Open source hardware 2009 – The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009

Open source hardware 2009 – The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009
opensourcehardware2009.jpg

Welcome to definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009. First up – What is open source hardware? These are projects in which the creators have decided to completely publish 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. Similar to open source software like Linux, but this hardware centric.

Each year we do a guide to all open source hardware and this year there are over 125 unique projects/kits in 19 categories, up from about 60 in 2008, more than doubling the projects out there! – it’s incredible! Many are familiar with Arduino (shipping over 100,000 units, estimated) but there are many other projects just as exciting and filled with amazing communities – we think we’ve captured nearly all of them in this list. Some of these projects and kits are available from MAKE others from the makers themselves or other hardware manufacturers – but since it’s open source hardware you can make any of these yourself, start a business, everything is available, that’s the point.

This year, I am asking for your help – the Open source hardware page on Wikipedia is missing more projects that it actually has total at the moment. If any readers out there want to help out, review all the projects we’ve listed and please add them to the Wikipedia page so it’s a more complete resource. Also, many projects on the Wikipedia page are not “Open source hardware” but that will likely be debated, at the least – all of the projects in this guide are considered open source hardware by those who actually does open source hardware it seems.

In this version of the guide on MAKE I will link to the product page and if it’s sold in the Maker Shed there is an additional link to the Maker Shed if you’d like to support OSH and get a kit or project. For 2009, this guide became so large that it cannot fit in to one post on MAKE so it will be divided up in to sections, 18 of them:

  • 3D printing – Open source hardware is now making things. Physical things you can print out, over the last few year 2-3 projects have really gained momentum and made some wonderful advances in low-cost desktop 3D printing. Projects include Fab@Home, MakerBot and RepRap. A new project was also added this year, s DIY open source construction set for experimental personal fabrication (view projects).
  • Arduino – Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It’s intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Perhaps one of the most successful open source hardware projects to date. Dozens of projects are included in the guide (view projects).
  • Arduino shields – This is a new category mostly because there are so many open source hardware shields in 2009. These “shields” add music, internet, GPS and additional functions (view projects).
  • Blinky projects – Open source hardware tends to have a lot of projects that blinky, pulse, and light up. It’s a hard category to define exactly, so I’m calling it blinky projects. From a “Larsen scanner” (cylon) to making your bicycle spell words in the air, all of these projects are filled with LEDs (view projects).
  • Clocks and watches – This year there are some really timely additions to the list, clocks! From a retro Russian tube clock to an open source watch. These time pieces are open and timely (view projects).
  • Culture jamming – These projects are not only open source hardware, they aim to open ours minds a bit. A cell phone jammer, a universal device that turns off TVs and an open source homeland security non-lethal weapon (view projects).
  • Development platforms and tools – These are tools and platforms, a wide category – but filled with chip programmers, mini-computers, debugging hardware and tons of project to – make other projects! (view projects).
  • Energy, Power and Green – These open source hardware projects power things or have something to do with powering devices, saving the planet and monitoring power/energy in some way (view projects).
  • Fun, games and entertainment – These open source hardware projects that are more fun than anything else, from net connect set top boxes to fun games (and gaming systems) you can make yourself (view projects).
  • Imaging – There’s only project, but it’s a great start. Open source cameras for everyone aren’t here yet, but there’s one project that is pioneering the field… of vision! (view projects).
  • Medical and bio – The open source hardware projects are medical or biological. While this category only has a few I expect this to be the largest category in 5 years or less. Open sourcing medical equipment around the world seems like the most logical step in the evolution of open source hardware, check out some of the first projects! (view projects).
  • Music – Music is one of the largest categories: synthesizers, guitar amps, MP3 players to an arcade MIDI device. These projects not only are open, they’re musical (one of the old forms of “open information”) so that’s twice the goodness rolled in to one (view projects).
  • Processors – You can actually make and fabricate your own chips, I have met anyone who does this but there are a couple huge projects that openly share CPUs and on-chip interconnections. Living room chip fabs are a few years away (well, Jeri has one) but here’s a glimpse (view projects).
  • Religious – Open source hardware has made inroads in to religious from an LED menorah to a blinky Christmas card. These projects almost belong in the “Blinky projects” category, but I thought they should get their own. I suspect more religions will be open sourcing their hardware soon (view projects).
  • Robotics – From controlling motors to a robot arm you can make yourself, robotics is a new and growing category in open source hardware. While there’s not a ton of projects many robotics groups are using Arduinos (FIRST is now) so I think we’ll see this category double and triple in 2010, here are some of the early pioneers (view projects).
  • Telecommunications – These projects use the telephone system in some way or are related to cell phones (or in one example, are cell phones). It’s popular to open source the software on phones now, and slowly but surely we might see more phone systems go this way to if there are benefits for the companies and the customers (view projects).
  • Transportation – There’s just one in the transportation category, an electronic fuel injection project. While there is always talk of an “open source” automobile, there mostly design projects and not a project with downloads, files, software, etc – in a few years we might see a physical open source hardware car however, there seems to be a lot of interest (view projects).
  • UAVs – A Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is an aircraft that has the capability of fully autonomous flight, without a pilot in control. Amateur UAVs are non-military and non-commercial. They typically fly under “recreational” exceptions to FAA regulations on UAVs, so long as the pilots/programmers keep them within tight limits on altitude and distance. Usually the UAV is controlled manually by Radio Control (RC) at take-off and landing, and switched into autonomous mode only at a safe altitude (view projects).
  • Wireless and GPS – From an open GPS tracker to a small wireless device that works with the Arduino, this is a fairly new category and likely one that will grow as more spectrum frees up (view projects).

