[linux-audio-dev] Open firewire audio interface: A back-of-an-envelope prototype plan

Marcus Andersson marcus.t.andersson at spray.se
Sat Nov 27 11:06:29 UTC 2004


Hi,

what you need to figure out is how hardware can be developed by people 
living in different countries, the same way email/sourceforge/CVS pretty 
much solved the distribution problem for software. Here is just a couple 
of ideas.

All interested developers buy a prototype card each. You manufacture it 
and then mail the cards to the developers.

You set up a PC with remote login and give each developer an account. 
Then hook up the prototype to the PC with firewire, JTAG, software 
controllable power supply (GPIO?), webcam and other things that makes it 
possible to test the card remotely.

It will not be as easy as pure software though. With software, you can 
just pop in and actually contribute something with a very small 
investment. In this case all developers have to be dedicated enough to 
actually buy the hardware.

Even if the hardware design is open doesn't prevent a company to make 
money selling it. Why not design everything the open source way, then 
let one or more companies make the investment required to prototype and 
test the card. These companies can then make money by selling the 
hardware, either completely assembled or in parts. To get someone to do 
an initial investment is probably required to get the price down. It is 
often necessary to buy components in the thousands to get a reasonable 
price.

Maybe you should first investigate if there already is a firewire 
prototype card on the market, which can be hooked up to audio converters.

Expect it to take much longer to develop compared when doing it in 
house. Maybe three to four times longer. The time actually spent on the 
development will probably be shorter though.

Marcus

Simon Jenkins wrote:

...

> But like I said, I'm more interested in doing it over firewire.
>
> Cheers
>
> Simon





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