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In our last episode, we met Nikola
Motor Company founder Trevor Milton

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and learned just what inspired
him to build an entirely

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new transportation ecosystem from
the ground up. But as we'll see,

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discovery is just the first phase.
The next step in the

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innovation process is building a
working prototype. This is

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Engineering Big Ideas, presented
by Mouser Electronics, Molex

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Intel, Analog Devices and Microchip
Technology

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Chasing a prototype design isn't
always easy. The whole idea is

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that you're trying to build something
completely new. So, how do

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you do it? You just have to know where to look.

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We're at the Arduino factory just outside of Milan, Italy for

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Engineering Big Ideas episode 2: Design for Prototyping.

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Can we see the factory?
Come in. Let's talk about the

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prototyping process. The prototyping
process is super important

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so the tools have to be simple to
understand and they need to

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get you quickly to the prototyping
phase and so a lot of ideas

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and a lot of things come out of
this process. As an engineer,

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I've used so many Arduinos in my lifetime.
It's neat to see where

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they all come from. Yeah, this is
it. This is where it all gets

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made. It runs through at least 24 different tests but we're trying

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to build quality products. I think that's
very important. The whole

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process of building the prototype
changes your mindset. Just

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build stuff and see what happens. No doubt, Arduino is the most

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popular electronics prototyping
tool around. Now, let's see how

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some actual engineering students
are using it to bring their

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ideas to life. This is the Fab Lab
where the students build

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their prototypes. My job was to teach
students about electronics

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as a tool for prototyping The starting
point was building tools

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that would make it simpler for people
who are very clever but

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they don't have a background in
engineering, and to turn

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electronics into like a creative
tool. So this is a prototype of

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a tool to teach kids about programming.
This became this product

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here which was a kickstarter so
you can see now we have like

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3D-printed parts, and it's a small series. And then now this is an actual

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company based in London. They have fully industrial

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injection-molded parts, but
you can see it's the same

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concept iterated multiple times.
And it gets a

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little bit slicker with each version.
Technology is not as

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complex as people think and if you
have the right tools almost

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anybody can come up with an idea
and make it real. No matter the

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scale, there's one thing that most working
prototypes share in common,

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they need to be refined before they're
ready for the production line.

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In our next episode, we'll explore
what it takes to show

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the world that a tech idea is a good
one. This has been the Design for

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Prototyping Phase of Engineering Big Ideas