Some of the projects are likely “open source hardware” but the files aren’t all up yet, at the time of this writing the maker was contacted to make sure they put a license up for clarification, this will be noted and updated. There will undoubtably be a few mistakes in a collection this large, hit refresh, we’ll be updating it all weekend. Also, there’s a very good chance we missed something, post them up in the comments and we will add them if they’re OSH. When we release this article each year there are always a few days of adding, removing and editing.

A great year for OSH, have fun reading the guide!

84 thoughts on “Open source hardware 2009 – The definitive guide to open source hardware projects in 2009

  1. mojo says:

    My projects: http://denki.world3.net

    The Retro Adapter in particular is completely open source.

  2. mojo says:

    PS. it’s all GPL V3

  3. Anonymous says:

    http://openfarmtech.org is another interesting project, they try to scale up open source hardware at the housing / community level.

  4. Timothy N Miller says:

    The Open Graphics Project (www.opengraphics.org) should be listed. We’re building our FPGA-based development platform, OGD1, (basically, a high end FPGA with graphics output devices on the board). We have the PCBs made and are about to go to assembly. We also have a library of logic blocks (controllers for PCI, memory, video, etc.). We even have our own CPU design. We also have a working VGA implementation, which turned out to be very nontrivial.

  5. Anonymous says:

    I haven’t found ethernut on the list, is it really missing? Quite surprising, as it has at least 5 years that I have been following (and using). It has even been featured on Elektor (Elektor Internet Radio).

  6. Phillip Torrone says:

    Anon – can you point me to the PCB files and license that says commercial use is allowed for the ethernut? i’d love to add it.

    @Timothy N Miller – can you point me to the PCB files and license that says commercial use is allowed for the ogp? i’d love to add it.

  7. B. Botany says:

    Software defined radio and ham radio projects are where? The hams have been freely swapping and modifying circuits for over a century now! And at least more me, and Arduino with a GPS isn’t terribly exciting until I think of GPRS, and suddenly note it could talk to me from anywhere.

  8. B. Botany says:

    typing too fast… “GPRS” is a typo for APRS – the automatic packet reporting system.

  9. Cubespawn says:

    Hi this is james from CubeSpawn
    see it at http://www.cubespawn.com – it may merit inclusion. ;-)

  10. lekernel says:

    The Milkymist project (www.milkymist.org) should be listed. We are developing a GPL-licensed system-on-chip design for embedded graphics processing, targetted at VJ and artistic performances applications. It’s actually a fully-fledged system-on-chip, with an open hardware embedded processor capable of running Linux, a SDRAM controller, graphics accelerators, etc.

