Is there such a site where you can participate projects of all sort?

[Alex_Sanders]

You know, like drawing PCB, coding some C, come up with best chip models? And at the same time, gain experience and learn from others?

 

[jim hardy]

check out discovercircuits dot com, forums

 

[Alex_Sanders]

check out discovercircuits dot com, forums

A very content-rich site, thanks!

 

[Mike_In_Plano]

hackaday.com, sparkfun.com, servocity.com, and makazine.coom are places that will get you set up on parts and ideas. Nuts and Volts magazine is also a good place.

I've yet to find a way to work together on projects, which is a bit saddening as I have the deep experience base of an old guy, but lack some of the resources, ingenuity, and determination that I had when younger. It would be fun to have about four guys working together. Especially if the projects were for the shear joy of doing them :-)

 

[DaveC426913]

You might like Make Magazine's online projects site. Wide range of hobbies for the industrious nerd.

http://makeprojects.com/

 

[jim hardy]

It would be fun to have about four guys working together.

Did you retire from industry?

What are you longing to build?

I retired from an electric power plant. Want to build an Evans Volksplane...
http://www.google.com/search?q=evan...v&sa=X&ei=KO5ST-vJMc-psAKXnInwBQ&ved=0CCwQsAQ

 

[Mike_In_Plano]

Hello, Jim.

No, I still design electronics, but it's for a consulting firm and most of the work is slapping simplistic building blocks together.

I once worked in semiconductor instrumentation and designed custom instruments for laboratories. Most of this work reaches some point where it's no longer fun, but it was challenging. And, there was a great deal of pride in the results.

Now, I long to develop a process for building improved vacuum sensors and the same for flow sensors. I'd also like to develop an IC to interface vacuum sensors.

Short of that, it might be fun to build a nerf launcher that tracks it's victim via IR bolometers (available at Ti) :-)

 

[DragonPetter]

Is there any project site that has collaboration? Kind of like the open source software projects where people can contribute to larger projects. I would be interested in engineering projects like that. That's what I thought the OP was getting at. I guess there are a lot more barriers to doing a general engineering project this way compared to just a software project.

I remember a site that had freelance projects though. Basically people and companies put out small projects for engineers and technicians to apply for in exchange for payment. This probably wouldn't be the best site to collaborate and learn from others though.

 

[DaveC426913]

I remember a site that had freelance projects though. Basically people and companies put out small projects for engineers and technicians to apply for in exchange for payment. This probably wouldn't be the best site to collaborate and learn from others though.

elance does this.

 

[Mike_In_Plano]

I'm game.

I have the layout, simulation, and PLD programming tools as well as lab equipment and over half a life in the R&D business.

If we could get three mentors, EE, CSE, and ME along with three corresponding up and comings, I think we'd probably have a pretty good team.

 

[Alex_Sanders]

Yea I totally want to game, although I'm not in the states, don't know if that's a huge issue...

I can get you guys materials needed though, things are heck lot cheaper here than in the states...

 

[DragonPetter]

Actually I had been thinking of creating a social network/service website that allowed people to submit project ideas, and to recruit members of the site to volunteer portions of the project to form project teams.

Say there's an engineer who wants to make a specific design. Maybe he doesn't have access to a machine shop or some software package. He could submit a goal, and the kinds of help and resources the project needs. Then other engineers/techs could browse through all of the submissions and enter themselves into the projects they found interesting. Designs could come together, and if there was a physical/expensive aspect to the design, then at the end of a design people could decide to come together to build it. This is not ideal in an engineering sense since prototyping is very important and you can't really expect to do an entire design before building something, but I don't know how any single member could have ownership and control over other people's contributions. If members joined a project, but had no experience on how to design some things, the creator or other expert members could teach others how to design stuff to get the project going.

You could also have projects that are hobby level where people just help towards an "open source" design. People would choose how much money and resources they would want to contribute, and so the projects would be limited by funding this way. If someone dropped out, the team could simply recruit another person in the pool of members, and so a project would float to the top based on its popularity and progress. The website could accumulate a database of designs, tools, simulators, theories, etc. that are made available to all the members. The website would also include features for communication, project management, etc. Say when you create a project, a forum group is created for that project and an upload space is created along with voting systems and any other interactive tools you'd want to use to organize the team.

If the design was to be a commercial product, the contributors would then own part of the design based on the completion of their tasks. There would also be confidentiality and other legal issues with this route, so I doubt I'd want to tackle that. Perhaps anyone could take the design and make a commercial product with it, so the person with the idea sacrifices their sole right to it so that it can become a reality.

Basically I want a website where companies and open source projects can spontaneously come into existence and cool projects can be collaborated on by people in their part-time that have a genuine interest in them other than making profits. It would bring old and new engineers together on an equal setting, where there is no boss or authority, and where experience/knowledge is admired and respected. There would also need to be some way for physical parts to come into reality. It would be similar to how artists can join an art studio and pool their resources together to create their art.

I know that's a half-baked pipedream, but I think a lot of good things would come from something like that.