Nanode - An Open Hardware Success Story

Big ideas have to start somewhere small - and that was exactly how Nanode started.

In early July 2010, having spent a month in southern China, and temporarily out of a job, I started to rummage some of the ideas I'd had - whilst couped up in a Chinese hotel bedroom for 29 days.

This blog post of 13th July seals the date on which I first mention putting the ethernet controller and the AVR micro on the same board as I had clearly been studying the Tuxgraphic's ethernet webserver. So the idea was launched and what was to become Nanode, was conceived.

Nanode was originally built on a breadboard and then demonstrated at the first of our Snowdon build sessions over Bank Holiday August 2010.

A lot has happened in the intervening year, the breadboarded prototype unimaginatively called Ethernet Arduino, finally appeared towards the end of March, on a neat pcb and renamed Nanode.

In the last 5 months, 552 Nanode boards have been manufactured, and over 500 sold, worldwide.

As I write, there are now 550 new boards being manufactured in the USA by Wicked Device, and a further 500 being produced in Shenzhen, Southern China.

By the middle of September, over a 1000 new Nanodes will be available at the time of the Open Hardware Summit and New York City MakerFaire.

The first 550 Nanodes have been a "kitchen tabletop operation", which clearly has to shift a couple of gears to become capable of supplying Nanodes in quantities of perhaps 1000 per month. Fortunately I have teamed up with some old friends in Hong Kong and Shenzhen who will manage the manufacturing operation.

Additionally, I now have a small, but expanding network of resellers, who will handle the day to day sales and distribution.

So it was timely that I had opportunity to present a summary of the Nanode Project at OggCamp over 13th and 14th of August. Here's the video Nanonde - an Open Hardware Success Story.