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Sparkfun's Entire Open Hardware Catalog Made Available On Upverter
An anonymous reader writes "Sparkfun has published their entire catalog of over 500 open hardware designs on Upverter. Anyone can now leverage Sparkfun's designs in their own projects by creating forks and customizing to their heart's desire."
From Wikipedia
I was just out there looking to replenish some supplies for a project I'm working on. Cool beans :)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
Fricking dumbasses can't even read the article. Oh yea, I'm on Slashdot. Who RTFA nowadays?
[John]
Shit better not happen!
In related news Dinglebert have relased there latest Wizzywig on Abalone Fruit.
Makes about as much sense as TFS.
It looks to me like the Upverter web site stores your design in the cloud, using their own proprietary web based tool, and you can't save or edit it on your own machine. So it Upverter's site goes down, or if they decide to make you pay for it, or they go out of business, or whatever, your design is lost! I would much prefer to use a truly open solution like gEDA or KiCAD. At least with proprietary and limited Eagle, you can save stuff locally and use it forever.
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
All these designs can be gotten in eagle format or something from sparkfun directly
What do I need open source forks for?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
The summary should be much more informative - you know like an actual summary insted of some buzz word infested circle jerk.
So you'll be able to comply when people tell you to go fork yourself.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You're not considering the modular nature of electronics.
With open hardware designs you can take a circuit schematic and integrate it with another circuit without having to go to all the trouble of generating it from scratch. Instead of dropping single components into a design you can drop a device like an accelerometer and all associated components as a complete circuit and then produce a PCB with everything on one board.
It's the reason there are so many custom arduino-based variants available - people were able to take the original design then change the form-factor or add something.
Eat open source food?
Ive done lierally tons of eda and sw dev over the last 20 years and i must say i think these upverter guys are onto something!
Whoever did the import screwed the pooch. There are no real part descriptions, just the symbolic identifiers used by sparkfun. Good luck decoding some of those.
Im sure a lot of people boil just thinking about cloud and corporations stealing your ideas (Occupy Thingiverse).
Here is an interview with Upverter guys on theamphour. Dave doesnt take any shit and he hates the cloud so dont expect any PR fluff.
http://www.theamphour.com/the-amp-hour-163-ramiform-reciprocity-raconteurs
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
Unless you care about EMC or heat dissipation or something else that depends on the interactions between the components, yes, you can think of electronic circuits that way.
I suppose for logic-only devices this works, but as soon as you start wanting to do something that requires power, you can't just drop circuits together like that.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
The summary should be much more informative - you know like an actual summary insted of some buzz word infested circle jerk.
The title looks pretty clear to me. Which ones are the buzzword in that title? It's a cool resource for hobbyists why do you have to be so boring? You got a job at Eagle?
What do I need open source forks for?
Because commercial fork manufacturers assume that a one-size-fits-all eating utensil is what the world needs. They fail to realize that some people have small mouths, and at the same time others might want to take really big bites. An open source fork allows you to modify the fork to meet your needs.
Small mouth, compensate for that. Want more tines, adjust the design. Need to accommodate liquids.....crap...I guess you need a spoon for that.....or, maybe a SPORK!
"Lame" - Galaxar
all the those are implementation issues (mostly) when doing PCB layout, can save time at the schematic level by putting
together blocks you know works, tweak the values/package size etc. to your needs
I'll keep everything on my machine, on my drives, thanks.
I think you mean examples lifted directly from the datasheet, lets not praise them for that
What you're looking for is here: S.H.O.V.E.L.
and it is open-source.
Unless you care about EMC or heat dissipation or something else that depends on the interactions between the components, yes, you can think of electronic circuits that way.
Mostly that's not a problem. If you're designing something beefy enough for power and EMC to matter then you probably know what you're doing, EMC in particular.
I suppose for logic-only devices this works, but as soon as you start wanting to do something that requires power, you can't just drop circuits together like that.
There's a whole world between "just logic" and power electronics. There's a whole variety of sensors available which are (very) low power, and whose busses operate at very modest clock frequencies. I'd say analog too, but there seem to be precious few analog based designs floating around. Mostly because many devices are so amazingly integrated it's mostly not needed.
SJW n. One who posts facts.