[0:14] 5000 subscribers
[0:16] hopefully, more by the time you are watching this video
[0:19] though who knows with YouTube, it could be less!
[0:21] Thanks to everyone who has watched, subscribed, liked, disliked and commented.
[0:26] Without you, there wouldn’t be much point in doing any of this.
[0:31] 5000 subscribers - it’s just a number
[0:34] but I thought it would be a good point to take stock and see where we’ve come from
[0:38] where we are, have a think about where we’re going.
[0:41] The first video I ever uploaded was back in 2009
[0:46] for an iPhone app I’d made that let you take a photo of a sudoku puzzle and play it.
[0:51] I followed that with an augmented reality version.
[0:55] These are my two most successful videos in terms of views and audience retention
[1:00] 88% and 74%
[1:03] that’s amazing number
[1:04] If only I’d started YouTubing seriously back then.
[1:08] These videos were followed a year later by another mobile application
[1:12] this was for a competition run by HP for their Palm Pre phones
[1:15] does anyone remember these phones? They were actually pretty nice. It’s a shame they failed.
[1:21] This was a port of an iPhone game that I’d made
[1:24] I won a nicely specced out HP laptop for my efforts.
[1:26] Unfortunately, the game didn’t last long as Atari threatened to sue
[1:30] so the game had to come down.
[1:32] I had a brief play with the Xbox Kinnect
[1:36] and hooked it up to a clone of space invaders I’d made
[1:39] after my previous brush with Atari I can’t help thinking that making a space invaders clone was a bit daft.
[1:46] And then we’ve got a massive 6-year gap before I came back with a series on deploying Rails applications to the cloud.
[1:53] I must apologise to any viewers who got interested in the channel back then
[1:58] because we have done anything since on Rails or the cloud.
[2:04] Fast forward 3 years and we hit lockdown in the UK.
[2:09] Working from home with no commute suddenly gives you a lot of spare time for projects
[2:13] and after a couple of friends suggested putting them up on YouTube I decided to give it a go.
[2:19] The first set of videos were pretty shonky.
[2:23] No microphone so the audio was terrible and they are pretty hard to watch.
[2:27] Not my best work.
[2:29] Since then we’ve been doing 2-3 videos a month.
[2:32] Hopefully, they’ve been improving, but it’s a learning experience
[2:36] so there have definitely been a couple of shockers.
[2:39] Audio tutorials and projects seem to have been a big hit
[2:42] it seems that everyone wants to do some kind of audio project on the ESP32.
[2:46] I really need to come back and revamp these videos as I’ve learnt a lot over the last year
[2:52] and I need to update all my example code.
[2:55] Projects I’m particularly pleased with are the DIY Alexa
[3:09] and the Voice Controlled Robot
[3:18] these let me do a bit of machine learning and I was able to run the trained models locally on the ESP32.
[3:24] These are also projects that took the most amount of time.
[3:28] Training up machine learning models takes ages.
[3:32] Some hidden gems are the self-organising LEDs
[3:35] though I did get hit with a copyright claim for using a few seconds of the opening music from 2001.
[3:40] I really need to be a bit more careful.
[3:43] The custom rotary encoder project
[3:45] this worked amazingly well and really enhanced the asteroids project
[3:50] the augmented reality Sudoku solver is also a favourite of mine.
[3:53] this was a nice tribute to my old iPhone application.
[3:57] Going back to the laser projected asteroids I really enjoyed building this and it was a great project
[4:02] though that didn’t seem to generate as much interest as I thought it would.
[4:05] There’s a lot of other great videos on the channel, so take a look at the back catalogue and see what you think.
[4:11] Let me know in the comments what your favourite video is.
[4:17] So, that’s the videos - but who is actually watching them?
[4:21] Who are you people anyway?
[4:23] Well, one thing that is disappointing, is there aren’t many girls in the audience.
[4:28] I guess this is a reflection of the world of tech in general, but there are some really
[4:32] amazing female makers out there who really don’t get the coverage they deserve.
[4:36] Age-wise, we’ve got quite a spread.
[4:38] Though I’m not sure why there is no one under the age of 18.
