Open Source Hardware, For Fun and For Profit

ptorrone writes "Lots of open source hardware articles making the rounds this week, first up — Wired has an excellent piece on the Arduino project, an open source electronics prototyping platform, its founders and business model (they have sold over 50,000 units). And next up MIT's Tech Review has a profile on a few open source hardware businesses including NYC based Adafruit Industries best known for projects like the open source synth (x0x0b0x) and 'fun' projects like the Wave Bubble, the open source cell phone/wifi/GPS/RF jammer."

Comments

Yes 'fun'...

[abigsmurf]

Radio Jammers are most definately not fun. It's bad enough the ones that send out a burst designed to disconnect phonecalls but one that's designed to run for 2-4 hours...

If someone on a cell phone is annoying you, ask them to keep it down or turn it off. Don't potentially block a call that may be to (or from) the emergency services or another life or death communication. There's a reason jammers carry stiff penalties in most Western countries.

Re:Yes 'fun'...

[zacronos]

Don't potentially block a call that may be to (or from) the emergency services or another life or death communication.

It's remarkable that the world managed to function at all before the age of cellular communication.

It's remarkable that the world managed to function at all before the age of modern medicine.

Just because humanity survived through it doesn't mean it is responsible or ethical to strip it away in circumstances when you don't understand the consequences.

The truth is, people before modern medicine might stand a better chance of dealing with a given health issue because they knew folk remedies which may have helped (though they didn't always help, they were rarely harmful). Today, most of us have an almost total lack of ability to deal with major health issues without modern medicine. The same is true with cellular communication -- people were fine without it at the time, but they (we) have grown fairly dependent on it today. Take it away unexpectedly, and they're worse off than when it didn't exist.

Note that I don't say this as if it were a good thing -- I think it's a horrible thing. But that doesn't make it any less true.

Re:Open "source" hardware

[iamdrscience]

Depends on the project. In the case of projects like OpenCores the term "open source hardware" is very apt because the project consists of Verilog and VHDL files which are essentially programming languages (similar in many ways to C and Pascal) which are compiled as hardware designs for chips instead of programs. For other projects, it's a little more abstract, but still fitting, I think. I mean, open source software is software that provides with all the files you need to build a program yourself and allows you to modify them to suit your needs. An open source hardware project would generally provide the same thing, but instead of source code, it's schematics and board layouts.

Re:Handy for terrorism, kidnapping, piracy, etc.

[MrNaz]

I agree. Please run for president and I shall vote for you so you can establish a Ministry of Acceptability that ensures that people only do and say things that are in line with your definition of peace and safety.