    Right now, we do not have PCBs for our custom FPGA board (we are working on this), but the chip design in itself is open source and highly portable, and has been shown to work on a number of off-the-shelf FPGA boards.

    Actually, I can see that many of the projects you listed are heavily based on proprietary chips such as Atmel AVRs or, worse, integrated MP3 decoders. Are they still “open source hardware”? What is the license for the HDL files used to build those chips and for the firmware burnt into the ROM of the MP3 decoder?

  11. Phillip Torrone says:

    @lekernel – the chip does not matter, any chip can be used. as long as it’s turing complete. while the arduino uses an AVR, you could use anything else.

    when the milkymist has PCBs drop me an email, i’ll add this to the list!

    @CubeSpawn – is there a license somewhere that says “commercial use allowed”? i can’t find it…

    @B. Botany – for software defined radio projects, can you find one that has PCB files and license that allows commercial use? if so please email me so i can add it to the list.

    1. lekernel says:

      If the chip does not matter and if the Arduino is open source, then I can make, say, a PIC development board and call it a “fork” of Arduino. But, wait, what will the two project have in common?
      Let alone the fact that the PIC is proprietary, too.

      You did not answer my question about MP3 decoding. For playing MP3s, you not only need the ability to execute computer programs (and by the way, said computer programs are hidden from you in the ROMs of the chips used on the “open hardware” MP3 player you mention), you also need PERFORMANCE, something that only a careful and usually complex chip design can provide. So, sorry, the chip does matter.

    2. CubeSpawn says:

      Hi Phillip,
      Cubespawn is under the TAPR Open Hardware License

      the license is here http://www.cubespawn.com/index.php/system.html

      Regards,
      James

  12. Phillip Torrone says:

    @lekernel – you can make an arduino “fork” – but, keep in mind, according to the license that the arduino team has published you can’t call it arduino and please do not make the circuit boards blue. that’s about it, go for it.

    performance of a chip is not a consideration, open source hardware just means anyone can recreate it. as long as it’s turing complete the projects will still work. this doesn’t mean it will work well, but it will work.

  13. lekernel says:

    Phillip, you missed my point completely. I was questioning what Arduino (and others) has to offer that makes it an “open source hardware” project. Sure, it has open source software (GCC, Processing IDE and STK500 bootloader) and a open-source-like touchy-feely community, but is the hardware itself actually open? The proprietary AVR does all the work, the rest is a power supply and a RS232/USB converter. And any attempt to replace the AVR (for example with a PIC, as I suggested) ends up in a relatively major PCB respin, let alone software incompatibilities.

    I will also make myself more clear about the MP3 decoder chip. Typically, such chips are made by using a DSP/microprocessor that does most of the work and sometimes dedicated hardware acceleration units. Like any microprocessor, it has a program code. And this code is pre-burnt in the ROMs in the chips, and, unless you are hacking the chip, you never see it. Calling “open source hardware” the design of a MP3 player that uses such a chip is like calling “open source software” a program that requires a ROM filled with a binary blob connected inside the computer, while the actually open source part of the program only transfers CPU execution to that ROM.

    Finally, I would love to see a computer system which is actually Turing-complete :)

  14. Phillip Torrone says:

    @lekernel – you do not need an avr to make an “arduino” using the published materials you could make one using another chip, that’s the point of OSH, you can make it and remake it if needed. that doesn’t mean it’s easy, just that it’s not locked away or impossible to recreate. i know you do not like the arduino (i recall your comments on your blog/elsewhere) so please email me, i don’t want this post to be about your dislike of the arduino project :)

  15. lekernel says:

    Actually the published materials would be of little use, if any :) Just take the FT232 datasheet, copy the reference design in it (in case you didn’t know, chip manufacturers actually have always encouraged copying of trivial designs like this), connect it to your microcontroller, add a few headers, and voila! you have a microcontroller board equivalent in functionality to the much-hyped Arduino. And you can make a blue PCB if you want, no need to give a damn about the original Arduino license since you used none of their work.

