5000 subscribers
hopefully, more by the time you are watching this video
though who knows with YouTube, it could be less!
Thanks to everyone who has watched, subscribed, liked, disliked and commented.
Without you, there wouldn't be much point in doing any of this.
5000 subscribers - it's just a number
but I thought it would be a good point to take stock and see where we've come from
where we are, have a think about where we're going.
The first video I ever uploaded was back in 2009
for an iPhone app I'd made that let you take a photo of a sudoku puzzle and play it.
I followed that with an augmented reality version.
These are my two most successful videos in terms of views and audience retention
88% and 74%
that's amazing number
If only I'd started YouTubing seriously back then.
These videos were followed a year later by another mobile application
this was for a competition run by HP for their Palm Pre phones
does anyone remember these phones? They were actually pretty nice. It's a shame they failed.
This was a port of an iPhone game that I'd made
I won a nicely specced out HP laptop for my efforts.
Unfortunately, the game didn't last long as Atari threatened to sue
so the game had to come down.
I had a brief play with the Xbox Kinnect
and hooked it up to a clone of space invaders I'd made
after my previous brush with Atari I can't help thinking that making a space invaders clone was a bit daft.
And then we've got a massive 6-year gap before I came back with a series on deploying Rails applications to the cloud.
I must apologise to any viewers who got interested in the channel back then
because we have done anything since on Rails or the cloud.
Fast forward 3 years and we hit lockdown in the UK.
Working from home with no commute suddenly gives you a lot of spare time for projects
and after a couple of friends suggested putting them up on YouTube I decided to give it a go.
The first set of videos were pretty shonky.
No microphone so the audio was terrible and they are pretty hard to watch.
Not my best work.
Since then we've been doing 2-3 videos a month.
Hopefully, they've been improving, but it's a learning experience
so there have definitely been a couple of shockers.
Audio tutorials and projects seem to have been a big hit
it seems that everyone wants to do some kind of audio project on the ESP32.
I really need to come back and revamp these videos as I've learnt a lot over the last year
and I need to update all my example code.
Projects I'm particularly pleased with are the DIY Alexa
and the Voice Controlled Robot
these let me do a bit of machine learning and I was able to run the trained models locally on the ESP32.
These are also projects that took the most amount of time.
Training up machine learning models takes ages.
Some hidden gems are the self-organising LEDs
though I did get hit with a copyright claim for using a few seconds of the opening music from 2001.
I really need to be a bit more careful.
The custom rotary encoder project
this worked amazingly well and really enhanced the asteroids project
the augmented reality Sudoku solver is also a favourite of mine.
this was a nice tribute to my old iPhone application.
Going back to the laser projected asteroids I really enjoyed building this and it was a great project
though that didn't seem to generate as much interest as I thought it would.
There's a lot of other great videos on the channel, so take a look at the back catalogue and see what you think.
Let me know in the comments what your favourite video is.
So, that's the videos - but who is actually watching them?
Who are you people anyway?
Well, one thing that is disappointing, is there aren't many girls in the audience.
I guess this is a reflection of the world of tech in general, but there are some really
amazing female makers out there who really don't get the coverage they deserve.
Age-wise, we've got quite a spread.
Though I'm not sure why there is no one under the age of 18.
It's nice to see that despite falling into some of the later categories myself, we seem
to be appealing to younger people
In terms of where you all are - to a large extent this seems to follow language and internet penetration.
Though we do have quite a good following in Germany.
Canada - you need to up your game!
And where is the rest of Europe?
I know we've had Brexit and all that nonsense, but we're still part of the same continent.
What else do you like to watch
there's not really any surprises there - you watch the same things that I watch.
That's pretty much all I know about you
though, from the comments, I get the impression that you are all really nice people.
What else is interesting about YouTube,
let's move onto the more grubby area of money.
How much does someone with 5000 subscribers make?
Have I quit my day job yet?
And am I enjoying the luxury yacht?
Or even better, have I hired a bunch of minions to make the videos for me?
The short answer is no, no and no.
You don't start a YouTube channel to get rich.
To get monetised on YouTube you need 1000 subscribers
and you have to have accumulated 4000 watch hours over the previous 12 months.
That took me about 10 months to achieve.
Since then we've averaged about £50-£60 per month
which is about $70-$80.
It's not bad, but where I live that's not even a cup of coffee a day
and it would probably only cover a couple of rounds of drinks in the pub.
But, combined with the sponsorship from the great folk at PCB Way
it just about covers the cost of components and software.
You may not have heard of PCBWay, but they offer PCB Production, CNC and 3D Printing, PCB Assembly
and much much more.
They are great to deal with and offer excellent quality, service and value for money.
There's a link in the description.
I can't give you the exact number of the PCB Way sponsorship
but take whatever number you are thinking of and divide it by 10 and you'll probably get close.
What software do I use to do my videos?
My main editing software is Final Cut Pro
I started off with iMovie but thought I needed something more professional.
I'm slowly becoming better at using Final Cut Pro, but it's a big bit of software.
For producing animations,
I have a terrible piece of software that I wrote that is slightly bonkers.
I have some javascript code that draws to a canvas in a web browser
which then posts images to a Swift mac application that writes each frame to a video codec.
I'm not sure how I ended up with such a Heath Robinson contraption, but it works.
I also occasionally use Apple Motion - but this is a piece of software that I really struggle to understand.
I've also used the animation library from 3Blue1Brown
which is great but also has quite a steep learning curve.
So, that's where we've been and where we are.
What's next?
Well, more videos of course!
Coming up soon, I've got a Teensy that I want to have a play with.
I bought this to drive these nice galvos that someone sent me
but now I'm wondering if I should take a different route and investigate parallel I2S as an option.
But I still want to have a play with the Teensy to see what it's capable of.
I want to revisit the magic mirror project
and turn it into a properly smart mirror. One that would recognise you and say hello in the morning
I really want to revisit the audio world
and do a complete guide to audio on the ESP32
and I need to update all my sample code.
There is also a bunch of projects that have slowly failed over time.
The flame lamp is currently out of commission with what is probably a broken connection somewhere.
And the voice-controlled robot has been scavenged for parts so is looking a bit sorry for itself.
So, if you are a new viewer, help me get to10,000 subscribers by hitting that button.
And if you are a regular viewer already
I just want to thank you for making the channel a success and for your comments and feedback over the past year or so.
It's a great and friendly community and I'm really happy to be part of it.
I'm going to stop now before I get emotional.
As always, thanks for watching
and I'll see you in the next video!