>> Announcer: Live from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. It's theCUBE covering DevNet Create 2018, brought to you by Cisco. (techy music playing) >> Hello, everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's exclusive coverage here in Silicon Valley. We're in Mountain View, California, for Cisco's DevNet Create. I'm here with Lauren Cooney, our analyst here with Wikibon, of course. Our next guest is Monica Houston, director of Hackster Live, Hackster IO, Hackster.io, open source hardware, really kind of creating a great community model. Really started from a great idea. Great to have you, thanks for coming, joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, we're here at Cisco Live, so no better place to talk about hardware and software coming together, but first talk about how Hackster started, how it grew, where it is now today. >> Okay, so Hackster got started about four years ago here in San Francisco. The founders, Adam and Ben, they said they wanted to make a community for people that were interested in building open source hardware. Adam had actually come from starting his own hardware startup and realized that there were very few resources for people like him that wanted to build electronics, and so started a community. I got involved, started... We actually bought a DeLorean, drove it around the country and did hardware hack-a-thons in 12 different cities in the US. >> And so where's it today in terms of numbers, community members, and you're based in Seattle, is that right? >> I'm in Seattle. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> So, what's the community look like, what's the numbers look like? >> There are half a million people on our site and 15,000 open source projects. >> John: Wow, awesome. >> Yeah. >> That is totally awesome, what projects do you see being the most popular on your site? >> Lots of home automation, home automation's a really popular topic. >> Lauren: Mm-hmm. >> We also get a lot of some pretty cool, like, music synthesizers, amplifiers. All kinds of stuff, yeah. >> That's great, now, say I'm like a... I, you know, have coded before but I'm not necessarily truly a developer. Like I'm a moonlighter, per se. >> Monica: Sure. (laughing) >> How could I get involved in this? >> Oh, man, there's tons of resources. So, actually on our site you can sort by difficulty. >> Lauren: Mm-hmm. >> So, if you want to find some beginner projects you can sort by difficulty and find only beginner projects. Also we have tutorials, so tutorials, getting started projects. >> Lauren: Mm-hmm. >> Like, so you buy an Arduino or you buy a particle board and you want to learn how to use it you can search for a getting started project on the site. >> Lauren: That's great. >> Yeah. >> How are you, like... So, you're at DevNet Create-- >> Monica: Yeah. >> With Cisco and what are you doing here? Like, what are you talking about, what are you really interested in? >> So, I have a project called Breadboard to PCB. I'm actually... So, I was a front-end web developer and then I got into all this, so I'm fairly new to it as well. I've been doing it for about six years. I'm not an electrical engineer. (laughing) I have to tell myself, but I'm doing a project called Breadboard to PCB. I made a PCB last year, sort of taught myself how to do that and realized it's actually not that hard and I want to spread that around to people and make them realize that they can build their own PCBs, too. >> That's terrific, that's awesome. Are you and Cisco, DevNet looking to share content or anything like that that might be cool? >> Yes, definitely. (laughing) >> Lauren: Okay. >> Yeah. >> All right, and is there any more you can tell us about that or is that still in the works? >> Still in the works, yeah, we offer... So, we have all these different partners, like Microsoft, Intel, hopefully Cisco as well-- >> Lauren: Mm-hmm. >> That do, they have, their hub is hosted on our site and people share their projects there with full instructions of a template. We actually go through and make sure everyone shares their code and their schematics. So, they're very well put together projects. >> Lauren: Great. >> Talk about some of the most exciting things you worked on, because one of the things I love about the open source culture is the creativity kind of comes out of nowhere. (laughing) We were just talking, before you came out, about my son, how he's been hacking his own thing. With this culture now you have so much online information. You go to YouTube, there's always a how-to. These communities have great resources. You guys got a robust community. So, there's always that natural, organic, "Whoa, look what this person did." >> Monica: Yeah. >> Can you share some stories around some killer things that happened. Not "killer," good things or just some things that are just creatively cool that you never would've thought would happen. >> Oh, man, so Allen Pan is a maker, I think he's based in LA. He has a YouTube channel, Allen Pan, and he did this really cool... I guess The Last Airbender is a popular movie and he did this flame activated, or punch activated flamethrower on his wrist. So, you try this at home. (laughing) Might be a little dangerous. >> What's his YouTube channel? >> I believe it's Allen Pan, is his name. >> So, there's some creative stuff, so people just tinkering around but there's also some serious hardware engineers. >> Monica: Mm-hmm. >> Any businesses starting out of this? Have you seen any, like, good ventures emerge? >> There's been a few things that I forgot about. There was a really cool watch that was Kickstarted that if you're a cyclist you can wear it and it tells you, like, which way to turn based on your GPS. >> John: Mm-hmm. >> There was some really nice Bluetooth, very elegant, like, Bluetooth controlled lights, that with different colors those are nice, yeah. >> So, what are some of the things you guys are doing in the community that you think's notable that you could share, people