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Open Source Hardware Projects, 2009
ptorrone writes "MAKE's yearly open source hardware guide is now online with over 125 projects in 19 categories. The creators of all of these projects have decided to publish completely all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings, and 'board' files to recreate the hardware. They also allow any use, including commercial. In other words, you can make a business making and selling any of these objects. This is similar to open source software like Linux, but hardware-centric."
Look under the "religious" projects. Finally a Christmas card that looks more geeky than the "iphone with cardboard" posted earlier on /.
Open Source software is great because there is an affordable universal machine which can be used to implement the software described by the source code. There is no such universal machine for hardware yet. Making electronics still requires either quite a lot of money or a versatile skill-set and tools. Other hardware isn't much different: You basically have to be a machinist to be able to create something from the published blueprints, and at that point, do you really need the blueprints?
Just because you have the tools and skills doesn't mean you don't need the blueprints.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
About 2 years ago I built a 68000 full hardware and software board in my second year of college. I wrote the firmware in ASM and had to then reprogram the ASM to Srecord and yes that's reprogram not just use a converter. The board was wire wrapped which took more time then I want to remember. Over all a fun project it took a total of about 6 weeks and we had to reprogram the ROM about 100 times because the rom burner was broken but no one knew till I suggested.
A home-brewed cell phone jammer, long distance TV turner-off'er, and an Area Effect Sickness Generator. MAKE is clearly pandering to the Got-Stuffed-In-Their-Lockers-A-Lot-In-High-School crowd...
They also allow any use, including commercial. In other words, you can make a business making and selling any of these objects. This is similar to open source software like Linux, but hardware-centric."
No, more like open source software like BSD. Stallman doesn't approve of anything commercial, or anyone making any profit off of anything at all. Witness GPL 3.0.
Ah Make magazine. Sadly this journal is so difficult to find here in Australia, and when you do, the cost is so astronomically expensive per issue that anyone who can afford it can just go and buy off-the-shelf stuff and probably has no need to make their own on the cheap anyway. Well that is the feeling that always springs to mind :(
I'm a die hard free market capitalist and I have to say you are clueless. If legit software can't provide value beyond what is freely available, it deserves to fade away. This is even more true for legit hardware -- whatever that is...
Sure am looking forward to building some of these things. I'd just like to clarify that GNU/Linux (linux's just the kernel) is free software and not open source, the main difference is that open source focuses on the practical part of having available source code while free software focuses on the user's freedoms (one of which is access to the source code).
I've always wondered if there is a view in hardware that meets the views of free software (i.e. the freedom to tinker with your hardware, to share schematics,firmware,etc. with friends, the freedom to modify and redistribute anything provided by the community), and if there is why is it not called free hardware? Also, does anybody know of hardware licenses similar to the GPL?
The creators of all of these projects have decided to publish completely all the source, schematics, firmware, software, bill of materials, parts list, drawings, and 'board' files to recreate the hardware.
Why must everything be labeled "open source?"
Plans and projects for the technically-minded hobbyist are at least as old as Popular Mechanics, first published in 1902.
I'm also a firm believer in the free market, but unfortunately software (operating systems in particular) does not seem to follow that model. The most versatile, powerful, and reliable operating system has been available free of charge for nearly 20 years - but most users are fairly entrenched in the "mindshare" of the major OS makers.
Mind_share
...we can add "swag optimization" to "search optimization". Except, Microsoft has nothing i want!
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Can Open Source Hardware Work? Banzi seems to think so via http://www.wired.com/techbiz/startups/magazine/16-11/ff_openmanufacturing
The Arduno cult is about branding, not technology. The CPU is an ATMega 128, a good little microcontroller. Boards for that CPU have been available for years. I was using this one years before the cult. It's Atmel that made this all possible, by building a microcontroller that requires very few external components to program and debug.
The Arduno people have their own language and terminology, talking about "shields" (daughterboards) and such. Too cult-like.
Ignore this idiot, please.
The most stable, versatile and powerful operating system is useless if the users don't like the applications that are made for it. It is the applications and ease of use that make people choose an operating system, not the quality of code in the operating system.
You want Linux or Unix to catch on? Make an open source Outlook & Exchange substitution. You'll have to beat businesses off with a stick.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Choosing an odd word to name an interface specification doesn't qualify its users as belonging to a 'cult'.
THANK YOU. And not the half-assed ones that are out there. I'm talking RPC over HTTP, calendar invites, tasks and contacts handled properly, PST file support, the works. When OpenOffice Calc supports pivot tables properly and Evolution supports Exchange Server properly, you'll see a massive switch in my company and many others.
I consider my model airplane design open source because I made the plans available. People have built them all over the world and have added revisions to the plans. Is that what makes it open source? Here is the URL: http://www.rubber-power.com/
Inventor, Artist http://www.Rubber-Power.com
I couldnt help but notice that there are no 3g based projects. I know that many (not all) of the 3g chipsets that you need to build any product are covered under extremely restrictive NDA.
However, I had really hoped that there would be atleast one
Note: OpenMoko does not disclose its 3g firmware (http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA01_gsm_modem) Upgrading the modem's firmware is technically possible but no proper software is currently legally available to users outside Openmoko staff
Stallman is clearly making license agreements that have never made any sizable market penetration. It's as though he writes them out of his lack of experience and failure. Witness his career in academia never to make it's way outside the laboratry. It's no wonder "Black Israel" thinks that God created the black man in nature and all the other races were created in a laboratory by the Shay'tan and his minion of devils and demons. What does Stallman want to achieve with any kind of license other than castrate the potential of software; I thought it was a good thing for something to be released free as in beer and speech but clearly all he wants is the source code to be seen rather than let an application get put out there like Open Source Initiative has achieved many times over.
I don't know if it's popular in the US but it is in the UK and Australia. It's a series of super-easy PIC controllers that are very cheap and programed in a version of BASIC though a serial port, no special programmer circuitry required. They have A to D inputs and servo control outputs. They are great for school projects and Silicon Chip magazine always has lots of project articles for them. See http://www.rev-ed.co.uk/picaxe/
Something like open design ? Or anything else ? Coining in the word "source" for things that aren't really related (i.e.: blueprints) only causes confusion. When I think of "open source hardware", I might think about VHDL or Verilog, but not really blueprints.
Open source has devastated the software community and increased the prices of legit software.
Now open hardware is looking to follow in its footsteps, hurting the economy, losing jobs and ruining lives.
Its the work of the communists from hell. lol
It's not just that. You also need something that comes with a sane migration plan (ie. doesn't require you to get 2,000 people to change simultaneously).
Most F/OSS Exchange "alternatives" were put together by people who have heard about Exchange but never appear to have actually used it.
You wouldn't even need to migrate Exchange (just yet, anyway). If you could just replace the Outlook Client in total and still use the Exchange backend, you could make a killing. Actually, I remember reading on /. about a drop in replacement for Exchange that ran on Linux. I think Zarafa is the one. All it needs is a replacement for Outlook to go with it.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
There are various things which claim to replace Exchange and they claim varying degrees of "drop-in-ness".
I've never yet met one which didn't simultaneously suck and blow.