These are projects that are either planned or ongoing at reserved-bit where members are open to working with others. If you want to participate in one of these projects, just sign up for a membership and come over! Alternatively if you cannot afford a subscription, you can apply for one of our Intern positions and contribute on behalf of reserved-bit.
Sino:bit
Status: Prototype started
The BBC micro:bit became a leading platform to teach programming to children in a way that they understand the fundamentals of electronics and computing from the ground up. One crucial drawback of this device though is that it is only capable of printing English characters.
Naomi Wu worked with Elecrow to design a device that has a bigger LED grid so that it can print Chinese characters as well. We are working on a cost-effective version of this design that can print the various Indian language characters.
Bat Detector
Status: Concept
The Bat Sensor began as a concept at Science Hack Day 2016 but did not make a lot of progress. In the process, we discovered the AudioMoth project that could serve as a basis for a cost-effective bat detector. The high level idea is to evaluate and adapt the AudioMoth design for use cases of Indian Biologists.
Electronic Door Lock
Status: Work In Progress
reserved-bit intends to be an autonomous space that makers can access at their convenience. The aim of this project in that context is to install and enable a lock that can be opened electronically by authenticating members over a secure connection.
The physical door lock has been installed and is functional. Work is now on to design an open solution that makes the door lock autonomous.
ChangeLog Auto-generation
Status: Work in Progress
The glibc project is one of the most popular C runtime libraries for Linux based systems and is a GNU projects. One requirement for all GNU projects is the maintenance of a ChangeLog file that records changes in commits in a specific format.
The ChangeLog file however is not very convenient to merge and is also quite cumbersome to maintain as a result of which the glibc community decided to drop it in favour of auto-generating a ChangeLog file that gives similar information. This involves comparing files and generating ChangeLog format information for each type of file.
Work is underway with a ChangeLog script with a C parser that can compare and display differences for C sources. Similar parsers are required to be plugged into the script for various languages including but not limited to perl, Makefile and assembly code.
FAQ
How do I participate in these projects?
Get in touch with the project members and discuss your involvement. If you find the project interesting and are willing to work with the team, sign up for a membership.
I have a project idea I would like to work on. How do I go about it?
Great! You only have to sign up for a membership and you’re all set.
I have a project idea that I want to work on, but I don’t want to share it with anyone.
That’s fine too. You only need to sign up for a membership and start working on your project. Your project will not be listed on this page.
I have a project idea that I want to work on but I need a mentor.
The project list above should give you an indication of the kind of expertise we have in the reserved-bit community. Our members are open to conversation (as long as you respect their time too!) so feel free to sign up and talk to them.
If you are not sure if your area of interest is covered, please call us and ask. Finally, if you’re looking for more involved mentoring, we have a mentoring program that may be suitable for you.
Who owns the IP for what I develop at reserved-bit?
The IP is owned by whoever works on the project and pays for the subscription. That is, if you’re a paid member, you own the IP of whatever you develop. If you are a project intern, IP you develop is owned by the member who sponsors your membership.
Why don’t you pay Project Interns? That’s exploitation and unfair!
Project Internships are more like scholarships for students who have some amount experience in a project area and would like to build on that using makerspace resources than an actual job. It is not a job that reserved-bit employs them for. If you’re looking for a paying job, then you’re looking for a Makerspace Intern position, which also involves a small amount of administrative work and tutoring
However, lack of a regular compensation does not preclude a reward/compensation if a project actually ends up being a commercial product. For projects hosted and mentored by reserved-bit that become commercial products (there’s a difference, check out this talk by the incredible Harish Pillay), we will strive to compensate everyone involved subject to commercial success of the product. For other projects, we will try to negotiate with sponsor mentors, but we cannot promise for obvious reasons.
What license would your projects have?
All projects sponsored by reserved-bit will be released under an Open Source license. We urge members to embrace the Open Source development model (and wherever possible, the Free Software ethos) but in the end the decision is up to them.