This is a bonus, listen, that is a bit different.
I felt it would be interesting to give you some tips and best practices on the process of creating your
own original project.
So this lesson is not technical, but just some general tips from my own experience.
The goal here is to give you some ideas of where to start and what to do for your future projects,
starting also from what we have done in this course and in this final project of the course.
And I would focus on mainly five parts first.
How to get ideas if you don't already have one.
OK, that could be ideas for a hobby project, all, for example, for a startup project and then a
full step process.
I would do for a new Keystone project, which is first to imagine the global architecture for the project,
then to build a proof of concept and then build a project.
In other words, the prototype.
And finally, and this is optional how to go further with your prototype.
Once you have done the project, all right, and let's get started.
So first of all, you will need, of course, a project idea.
So if you already have one?
Well, you can just watch this for more inspiration.
And then we're going to get started with how to build the project.
But if you don't have ideas?
Well, if you're looking for a hobby project, so a hobby project would be something that you do at
home.
Just for the purpose of having fun are also educational purpose.
So if you want to learn more about Arduino.
Well, first of all, and that's kind of obvious, but you can search for art in a project on Google,
and you can see you would have like 20 Project and he 400 Project 50 300, so you can browse all those
ideas and then maybe you will find something that you like.
I'm going to just show you, for example, on the Arduino Project Hope.
OK.
You have many different projects you can browse, OK?
And so for each project, you have a description.
How do you project the code?
Everything.
So you can get started with this.
So you have a step by step way to do project.
If you go on Instructables also and just search for, I don't know here.
Well, you also have many, many marginal projects, okay, so you can for young people in the games
with OCD and all kinds of cool projects, some of them are going to be more hardware related, some
of them more software related.
OK.
You can find many different things.
So if you too to practice more, we just project that's already existing that already have a solution
while not something you can look at.
And then, of course, you can create your own project with your own ideas and maybe post them in those
websites and know well, if you are looking for ideas for a starter project, for example, if you want
to commercialize a product or just help people with a product, then well, the first question is,
of course, what is the real problem you're going to solve here?
OK, what's the real problem they have and how are you going to solve it?
And for this where you can browse projects?
But basically the most important thing is to find what is the real problem and how to solve it.
There is no way around that.
So if you're expecting me to give you a very clear answer on how to find a good project for a startup
while unfortunately I'm not going to give you that because what the real answer here is, it depends.
And every problem will have a different solution.
But then once you know, what is the problem you're trying to solve?
And then once you know that you can make your prototype without, you know, then you have to project
it.
And we can start with the full steps process to build the project.
So first of all, before you even get started with your project, so before you write code, before
you do electronics, before you do anything, you have to imagine what is the global architecture of
your project?
OK, so what kind of components do you need?
How they are going to communicate between each other and what exactly is the technical result?
You need to reach for the project.
So for example, if your project is to measure the temperature in one room of your house and to get
this temperature printed on a different room, well, you can think of components that, OK, I need
a temperature sensor, of course, but then I would need to make this communicate with the other room.
So just using wires is maybe not the best solution.
So in this case, well, you might need a Wi-Fi module or a Bluetooth module.
Well, you might investigate on what is the best communication to do that.
OK.
So we'll find what components you need.
You don't necessarily need the exact components right now, but the kind of components?
OK.
And also what this is the technical result you need because, well, if you start from a problem, well,
there are different ways to solve a given problems.
And if you want to create a technical solution with Arduino now probably different ways and different
technical results you can do.
So here you might think of different technical solutions and how everything is going to work together.
And if you do this well, you don't need to spend days and days.
But if you do this well, you may save some money because while the components are going to buy are,
I'm going to be super expensive.
And you may also save a lot of time because one solution may be much easier than another solution.
All right.
So once you have the global architecture of a project, then starting to build a proof of concept on
what we can also call a book.
And so here what is the goal?
The goal is just to show that the idea works.
OK, so if you want to, for example, make a contractual stencil, talk to an LCD screen using wireless
communication, then you're not going to do the whole project, but you're just going to make it work
on your desktop.