might be interested and like, how do you guys organize? There's some things that you guys do differently. What are some of the community activities that, you know, are standard. You know, the normal thing, you have meetups and whatnot, but like, how do you guys run your community, what are some of your guiding principles. Can you share how things work? >> So, we are always open, so you can go to our site and there's no, you know, there's no pay wall or barrier to view all of our content because our content comes from our community, and like, they're the ones that are... We're encouraging them to really document their work. Also, yeah, so we do hardware hack-a-thons where we try to make sure-- >> John: Yeah. >> Everyone's very... We're very beginner friendly, I guess. That's one of our goals is to make sure that people are coming from all different... You know, it's the artists that are making cool projects and-- >> So, when new people come in-- >> Mm-hmm. >> They get welcome letter, kind of community email haze or chat, all that stuff going on, all that's in place. >> We have a news feed, we have discussion, comments on the project that we moderate a bit, so yeah. >> So, Hackster.io. >> Hackster.io, yeah. >> All right, what's the coolest thing you guys are doing right now that you think we should know about? >> So, sort of related, actually this weekend I was at a workshop to learn how to make my own fire projects. (laughing) I like fire, (laughing) yeah. >> John: A pyromaniac community. I want the flamethrower fist thing. >> Yeah, I know. (laughing) >> Lauren: Over here is, yeah. >> I'm instantly like maybe on YouTube or something, I want that. That's a great party trick. >> I think it's great. >> Until something lights up. >> Right. (laughing) >> All right, so what are you doing here at Cisco? What's the focus here, obviously great culture they're building here. Very developer, not a lot of Cisco Kool-Aid being injected here, but much more of an outreach for Cisco, what's your focus here? >> This is all new for me, actually. So, I did not realize that this has got such a huge developer community and was really involved and like, this is a great conference. >> Lauren: That's true. >> People are so nice. >> Yeah, and the internet of things is a big hardware-- >> Yeah. >> Focused market. >> Yes, yeah. >> So, they've got all the software there. >> It's only getting bigger, yeah. >> Cool. >> Mm-hmm. >> Cool, all right, so what's new in Seattle? Give us an update on what you're doing. >> All right, it's still raining there. (laughing) >> That is actually very good to know. (laughing) >> You have Microsoft up there. >> Monica: Yeah. >> You have Amazon. >> Monica: Mm-hmm. >> University of Washington, so you have kind of a nice, kind of geek culture developing up there. So, yeah, good open source hardware vibe up there? >> Yeah. >> What's the community like in Seattle? >> Yeah, I run meetups, there's lots of people that come out to different hardware meetups and there are, like, a lot of new, cool hardware startups. Like for instance, Glowforge is a laser cutter that was Kickstarted recently. >> Lauren: Yep. >> There's some other really neat... DiGo is a home automation light switch. >> Lauren: Mm-hmm. >> Yeah, there's some pretty cool startups. >> So, if someone wants to join your community, what would you say to them if they're watching this video right now, hey. What are they, what's it like to join, what are they going to be... What's the vibe like, what are some of the things that are involved? What's the value for someone watching, that might want to join this, totally into tinkering with hardware? >> One thing is a great format to share your projects, and also to document your projects. Documentation is really important and I like to say that a project doesn't exist unless it's documented. (laughing) >> John: Yeah. >> So, documenting it and then we'll boost your project, we'll share it on our social media and it'll get lots of views. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> It's an open, it's a nerd culture. I mean, by the way, robotics is the hottest thing going on. You can't get involved, a lot of the younger generation are absolutely enamored with robotics, just at all levels. From, you know, you've got drones, which is super cool, right. Then you've got all the kind of stuff that's, it's all about hardware, hardware. >> Well, this is great, I'm on the site and I'm looking right now at the mind control drone. >> Monica: Oh, yeah. (laughing) >> That is, you know, my question is does that really work? Can I, you know, can I actually do something. You know, take this and learn from the site and actually build that? >> There are, and there are some developer, I guess it's EEG or EKG, EMG is another one, that you can really, you know, you can think left or think right and it will go left or right, it figures it out, yeah. >> That is so cool. >> Are people meeting up on the site and doing work together. Is it like a collaborative kind of hub going on there? >> There are some people that are doing that. Yeah, there was a few people on our site that were doing work on the, what was it... Elon Musk's thing, the... Hyperloop. >> John: Yeah. >> There's, like, the Hyperloop contest, and so a few people on our site were doing some work for that. >> Lauren: That's great. >> So, yeah, people are meeting there, yeah, for sure. >> Monica, great to have you here in theCUBE. Thanks for sharing about Hackster.io. We're going to check it out and thanks for the tip on the YouTube channel. We'll get the fire flamethrower. >> Yeah, make your own flamethrowers. >> John's going to be busy this weekend. (laughing) >> I'm a pyromaniac, I keep playing with matches all the time. So, thanks for coming on, I really appreciate it. >> Yeah, thank you. >> Hackster.io, we are theCUBE here live in Mountain View, California. Cisco DevNet Create, the Computer History Museum. We'll be right back with more after this short break. (techy music playing)