The Inventors Paradox 

it is if you go broke doing it!

Since when do the chinese of a copying persuation care about patents or copyright?

@@rimmersbryggeri They don't. But the importers, distributors, and resellers in western countries do.

@@akiko009 Do they really though? Doesnt seem like it in the "Same old Korean shit" (an expression from the 90's music business) markets that are everywhere and even infiltratin legitimate businesses.

Publish it! Make it public domain, then it's un-patentable forever!

​@@leosbagoftricks3732 but what if I want to make money? sorry if that sounds too capitalistic but money is nice and can also be used for good.

@@cesarparra6025 nobody is stopping you from making money! Just move faster and smarter

Great comment! brightened my day.

Agreed, the brass part was the zero tooling cost prototype solution.

Linked in the description now!

in return you would get peanuts, and the corporations would take all the honey ... bottomline, and you'd have no control over what they pay out to you ....

The problem is communications, unless you have fancy wiring, how do you send data to an individual LED? The Concept revolves around the super basic 2-wire connection which makes fabrication easy.

@@leosbagoftricks3732 I was thinking LED light strips where the LEDs can be individually programmed through a bus, "WS2812 controlled RGB LEDs" as Bitluny uses in ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fz2QAV9z_o8.html . Those LEDs seem to have four leads and they seem to be fast enough to be used as a screen. I realize that two leads are easier and cheaper than four, but not that more expensive? And I can buy those at $6 for 20 - you could probably find a way better deal. So a sign manufacturer without too much electronics skill could build a sign and drill holes for the lights. Drop the lights on a light strip into the holes. For large/complex objects, multiple light strips could be used. Run the calibration routine to figure out where each pixel/LED is in x/y space. After that, coming up with the patterns to run would still require some artistic talent, no way around that. Hm... well, perhaps colored 4d perlin noise. All this could of course be performed by a skilled electronics developer who took his time to note where each pixel/LED goes, but for a great number of LEDs, that might become cumbersome. The "business idea" would be to * sell cool signs or sell * the light strips * the calibration software that maps LEDs to x/y coordinates * the software to design the light patterns * the driver that sends the light patterns to one or several light strips connected to the driver/sign cheers, m

@@mattiasfagerlund My train of thought, exactly, after watching this video. Serially-addressable LEDs (strips) are the cheapest way now to do something like this. The money could be in making the controller communicating via BLE to a phone, and the software on that phone mapping 2D or even 3D positions of the LEDs and building the model, then allowing drawing animations on top of that, and/or mapping pictures/video on it. Sell this to sign vendors, or directly, along with LED strips, or as ready-made signs. To increase refresh rates the controller could drive a few strips in parallel. Otherwise, I feel you, chasing the rabbit down the hole is what engineers live for, and you need to learn business-oriented thinking, and when to stop the chase, to survive as an individual "product developer".

Was that the Capaciflector idea?

Thanks for sharing your ideas. The bandwidth of the power bus as a communications medium is very low, not practical for programming.

Makes sense! Thought if they had IDs you could still use this method by (IR-)blasting the whole program from a bright LED source instead of the projector. Overall I think the product it's a great idea! Specifically the use of the Alucobond/sandwich panels for this, since they are already in use in the signage industry. Good luck!

It might not be just Leo's decision, business partners might have something to say

The word "partners" might be a clue.

...or something nobody needs or could afford

@@leosbagoftricks3732 Alot of over complicarion going on, especially in electronics. Almost like "makers" want to show how smart and advanced they are by making their products needlessly obtuse. That's what I like most about your projects the reduction to the least complication possible for the sollution you chose. Not that I'm very accomplished in electronics but I know enough to see when there are possible unnecesary fault sources.

Cost, Cost, and Cost. The MCU is too expensive.

@@leosbagoftricks3732 Not any more! You can get decent MCU's for

@@leosbagoftricks3732 BTW, if $/pixel is the main bottleneck, I bet you could eliminate the housing altogether by putting 3 solder bumps on the back of the PCB to contact the front power surface. A standard screw and nut (CHEAP) contacts a plated hole in the PCB to the back power surface. Now the pixel pops out of the PCB panel and is ready to use. Maybe add a conformal coating if weather resistance is needed. I bet you could make 10K pixels for

@@bigjoshlevine Please point me to an MCU with 14K Bytes of self-programmable FLASH for $0.10!

@@leosbagoftricks3732 Are you storing a stream of uncompressed 8-bit R,G,B values? Any RLL or delta compression?