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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 /.
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...
Agree with you. And also, software should be free (as in free speech) due to the inherent nature of software (lines of code). OTOH, one can choose not to display the schematics of the hardware thus preventing someone from duplicating it. Of course, in most cases, one can open it up and reverse engineer it; however not so easy with microchips and the like. I find "open source hardware" just a fashionable tag people use to promote themselves.
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 :(
Well, programming isn't that easy either. I mean, in theory, all you need is a computer, but in practice it takes a lot of time to learn properly.
I think that getting started in electronics wouldn't be that expensive. Soldering irons are cheap, and components like capacitors are sold for prices like $0.05/unit. Of course microcontrollers and such are more expensive, but you don't need those in large amounts.
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...
A lot of people confuse "use" with "derivative works". Use means run the program.
Bruce Perens.
Stallman used to sell tapes with GNU software, as well as manuals. He even said this was the way he initially supported himself.
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.
Quite a lot of money? As far as hobbies go, electronics is extremely affordable. Try "car racing", or "remote heli/plane" or even wood-working. You can make many interesting electronic projects for under $50 AU. Spend a bit more for an Arduino, and there are a nearly limitless number of projects you can build. As hobbies go, I don't think electronics can be classed as "expensive".
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
This seems to be attached to the wrong article.
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
There are certainly more expensive hobbies, but compared to Open Source software development, electronics is costly. Having circuit boards made is expensive and making them yourself is still hit or miss without a lot of practice. Sure, you can learn a lot with breadboards and simulators, but to make something usable according to a plan is a much bigger leap than from source to executable software.
the arduino seems to be as close to 'programmable logic for the masses' as I've seen.
this year, I finally took the plunge and got very into this arduino thing. love it! recommend it.
I'm a mostly-software person with a hardware hobby background. the arduino is just enough hardware to 'stay interesting' and yet not need a full EE to do useful things (design, build AND code).
its not a host like unix is; its a controller. but its all in C, its multiplatform (the IDE) and it does quite a lot for the cost (almost no cost; just a $20 usb serial cable for development and that's all, over the chip and board itself). chips and boards can be made for $5 (I built my own arduino clone on perf board. not hard.)
the arduino craze is taking off and only going to get bigger as time goes on.
need an IR receiver that 'does things' based on learned IR codes? arduino. need some X10 wireless stuff controlled? arduino. need to talk to LCD displays easily? arduino. and ALL the source is out there, so your coding is mostly a 'glue' exercise without a huge amount of new code that needs to be written.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
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.
Stallman doesn't approve of anything commercial, or anyone making any profit off of anything at all.
Would you like some ketchup to go with that foot?
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
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/
A lot of people confuse "use" with "derivative works".
And I never heard a good reason why the "confusion" is a bad idea. Derivative works are after all a use of the code. Not in a strictly legal sense, of course, but it's not a stretch.
I'm currently using the Arduino to construct an effects processor inspired by the long discontinued Waldorf 4-Pole. Writing the software for the envelope generator, display, and LFOs has been a great way to brush up on my long-disused C programming skills. Even though the AtMega168 that the Arduino platform is based on is not a DSP, the hardware seems powerful enough to do some direct digital synthesis; I believe there actually is an open source hardware synthesizer based on the AVR microcontroller.
The reason that the confusion is a bad idea is that copyright law - not the Open Source folks - define a set of individual rights, and without knowing the definition of those rights you end up not being able to much much sense about them. You end up like those folks who think the internet is made of tubes.
Bruce Perens.
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.
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.
Actually by hobby electronics standards the Arduino is a tad pricey... You pay for an easy to use platform which can be used by people who don't have electronics skills. You need to be able to code in C, but the Arduino development environment provides libraries to all the hardware access easier.
If you are a Real Coder(TM) you can just get an AVR programmer (£15) and an ATmega8 (£1 or less) and start hacking away. I keep hearing comments from the young 'uns about how 20MHz is really slow and you can't do anything with 1k of RAM and 16k of ROM, but I guess they haven't seen the demos people were making on C64s and Amigas back in the day. AVR assembler is very nice too.
Now, a shameless plug for my own projects: denki.world3.net. All GPL. I sell the Retro Adapters here: retro.world3.net.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC