Zoybar is a an open design project from Israel founded and designed by the designer Ziv Bar Ilan, and it will be available from January 2009.
It’s the project of an open design guitar, and it is a very interesting one, because it shows interest in building an economic ecosystem (an Open P2P marketplace) and for sustainability and local business as well (and therefore for a sustainable local development).
Zoybar is a unique platform for developing innovative music instruments and effects.
The Zoybar components provide research and development tools as a sustainable, playable prototype platform. The same modular parts can be assembled as different instruments, can be change during the performance and also be mounted with numerous special effects, just by adding and changing their position across the profile grooves.
As an independent developer you can use the Zoybar hardware platform to integrate your application and become relevant to the whole Zoybar community.
You can submit your projects as a group administrator and interact with your own forum, members, and rich media content platform for free.
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Basically the design process has two primary principles:
Number one:
Analyzing the system elements by their basic functions and defining them as autonomous components.
Autonomous means that a component is responsible for a specific function, can be attached and removed independently from the platform and does not have an affect on the other components – regarding attachment and production hierarchy.
The development of new features in done on a real working platform at real-time and can be replaced or produced aside the existing components in a quick transition time.
The development of new features can now be focused entirely on a specific function, and can be collaborative with other developers on the platform.
This design approach creates great flexibility to produce a high variety of low demand products, while maintaining the high productivity of large scale production.
It also helps locating problems and to eliminate overproduction by only producing items when they are needed.Number two:
Every component and future development would have the same attachment method.
This means that all of the parts are also spare parts regardless of their version or manufacturer, keeping them relevant, rather then dumping them as useless waste as soon as a new version has been released.
Upgrading means that you no longer need to replace the entire system and that you can trade your past components with others.These design steps creates a sustainable platform for emerging decentralized r&d communities.1
What does it mean an open Hardware platform?
Zoybar was designed to accommodate a very high level of modularity.
All of the components can be replaced, added or removed without the need to hack the instrument.
Zoybar is also open for independent upgrades and modifications.
Think of the Zoybar platform as a hardware version that might be similar to the Firefox browser concept.
Independent developers could create new add-ons and plugins (sound effects) that will become relevant to the whole Zoybar users and community. Almost any application can be easily attached to the Zoybar platform, just by adding and changing its position across the profile grooves with common bolts and screws.
Further along the Zoybar users will have numerous modifications and upgrade options as more developers will join the community. Adding a new feature or swapping components within the Zoybar community will be an amazing low cost option for those who are always looking to enrich their sounds, instruments and performance repertoire. 2
via | odesign community
