV.OCDADVICE FOR BUDDING SELLERS
First of all, just go for it! Don’t think it’s going to be
really hard. Things are easier to find now than they
were five years ago in terms of printed circuit board
making. You’ve got very good things like OSH Park
that are quite accessible now. When I was doing
it, you had to find someone in China and deal with
them directly. There were a couple of sites that
made it a bit easier, but quite often it really was a
little bit difficult.
I guess my point is that all these things that look
quite complicated at the beginning, you get past
them all. There’s so much stuff online – especially
now – there are so many forums on that stuff, so
the first thing is don’t be scared that it’s going to be
really hard. The second thing is to have an idea that
you’re really passionate about. You can’t start and
think ‘right, I want to make a product, what shall I
do?’ Well, I guess you can – that’s what companies
do all the time – but I think that doing it on your own,
it’s really important to have the idea for the product
before you have the idea to start a business – at
least from my side. Maybe other people
can do it the other way around, but for
me you have to have the passion
for a product – and it helps
to have one product, one
idea to begin with – and start
small, then build on it as you go.
Be patient: things do take a while
to get going.
I’ve always done things open-source.
My family think I’m mad and a lot of
people just don’t get it – I never used to.
I was always wondering why wouldn’t you
just patent everything – what if somebody nicks
your idea? I really benefited when I was learning
from other people’s open-source stuff, particularly
the Arduino project – it really got me started with
embedded coding and the fact that all the people
very freely give code examples online and stuff,
so I think just keep that spirit of sharing going. I
guess you do take the risk that someone’s going
to take your idea and just run with it, but for me,
I’ve not really had that happen. I’ve seen projects
come along that were very similar to what I’ve
done, but I’ve never regretted sticking everything up
online. I do actually use a non-commercial open-
source licence ... I’m not quite prepared to let go.
[But] keep things open-source; I think it generates
goodwill. More often than not, somebody starting
out is going to be benefiting from other people’s
goodwill to get started.