So using a breadboard using cheap and easy to use components.
OK.
You're going to add each component one by one.
So for example, first on your breadboard, you add the temperature sensor, you make sure you can read
the value.
And then once it's done, you go to the next component so you test each component, you make the code
for each.
You make a secret a very basic secret for each and then you make them work together and you test the
overall functionalities and you also iterate more doing that.
So you have this temperature sensor.
You have to see that.
Then you're going to, for example, test the LCD screen on a the same way, but a different one.
And then maybe you will need, for example, to adrenals.
So you're going to make sure that you can communicate between the two other nodes using a Wi-Fi module
or using a Bluetooth module.
So just show that the I.D. works here.
You don't need to make the project work at scale or completely fully integrated in the environment.
OK, you just want to show that it's working.
It's kind of what we did actually with this final project of this course.
OK, we put everything in a breadboard.
So first, we build the circuit step by step with each component that we have tested during the.
And then for the final project, we have separated the different functionalities that we want to test,
and each functionality was added on the previous ones that were already working.
And the result is that we have a complete system, a complete obstacle detection system that is working
on the breadboard.
And so this is actually the proof of concept.
So you might want to stop here, but then well, since they would be to build the prototype.
So here you will integrate your project in the environs.
OK.
Just make it work basically can be a prototype can also be called a MVP.
So MVP is a minimal, viable product.
OK, if you are building something for a startup, you need something that is working in the environment.
We did just the mean on functionalities.
You need to solve the problem.
And so here you will need to assemble the components you need to build something, for example, build
mechanical components with a 3D printer with ACNC machine, etc. also sold some components.
Just so here you might not use a breadboard.
But but all the components in the real enlightenment.
And again, you're going to tell the functionalities one by one chemicals.
Now you already have the code.
The code was done in the previous step, so you're going to test again each functionalities.
And now you know that the code is working.
So if something is not working, then is the hardware.
And so you continued, you continue.
You fix issues.
You iterate until the project is working fine on the environment.
OK.
So step two was to just make sure it works.
Step three is when the project in the environment.
And so, for example, if you want to go further with this obstacle detection project, you can actually
make it to work using not a breadboard, but just using the components in a real situation in a robot,
for example.
And in this case, you will need to still do some stuff.
You will need to correctly place the components and then test everything again.
And then you have your prototype, which is ready, and the next step is actually to go further with
the prototype.
And so if you just have a hobby project, you maybe want to share it online and put it open source so
you might put the code on GitHub, for example.
And this is a good way to get feedback and to improve the way you build your project, because putting
something online, you're going to need to correctly package it.
You need to correct Karakia, write the code, add some comments, maybe, and then just write a good
description.
So that's going to help you introduce your project to other people and maybe better understand your
project.
And also, you can get feedback and some other people may use your project.
So that can be useful for everyone.
And if you want to make it a project for a startup company, for example, well, you have to communicate
about it first.
That's very important.
So again, maybe your project can be Open-Source.
That's one option you may think of.
And so basically here you need to will find communities online and just talk about your project and
see if people are interested.
Then if you need some funding, you can start a, for example, a crowdfunding campaign that's very
common to do.
You can use, for example, Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
Those are two very popular platforms.
And on those platforms, you can actually kind of presale your product so that you're going to have
money for the future development and especially for the scale development of your products.
Because if you have need one product, that's very different from making 100 products when it comes
to hardware.
And also, in the meantime, you may want to learn about hardware production, so I'm not going to go
in details about that as a very completely different topic.
Well, you will need to contact suppliers.
So how do our suppliers, mechanical suppliers, maybe suppliers for different models and also PCB manufacturers?
Because maybe after going with Arduino, you're going to make your own PCB.
OK, so you're going to need to learn about all that and all that cost a lot of money, and that's where
the crowdfunding campaign can be really helpful.
All right, that's the end.
Those tips should help you make some better decisions for your next project so you can be more efficient
in the process of doing the project.
Now, let's go to the conclusion section of the class.