I started electronics in 2009, during that time there were only few makers in Nigeria, most of this makers focused mainly on building of local inverters and every maker tend to hide their circuit and source codes from each other until 2014 when arduino open source platforms became so popular which led to the rapid increase of makers in Nigeria.

Back then in college, we write and sell opensource codes for hobbyists, that's when i realised that many people will develop interest in making interesting hardware projects if they are given the opportunity by making everything they need open source to them. "You learn more by looking at other people's code".

ByteHub Embedded engineer training hobbyists

Thanks to Adafruit, SparkFun, Arduino, Seeed studio and many other companies who have contributed greatly to the hardware makers community by making every project opensource. At ByteHub Embedded, we also have the same passion to drive this vision across Nigeria and Africa using the CloudX microcontroller board. The Hardware Nigeria Community (HNC) and my very good friend Emmanuel Odunlade have been contributing a lot of effort to the actualization of this maker movement.

The Maker Movement is being lauded as the New Industrial Revolution. It has arrived and “it will be bigger than the Web,” says Chris Anderson, former Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine.

 

Simple counter display made with CloudX

The maker movement, as we all know, is the community of inventors, designers, hackers, artists, tinkerers and entrepreneurs working together to promote Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture across the world.

According to Atmel, a major backer of the maker movement, there are approximately 135 million United States adults who are makers excluding children and teenagers and the overall market for 3D printed products and various maker services is expected to reach $8.41 billion by 2020.

A 3D printed electronic product built around the CloudX board

The maker movement is all about using existing technology to empower yourself to create your own things, the kind of technology you want to exist. The maker movement allows people to share projects, how-to-instructions, tutorials, videos and source codes.

Based on the statistics that reveals the size and scope of the maker movement around the world, we thereby call on makers in Nigeria to channel their resources to supporting and promoting the hardware makerspace, organising hardware related events, competitions, exhibitions, maker faires and teaching STEM in schools.

Introducing CloudX for Robotics and AI at the University of Lagos.

At ByteHub Embedded, we also volunteer to give our space for hardware related events and meetups. Let's promote and share local contents so that we can also share in the world's market. You can signup and share your projects at CloudX Nigeria.