[4:42] It’s nice to see that despite falling into some of the later categories myself, we seem
[4:46] to be appealing to younger people
[4:52] In terms of where you all are - to a large extent this seems to follow language and internet penetration.
[4:58] Though we do have quite a good following in Germany.
[5:00] Canada - you need to up your game!
[5:03] And where is the rest of Europe?
[5:04] I know we’ve had Brexit and all that nonsense, but we’re still part of the same continent.
[5:10] What else do you like to watch
[5:11] there’s not really any surprises there - you watch the same things that I watch.
[5:16] That’s pretty much all I know about you
[5:18] though, from the comments, I get the impression that you are all really nice people.
[5:25] What else is interesting about YouTube,
[5:26] let’s move onto the more grubby area of money.
[5:29] How much does someone with 5000 subscribers make?
[5:33] Have I quit my day job yet?
[5:35] And am I enjoying the luxury yacht?
[5:36] Or even better, have I hired a bunch of minions to make the videos for me?
[5:40] The short answer is no, no and no.
[5:44] You don’t start a YouTube channel to get rich.
[5:47] To get monetised on YouTube you need 1000 subscribers
[5:51] and you have to have accumulated 4000 watch hours over the previous 12 months.
[5:55] That took me about 10 months to achieve.
[5:58] Since then we’ve averaged about £50-£60 per month
[6:02] which is about $70-$80.
[6:04] It’s not bad, but where I live that’s not even a cup of coffee a day
[6:08] and it would probably only cover a couple of rounds of drinks in the pub.
[6:12] But, combined with the sponsorship from the great folk at PCB Way
[6:16] it just about covers the cost of components and software.
[6:20] You may not have heard of PCBWay, but they offer PCB Production, CNC and 3D Printing, PCB Assembly
[6:27] and much much more.
[6:28] They are great to deal with and offer excellent quality, service and value for money.
[6:31] There’s a link in the description.
[6:35] I can’t give you the exact number of the PCB Way sponsorship
[6:38] but take whatever number you are thinking of and divide it by 10 and you’ll probably get close.
[6:47] What software do I use to do my videos?
[6:50] My main editing software is Final Cut Pro
[6:53] I started off with iMovie but thought I needed something more professional.
[6:57] I’m slowly becoming better at using Final Cut Pro, but it’s a big bit of software.
[7:01] For producing animations,
[7:04] I have a terrible piece of software that I wrote that is slightly bonkers.
[7:08] I have some javascript code that draws to a canvas in a web browser
[7:13] which then posts images to a Swift mac application that writes each frame to a video codec.
[7:19] I’m not sure how I ended up with such a Heath Robinson contraption, but it works.
[7:22] I also occasionally use Apple Motion - but this is a piece of software that I really struggle to understand.
[7:29] I’ve also used the animation library from 3Blue1Brown
[7:33] which is great but also has quite a steep learning curve.
[7:38] So, that’s where we’ve been and where we are.
[7:41] What’s next?
[7:42] Well, more videos of course!
[7:44] Coming up soon, I’ve got a Teensy that I want to have a play with.
[7:47] I bought this to drive these nice galvos that someone sent me
[7:50] but now I’m wondering if I should take a different route and investigate parallel I2S as an option.
[7:55] But I still want to have a play with the Teensy to see what it’s capable of.
[7:58] I want to revisit the magic mirror project
[8:01] and turn it into a properly smart mirror. One that would recognise you and say hello in the morning
[8:07] I really want to revisit the audio world
[8:10] and do a complete guide to audio on the ESP32
[8:13] and I need to update all my sample code.
[8:16] There is also a bunch of projects that have slowly failed over time.
[8:20] The flame lamp is currently out of commission with what is probably a broken connection somewhere.
[8:26] And the voice-controlled robot has been scavenged for parts so is looking a bit sorry for itself.
[8:32] So, if you are a new viewer, help me get to10,000 subscribers by hitting that button.
[8:37] And if you are a regular viewer already
[8:39] I just want to thank you for making the channel a success and for your comments and feedback over the past year or so.
[8:45] It’s a great and friendly community and I’m really happy to be part of it.
[8:49] I’m going to stop now before I get emotional.
[8:51] As always, thanks for watching
[8:53] and I’ll see you in the next video!