    I will also add that some guys active in the FFII (http://www.ffii.org/) are thinking about launching a petition to pressure websites that sell Arduino to stop marketing it as “open source hardware”. I am all for it.

  16. Robert Morrison says:

    Did you forget the Home Automation category for open source projects? This is a very popular DIY project area. I maintain the Zeta Engineering HCS_C project, a spinoff of the original Ciarcia (Byte/Circuit Cellar) HCS II home automation controller.

    Robert Morrison

  17. Phillip Torrone says:

    @robert – can you point me to where the files are, PCBs etc and a commercial use license? i don’t see them, i’d love to add these.

  18. Phillip Torrone says:

    hi lekernel, i wanted to spend some more time replying to this, i was replying from my phone before.. (i was actually shipping open source hardware all morning, arduinos, stuff like that).

    just my opinion, i think that you might be pissed off in general, angry about arduino because it’s so successful?

    you have two conflicting arguments, one about whether arduino is open source because it uses an AVR and another is about whether MP3 chips are open source (not that is mp3 is licensed, but we’ll ignore that for this discussion).

    one could say that an MP3 chip is proprietary and should be implemented as a DSP where the ‘firmware’ is more obvious. but then i would argue that using a DSP chip is just as proprietary as an FPGA so really he should be using FPGAs (we’re -positive- someone has done an mp3 decoder on an FPGA). and then i’d say the FPGA structure is just as proprietary, so one should be using CMOS logic chips. So really he should be using ONLY 74HC logic chips wired on a gigantic PCB and if hes not doing that then its not open source hardware SO THERE! :) (others would say you should go straight to MOSFETs but really, thats ridiculous!)

    lets look at something that is more well understood: Linux. we all agree that Linux is open source software right? and yet, there are chunks of the kernel that use the processor, bus chips, bios, etc. the linux software itself cant just magically be run on an iphone. it must be PORTED. porting software/kernels is hard if you dont know what you’re doing. it takes some effort but it IS possible. You can/could run linux on nearly any processor although when it started it was x86 based only. so obviously there is some BASE LEVEL under which we say “below this abstraction, we wont be doing any more noodling and we’re happy with it”

    so now that we’ve established that, we will look at Arduino. you agree that the SOFTWARE is open source, the FIRMWARE (bootloader & ‘wiring’ core) is open source so lets look at the hardware. First off, they released the board files and schematics. you can literally run off arduino clones from the files tomorrow, joy to the world. so the PCB itself is open source to the extent we understand copyright law.

    the RS232 interface uses an FTDI chip but you could easily replace that with a MAX232 and you could easly replace THAT with NAND gates (and people have) so really thats not the problem either.

    so the only real point you have is that the AVR -itself- is not open source. that is true, they have not released the files that allow anyone to slap together their own processor. but we argue that not-that-much of the Arduino core depends on the chip structure itself (to the extent that nearly all microcontrollers have ‘timers’ and ‘pin direction’) and that since its abstracted quite well you could easily replace the AVR with say, an ARM Cortex M3. in fact, people have done this, and yes it requires PORTING some of the Wiring core (which, as you remember is distributed). and yes it requires PORTING the hardware files (which, as you remember are distributed) but its not any more work than PORTING software which happens ALL THE TIME (often hidden in squicky Makefiles, config files and #ifdefs)

    heck, you could do the above and not even call it Arduino and everyone would be very happy. people do this -all the time- there are easily a dozen projects along these lines. but if you do want to call it Arduino, you’ll have to contact the team for permission since its their trademark. it seems pretty straightforward to us.

    so yes, if we want to be pendantic, there is actually no such thing as open source anything other than, perhaps, rocks. but then we’re stuck with rocks and rocks are terrible semiconductors. string theorists may comment on how the rocks aren’t open source either, sorry.

    all this being, said – this is a great discussion. i really look forward to your arduino petition, i’ll even sign it because it’s freaking hilarious! here are some ideas :)

    STOP ARDUINO!
    ITS NOT OSH BECAUSE ITS TOO BASIC – ANYONE CAN DESIGN IT
    ITS NOT OSH BECAUSE ITS TOO COMPLEX – NO ONE CAN PORT IT
    DOWN WITH OSH
    LONG LIVE ROCKS!

