The Smoothieboard v2 project is huge. Pretty much everything we are doing hasn’t been done before : Building on top of a RTOS, having an actual bus to add extra extruders, a complete ecosystem of plug-and-play extension boards, MTP file access, a board version that is inexpensive but not china-crappy, and a ton of features nobody has seen before.
This is taking a lot of time. Recently we have sped things up a bit by paying professional devs to work on some things. We already put nearly $15k into this, and we are running out of money.
We are thinking about doing a kickstarter to help. Not a kickstarter for the Smoothieboard v2 ( that would come later ), but a kickstarter where you would support the project, and get a nice T-Shirt in return.
We’d then use the money to speed up the v2 development.
What do you think ? Would that work ? Would you get a T-shirt ?
Honestly, Kickstarter or Indigogo, etc. are really product focused. If yours was for v2, then I would say yes. For what you are proposing - asking for your loyal group of followers for donations - setting up a Patreon account or just a PayPal account to accept donations might me a better route.
I don’t know the fees Patreon charges, but PayPal is less than 3%. Kickstarter is something like 10%
Save kickstarter for the actual v2, and you have a winner, IMO.
@Roger_Kolasinski We already have a Paypal, it’s on the homepage ( and I’ve made calls on social media for donations ) and nobody donates ( Patreon is something we are considering but I’m skeptical how well it’d work ).
Here people would have a chance to get a T-shirt. Don’t underestimate the power of the T-shirt
Perhaps Patreon or Kickstarter, but based on donation level you can request a feature. Seems like a good way to have people put their money where their mouth is if they want it to do something.
You should include links in your signature. I’m on slow hotel wireless and your home page is appearing at a very slow crawl, gonna take a very long time to find that PayPal link
