Ask Hackaday: What’s in Your Garage? [Hackaday]

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No matter what your hack of choice is, most of us harbor a secret fantasy that one day, we will create something world-changing, right? For most of us, that isn’t likely, but it does happen. A recent post from [Rohit Krishnan] points out that a lot of innovation happens in garages by people who are more or less like us.

He points out that Apple, Google, and HP all started in garages. So did Harley Davidson. While it wasn’t technically a garage, the Wright brothers were in a bicycle workshop, which is sort of a garage for bikes. Even Philo Farnsworth started out in a garage. Of course, all of those were a few years ago, too. Is it too late to change the world from your workbench?

Basement

We’d argue basements are at least as important (although in southern Texas, they call garages Lone Star basements since no one has proper basements). The real point of the article, though, isn’t the power of the garage. Rather, it is the common drive and spirit of innovators to do whatever it takes to make their vision a reality. A few hundred bucks and an oddball space has given birth to many innovations.

So, what’s in your garage? Or where do you hack? And do you think innovation at that scale is still possible today? When all you needed to build a product that would launch HP was a few soldering irons and hand tools, it was a bit easier slope than standing up a semiconductor fab line.

Easier, Yet Harder?

Then again, some things are easier. Getting a PCB made and stuffed is orders of magnitude easier than it was two decades ago. Prototyping is trivial with 3D printing and CNC machining. Fielding a computer-based application that can scale to millions of users is cheaper and easier than ever, too. So, where are the garage innovators today? Are people no longer willing to work in a garage for little pay, hoping that it will pay off?

And of course, it doesn’t always pay off. You just hear about the ones that do. For every garage band that becomes Nirvana, The Ramones, or Creedence Clearwater Revival, there are probably hundreds like the Fugitive Five you probably haven’t heard of and hundreds more that you absolutely have never heard of. Even Walt Disney (who started in a garage, according to the post) went bankrupt at least once before hitting it big. As investors will attest, you can’t tell who will succeed until they do.

Get Innovating

For a while, big labs were the ones creating innovation, but that’s changed a lot in recent years. Small inventors disrupting the status quo isn’t a new phenomenon. We’d like to see more of it today.

We’re proud to see garage-scale innovation basically every day. Maybe the days when you could start Apple in your garage are gone. Certainly, you can’t actually launch a new personal computer like they did. But will garage innovators play a part in alternate energy, AI, or another nascent field? We hope so. Maybe you’ll be one of them.

Title image courtesy of [Cottonbro Studio]