  19. lekernel says:

    My arguments are not conflicting and both point in the same direction: the openness of some of the projects you list here is questionable.

    I went on for Arduino because you mentioned it first, and for the MP3 chip as it is another good example.

    Yes, I am pissed off with Arduino. Not because of its intrinsic success -after all, messing around with Arduinos is arguably better than playing Worlds of Warcraft-, but because many blogs and electronics magazines (Hackaday and Elektor for example) have their quality content often replaced by Arduino-based LED blinkers. That’s a different argument, though.

    Yes, FPGA structures and design tools are proprietary. However, correctly written RTL code (Verilog/VHDL) will behave the same on most FPGAs and even ASICs, if you choose to synthesize it for that target. A processor designed in open source RTL will execute the very same *binary* code, whatever underlying technology it is using.

    Why are you saying that going down to the MOSFET level is ridiculous? A hacker/maker-run semiconductor foundry would be a wonderful project, albeit extremely ambitious. Designing with FPGAs is already one step towards this, as we would have higher-level designs ready and waiting to be synthesized for our silicon process and fabricated.

    And for the petition, it’s not mine, and it’s not against Arduino itself. Indeed, if I needed a cheap, quickly programmed (the pre-flashed bootloader makes things easier) and easily available AVR board, I wouldn’t be the last to use Arduino. But I do not call it open source hardware.

    1. oskay says:

      >Designing with FPGAs is already one step towards this[…]

      Maybe, but not any more so than designing around the most popular AVR microcontrollers. If and when true open-source FPGAs and/or microcontrollers ever appear, wouldn’t you also expect that versions will be constructed that implement the AVR instruction set?

      >Yes, I am pissed off with Arduino.[…] many blogs and electronics magazines
      > (Hackaday and Elektor for example) have their quality content often replaced
      >by Arduino-based LED blinkers. That’s a different argument, though.

      I understand completely. That’s the same reason that I’m pissed off at Crayola: My local art museum started an exhibition of “refrigerator drawings” made by kids with crayons, finger paints, and pencils. Those a-holes at Crayola make crayons!

      1. lekernel says:

        What if just every art museum was having such exhibitions, and dubbed them “Crayola exhibitions”?

  20. Phillip Torrone says:

    what oskay said!

    +

    you say “Yes, I am pissed off with Arduino.”

    at least you admit it, that’s a good first step.

    and then you say “Not because of its intrinsic success -after all, messing around with Arduinos is arguably better than playing Worlds of Warcraft-, but because many blogs and electronics magazines (Hackaday and Elektor for example) have their quality content often replaced by Arduino-based LED blinkers. That’s a different argument, though.”

    i founded hack-a-day and i think i’ve read your comments there, specifically on arduino related projects. from what i recall your comments are in general mean, they make people feel bad about their projects and discourage beginners. now that you’re saying your pissed at arduino, it makes sense now. i just doubled checked your blog and it appears you really do not like arduino (you say “Arduino-based crap”) and apparently do not think what bre pettis does is very good (makerbot?).

    i’m not sure if this much anger is healthy however, arduino isn’t going away. did you see that great WSJ article a couple weeks ago? i think every kid who wants to learn electronics is going to use arduinos some time or another.

    back to the topic at hand, it sounds like you just want people to acknowledge how smart you are because you can write VHDL. that’s no problem, i think that’s cool. i think i can speak for the entire group of people here and say “you are VERY smart and you can design great hardware! all the stuff you do is fantastic and VERY difficult and few of us could write hardcore VHDL like you”. that feels good, done.

