DIY Electronics is Changing the World

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Schafer: Exactly. I ran the Microcomputer Users Group of Western Colorado and this is just as fun as that. Now, the maker movement as it is, honestly there's some good marketing that went into it by Make Magazine which used to be owned by O'Reilly, and they've combined a lot of things. If you go to a Maker Faire you'll see some Arduino stuff, you'll see some 3D printers, and you’ll see some steampunk. I went to Detroit and they had jet powered go-karts. In San Mateo, you see electric-powered bicycles and guys riding around in cupcakes and electrified bands shooting lightning bolts. It's just a gathering of creative people who said, "I want to make something."

The fun ones are the ones they just wanted to make just so they could do it, to show their friends or just an idea they had. Then there's a whole range of people that are educators that are teaching students, or people that have a vision of building a product, maybe to sell in the maker market or use the maker market tools and contacts of engineers, because about 25% of makers at these maker events are professional engineers.

That is the reason why, even though I'm a commercial touchscreen LCD company, I did a maker product. Because they'll use my maker product and if they need something bigger, faster, or if they're doing it at home and they need to do something at work they'll say, "Hey. Why don't I call EarthLCD? They did cool stuff with arLCD, I'm sure they have other LCD solutions." That's really what we are, an LCD solutions company.

Matties: It sounds like you guys are doing a lot of good things.

Schafer: It's a lot of fun, and you know what? If you can't have fun why do it?

Matties: Exactly. Thanks for talking with me today.

Schafer:  Nice talking with you, Barry.

Visit EarthMake for more details: EarthMake.com

For more information, watch the following TED talk with Massimo Banzi: 

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