Welcome to blog.thios.co: A New Home for Open Hardware Thinking
For the past few years, I've been writing about Thios in fragments—Twitter threads, Reddit posts, Discord messages, the occasional Medium article. It's been scattered, ephemeral, and frankly, hard to follow.
Today, that changes. Welcome to blog.thios.co.
Why a Dedicated Blog?
In an age of social media and short-form content, launching a traditional blog might seem quaint. But here's the thing: long-form thinking requires long-form space.
Open hardware isn't built in tweets. It's built through:
- Deep technical documentation
- Thoughtful design decisions
- Transparent problem-solving
- Community dialogue
A blog gives us room to breathe, to think, to explain.
What You'll Find Here
This isn't a marketing blog. It's not a press release feed. It's a working journal of building Thios in public.
Technical Deep Dives
- How we designed the Thiosphere™ SDK
- CAD workflows and 3D printing techniques
- Sensor calibration and data logging
- Software architecture decisions
Business Transparency
- Revenue numbers and financial decisions
- Pricing strategies for open-source products
- Partnership negotiations
- Fundraising experiences
Design Philosophy
- Why we chose open hardware over patents
- The role of aesthetics in functional design
- Balancing accessibility with sophistication
- Learning from failures
Community Stories
- User builds and modifications
- Contributor spotlights
- Collaboration case studies
- Ecosystem growth
The Tech Behind This Blog
Because we're Thios, of course I'm going to talk about the tech stack:
- Next.js 16 with App Router and Turbopack
- MDX for rich content with embedded components
- MySQL for comments, likes, and bookmarks
- Shared authentication with www.thios.co
- Custom deployment to DreamHost VPS
The entire blog is open source. You can see exactly how it's built, fork it for your own project, or contribute improvements.
Interactive Features
This isn't a read-only blog. You can:
Comment
Every post has a comment system. Nested replies, user attribution, the works. I'll be in the comments responding, debating, learning.
Like & Bookmark
Found a post useful? Like it. Want to save it for later? Bookmark it. Your engagement helps me understand what resonates.
Subscribe
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Writing Cadence
I'm committing to at least one post per week. Some will be short updates, others will be 3,000-word technical deep dives.
Topics I'm planning to cover:
- Launching store.thios.co (live today!)
- Exploring StartEngine for equity crowdfunding
- Partnership with Tropologic on IP strategy
- Learning from teardowns and reverse engineering
- AI as a technical co-founder
Why Now?
Thios is at an inflection point. We have:
- ✅ A working product (Thiosphere™ SDK)
- ✅ A store (store.thios.co)
- ✅ A community (growing daily)
- ✅ A vision (open hardware for controlled environments)
What we need now is narrative. A way to tell the story as it unfolds. A place to document the journey.
This blog is that place.
Building in Public
There's a movement in tech toward "building in public"—sharing revenue numbers, design decisions, failures, and successes in real-time.
I'm all in on this.
You'll see:
- Actual numbers - How much the store makes, what things cost
- Real challenges - Technical debt, design mistakes, partnership struggles
- Honest reflections - What's working, what's not, what I'm learning
Why? Because transparency builds trust, and trust is the foundation of open source.
Join the Conversation
This blog is as much yours as it is mine. I want to hear from you:
- What topics should I cover?
- What questions do you have about Thios?
- What are you building that relates to this?
Drop a comment below, or reach out directly. Let's make this a dialogue, not a monologue.
What's Next
The next few posts are already in the works:
- Launching store.thios.co - The tech, the strategy, the vision
- StartEngine exploration - Equity crowdfunding for open hardware
- Tropologic partnership - IP strategy meets biology
- Teardown philosophy - Learning by taking things apart
- AI as co-founder - How LLMs are accelerating development
Stay tuned. Subscribe. Engage. Let's build something remarkable together.
Welcome to blog.thios.co. 🌱
P.S. - This is post #3 on the blog. The first two were test posts to validate the system. This is the real beginning. Let's go.