    moving on, you say that “yes, FPGA structures and design tools are proprietary. however, correctly written RTL code (Verilog/VHDL) will behave the same on most FPGAs and even ASICs, if you choose to synthesize it for that target.” so it sounds like you’re admitting that your *truly open source hardware design* is dependent on a layer of hardware that you DONT have the design for. fine by us, just want to make it clear otherwise someone may start a petition against you! someone might have issue with you using proprietary dev boards if you use them, be careful!

    likewise, we say “yes, the AVR and other microcontroller structure is proprietary. however, well written Arduino (which is, essentially C code) can be ported from one processor to another without too much difficulty if you target the compiler properly” – sure maybe some pins get moved around but thats not hard if the schematics and/or layout are available. people do this -all the time-, many of the OSH makers have done it -often-: grabbing code and porting from ARM’s to PIC’s to AVR’s to 8051 to basic stamp to Arduino to… Sometimes it doesn’t port nicely but a processor is a processor.

    or as oskay pointed out… i wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere down the line someone fabbed their own ‘Arduino chip’ that is optimized for use with the Arduino hardware and IDE. parallax made their own chip for their own products, so its certainly feasible.

    so here’s my proposal: unless someone can post up photomasks and gate level netlists & layout that the designs are not really open source hardware.

    or we could say “Hey you know, it would be great if we all fabbed our own chips but right now we don’t/can’t so lets go with what we’ve got and acknowledge that some hardware is lower level than others but that contributions at every level are useful for the greater good of Electrical Engineering in general.”

    i prefer the latter. but if you want the former, ladyada has some tanner tools files (oh so proprietary, but i’m pretty sure we can export masks) for a low power, low noise op-amp design here that is ready to go. i have consulted with her just now, let me know.

    LONG LIVE ROCKS

  21. Tito says:

    Hey everybody – good to see there’s a growing ‘bio’ section. The Pearl Gel Box, which I denied at Foo Camp, should definitely be up there. Check it out: http://www.pearlbiotech.com

    Tito

  22. Maurice says:

    Here’s a link to my Open Source Hardware Project: http://www.cameraaxe.com/

    The Camera Axe is a tool for photographers to trigger cameras or flashes based signals from various sensors. The Camera Axe is useful for catching phenomena that happen too quickly for human reflexes, like photographing a popping balloon or a milk droplet splash. Other uses can be to catch things photographers don’t want to wait around for like birds flying to a bird feeder or surveillance of people walking down a hallway. The possibilities are endless. The hardware and software for this project are shared under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

  23. lekernel says:

    > it appears you really do not like arduino (you say
    > “Arduino-based crap”)

    There are some projects which sometimes use Arduino, and still, are good. RepRap for example. What I call “crap” is LED blinkers and similar stuff, which are unfortunately what Arduino gets most coverage from.

    > and apparently do not think what bre pettis does is very good
    > (makerbot?)

    I guess you are referring to http://lekernel.net/blog/?p=216.
    It was not my text, I posted it there because I found it funny and I do not necessarily 100% agree with it. It is also making fun of hackerspaces, while I am involved in them. In fact, I do not even know what Bre Pettis does well enough to criticize it.

    > so here’s my proposal: unless someone can post up photomasks and
    > gate level netlists & layout that the designs are not really
    > open source hardware.

    That’s fine. You see, some projects are really trying to do that: OpenRISC, OpenSPARC, OpenGraphics, …

    1. Phillip Torrone says:

      you wrote – >>There are some projects which sometimes use Arduino, and still, are good. RepRap for example. What I call “crap” is LED blinkers and similar stuff, which are unfortunately what Arduino gets most coverage from.

      no one is going to fab a chip to blink a LED, hundreds of thousands of people are getting in to electronics despite your hatred of the arduino and discouraging words (here and elsewhere it seem) that’s fine, more for us, we’ll help them out :)

      do a ton of how-tos and publish them on make, hack-a-day and all the places you don’t like, make them better :)

      >>It was not my text, I posted it there because I found it funny and I do not necessarily 100% agree with it. It is also making fun of hackerspaces, while I am involved in them. In fact, I do not even know what Bre Pettis does well enough to criticize it.

      really? it’s on your blog with the “arduino-crap” comment, i wouldn’t put something on my blog like that about bre. the reprap is related to makerbot. it’s funny how you say you don’t know what bre does to criticize it but i will say that i don’t think you know enough about getting beginners involved in electronics to criticize it as well.

