More Musings about Etherkit’s Future
As I mentioned in my previous post, we are still undergoing a stage of tremendous upheaval in our household. I won’t really know how our new life will shake out quite yet, but I am certain that my time will be more restricted. I think I’ll have a good grasp on the extent of this within a month or so. In the mean time, I’ve been thinking about Etherkit. It’s a bit weird to air this out on the blog, but I think it would be good for others to hear my thoughts about this and have the chance to offer feedback.
The assumption is that I’m going to have less time to work on Etherkit (the only real question being how much less time), which means that if I do have enough time left to continue with the business I will need help by either outsourcing manufacturing or finding someone to bring on as a partner. If possible, I’d like to go that route, as I’m not really ready to see Etherkit fold up yet. This would also require more funding, so I would probably have to find a way to raise capital via the sale of equity, or perhaps I could crowdfund enough on a future product to keep things afloat.
Right now I have in the product pipeline OpenBeacon 2, which is perhaps 80% finished (most of the remaining work is in firmware), and a handful of small useful RF modules. On the drawing board I have a couple of QRP transceiver designs utilizing the Si5351 that would definitely fall into the category of cheap and cheerful, and would probably be a lot of fun to bring to market. Also, since OpenBeacon 2 is based on the Arduino Zero, I’ve been discovering the power of the Atmel SAMD series of ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontrollers. I’d love to develop a dev board derivative of the Arduino Zero using some of the SAMD line that have a bit less flash storage and consequently are a bit less expensive. I think hams (and other hackers) would really like such a device.
The other option is that due to time constraints I just cannot realistically continue Etherkit as an active business (at least regarding retail sales of physical stuff). If that happens, then I would still like to stay active in some way, under the restrictions in my available time. Perhaps writing may be a good choice, since that is quite portable and can be picked up and set aside a lot easier than designing electronics. Writing technical books, for a new blog that earns money somehow, or as a contract writer for an existing website are all possibilities. I’ve thought it might be nice to write about test and measurement for the ham’s home lab.
Either way, I’m not done with the ham homebrew community. The open question is merely how much time I can still give. Let me know what you think about the above in the comments.
Back to the Shack
It’s been a while since I’ve transmitted any RF on the amateur bands other than the testing that I’ve been conducting for OpenBeacon 2. Between how much time I’ve been putting into OpenBeacon 2 (and refining the Si5351 library), it’s been very difficult to find the time to sit down to operate. On top of that, I honestly just haven’t felt much of the operating mojo, so unsurprisingly I haven’t even tried to make it a priority.
Generally, it’s not great to force these things, but I’m getting to the point where I’m feeling a bit disconnected from amateur radio and that I really need to be QRV again in order to rebuild that connection. The ARRL Centennial in 2014 was a great operating year for me because it gave me a concrete and interesting goal to pursue.
So I figure that I need something similar to get me motivated again. A good goal perhaps would be to finally finish up basic DXCC from this QTH. As of right now, I stand at 75 confirmed entities in LoTW. It shouldn’t be that difficult to get 25 more confirmations in LoTW by the end of the year, especially if I carve out a couple of weekends for contesting. I used to chase a lot of the big DXepditions as well, and that might be another good source to pick up a handful of ATNOs (assuming I pay whatever fee they charge for a prompt LoTW upload). I’d also like to actually get a successful HF SOTA activation or two under my belt, and this would be a good summer to do that.
The League
Speaking of the venerable institution, I let my membership lapse recently. Not really with the mind to do so, but given the rather significant dues increase, it was becoming a bit more difficult to justify the expense. Yeah, they are only asking $10 more per year, but I have to ask myself if I’m getting $50 of value every year.
I was honestly barely reading the QSTs that were arriving in the mail. However, the archives always have been one of the best features of the membership. I’m glad they do work with the FCC to represent our interests. Their lab does a good job of evaluating products. It feels that their organizational structure is a bit too ossified; a bit too hierarchical for my tastes. Getting feedback to the leadership seems difficult if you aren’t already connected to leadership.
On the balance, I’m generally pro-ARRL, but I still don’t know that I see the value of just forking over $50 annually. I understand why they needed to do a rate increase (although it probably would have been better to phase it in more gradually rather than a 20% hit all at once). I also understand the economics of why it would be difficult to offer a membership without QST, unless a paper QST was scrapped entirely. I would be curious to see how the rate increase ends up affecting their member numbers and their bottom line.