LittleBits Asks Users to Invent Its Next Product for a 10 Percent Cut

bitLabs is a new platform that will act like an app store for hardware.

design_disrupt

When littleBits launched in 2009, it looked like a product company. Its founder Ayah Bdeir had created a kit of circuit boards and electronic components that would snap together via tiny magnets. It was a maker kit made for makers. For the next five years, littleBits kept adding products of growing complexity to its library of modules: A Synth Kit, a NASA Space Kit, an Arduino module that allowed makers to program their prototypes, and most recently, a cloudBit that made it possible to connect and control every littleBits module through the internet.

By all accounts, with upwards of 60 modules, littleBits is a successful product company. Only, that was never really Bdeir’s goal. Today, the company is rolling out bitLabs, a new platform for crowdsourced hardware. Makers will be able to prototype new littleBits modules and submit them to the company to be manufactured and sold in the marketplace for a 10 percent cut of every piece sold. It's a big step for the company, and a better indication of its ambitions, which is to be the most extensive platform for hardware creation and innovation available.

It took a while to get here---every kit and module littleBits offers today was a stepping stone to building an ecosystem that could support a platform like bitLabs. “While we were creating the foundation, people thought that’s all that we were,” says Bdeir. “This has always been the vision of the company from the very first day; it’s always been about creating this infinite platform for innovation.”

A Tool for Inventors

The new kit called the HDK (Hardware Developer Kit) functions a lot like a SDK. Included is the Proto Module, a magnetic connector that allows you to connect any exterior wire or circuit to the littleBits ecosystem. There’s also a Perf Module which is essentially a breadboard and bitSnaps, the magnetic connectors you find on most littleBits components. All of these pieces will expand littleBits' reach and allow makers to tinker with prototypes that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible.

But the bigger innovation is the online platform for manufacturing those prototypes. Makers are encourages to submit their working prototypes to littleBits, where they will then be voted on by the littleBits community. Any prototype that gets more than 1,000 votes (Bdeir says the number of required votes will increase eventually) will be pushed to the next phase where the littleBits team will review it for manufacturability. littleBits will shoulder the cost of manufacturing winning prototypes, and those items will then be sold in the marketplace.

It’s vaguely reminiscent of the Quirky model, which asks community members to submit and vote for winning products before designing and manufacturing them. littleBits system caters to people who already have experience in engineering and making hardware since submissions must be a working prototype; this should help to cut through the noise of moonshot ideas. The company already has a long list of dream modules, which can be seen on its Dreambits page. There are ideas for video cameras with a USB port, an electromagnetic coil bit, a solar-powered bit and a bit that could register proximity like the iBeacon.

Aligning the Incentives

People are already hacking these ideas into existence, but Bdeir believes creating a marketplace for this hardware will only increase experimentation. “It’s our mission to democratize this industry which has been archaic and top down and very closed,” she says. “We want to flip it on its head. We want to do to it what 3-D printing has done to manufacture or what the app store has done to app and game development.”

The platform is launching with five modules, including a touch sensor from Bare Conductive, the conductive paint platform and an EKG from Backyard Brains. These bits are just the beginning, if Bdeir has her way. She says the submission to creation process will take anywhere from 30 to 90 days depending on the complexity of the module. It’s a level of convenience that might potentially spur a whole new set of people to tinker and create, which Bdeir hopes will lead to some groundbreaking gadgets and ideas that won’t necessarily come out of Cupertino. “bitLab brings it all together,” she says. “We have a really powerful library, software and hardware interaction and then you add a marketplace for user-generated software and the sky’s the limit. It’s going to really change the hardware industry.”

You can buy the HDK kit for $39.95 here.