Two people on YouTube decided to back TrailCurrent with a channel membership before there was much of a list to join. This post is a thank-you to them, and a heads-up about a new, simpler way for anyone who wants to support the project.
Thank you, first
When you give everything away, it is easy to wonder whether it is landing with anyone. A membership answers that question in the nicest way possible.
Thank you to @richard7crowley, our very first channel member, and to @yatyas72, who joined soon after. Neither of them got anything the rest of you did not. They liked what we were building and wanted to help it along. That means more than we can say in a blog post.
Meet Convoy
From here on, the way we will point people to support TrailCurrent is TrailCurrent Convoy, a membership we run through our own shop. It covers both sides of what we do: the TrailCurrent platform and the open source channel. It is $3 a month.
Why move it off YouTube? When you join through YouTube, a share of every membership goes to the platform before any of it reaches the project. Running it ourselves means it costs you less, and more of what you put in goes to the work itself: parts, prototype boards, test hardware, and the time it takes to build the next module.
That also means we are switching off memberships on YouTube. It did not seem fair for our first members to keep paying the higher YouTube price while everyone after them pays less. Turning memberships off cancels the monthly payment automatically, so there is nothing you need to do. If you would like to keep supporting the project, Convoy is there whenever you are ready, at the lower price.
What it helps keep going
We try to give back far more than we ask for. Here is what that looks like:
- The TrailCurrent system itself. Everything from the small boards behind your panels to the app on your phone, in public on GitHub.
- The designs. Cases, mounts and enclosures you can print as they are, or borrow for a project that has nothing to do with a camper. See what is inside.
- Honest hardware reviews. What a board or tool is good at, and where it falls short, before you spend money on it. The Waveshare review is a good example.
- How we work. The tools, the software, and the CNC lessons we learned the hard way, like the table that warped, so your own maker projects can skip a few of those mistakes.
Free stays free
Everything TrailCurrent makes is MIT licensed and free of charge, with nothing behind a paywall. That is not changing. Convoy members do not get early access or locked content, because there is none. What a membership does is help keep the project running for the long haul, so all of it can stay free and open for everyone.
If joining Convoy feels right, welcome aboard. If now is not the time, that is completely fine. Watching a video, sharing one with a friend, building a module, or telling us what you think in Discord all help too.