      >>That’s fine. You see, some projects are really trying to do that: OpenRISC, OpenSPARC, OpenGraphics, …

      trying, great. but any project that uses an FPGA doesnt cut it (and certainly not anything that uses a proprietary FPGA dev board!). they need to post actual masks and transistor level layouts so that it can be fabbed. (once they do that, we will design an uC chip that can be used in all the Arduinos.) i wish them best of luck, meanwhile we have useful open source hardware to publish & ship for people of all ages, backgrounds and education levels, the race is on, what are you doing to help?

      :)

      1. ladyada says:

        lekernel & pt,
        just wanted to mention that for truly open source hardware not only the physical ROM masks but also dopant schedule and manufacturing routines should be published. i’m pretty lax about the masks, you could put them up as DXF, PDF or gif, whatever. as long as it could be cut by hand on rubylith or similar.

        also, please note that if you’re doing graphics hardware you may also need some OTHER chips such as high speed op amps and that these must ALSO be released in transistor/mask level EDA.

        jeri ellsworth has already started by making her own transistors so i’m psyched that soon we’ll be doing 10 micron processes in our kitchens!

  24. CY says:

    Ronja (optical data links) might apply

    http://ronja.twibright.com/schematics/

    License is on the schematics in the lower right, appears to be GPL.

    There are also BRL-CAD files:
    http://ronja.twibright.com/3d/

  25. Kevin Townsend says:

    lekernel (et al): Wow. What’ up with all the Arduino hate? OK. You think it stinks. I’m not really a big fan of myself (I’m mostly an ARM guy), but I’m still happy to seeing tends of thousands of people get excited about electronics and maybe pick up a soldering iron for the first time or write a few lines of code and realise that it isn’t rocket science after all. Maybe some day the brightest and best of those people will even find that they’re pretty good at it, move up to bigger and better things, and make a really positive contribution to the world one day. Not everyone needs 500,000 gates of programmable logic to do something worthwhile. Arduino isn’t doing anything that hasn’t been done 1000 times before, and I’m not even going to weigh in on whether it’s doing it well (I don’t have enough experience with it to say since it’s not really my cup of tea) … but if that rankles your feathers so much, I’m sure the brilliant folks over at Xilinx or Altera will be happy to take some money off your hands and they have several forums where your video-processing, bit-juggling brilliance can shine that much brighter when you don’t have to deal with the unwashed 8-bit masses. You’re a brilliant programmable logic genius, we get it … I’ll be looking forward to seeing your finished project at OpenCores … but grow up a bit. Life’s hard enough already. Coming across as an a**hole isn’t going to make it any easier.

  26. Yann says:

    Two more open source hardware projects, for the Development Tools category. Both are CC-SA 3.0 licensed, and include board and schematic.

    http://store.stackfoundry.com/megavore.html
    http://store.stackfoundry.com/copper-avr32-stick.html

  27. lekernel says:

    > or BETTER YET do a ton of how-tos and publish them on make, hack-a-day and all the places you don’t like, make them better :)

    I sent a couple of things to hack a day, Uzebox for example. Most of them never got posted; instead, LED blinkers flourished.

    > i don’t think you know enough about getting beginners involved in
    > electronics to criticize it as well.

    To criticize what? Electronics beginners? I don’t. Since you’ve been reading my blog, you probably know that I have even done workshops for them, and as they came back, it seems I have not been so aggressive. What I do criticize is:
    – projects that claim to be open source hardware but are not doing that much to be really open source. The examples that I mentioned and many others deserve the “open hardware” title a lot more than some projects that you listed (I am not saying they are bad, just that they are not open hardware) – but you keep ignoring them in your “definitive” guide. Perhaps we should better define what “open source hardware” is, we definitely do not share the same view on this point.
    – “hacking” blogs/electronics magazines that used to be good (I used to enjoy reading Hackaday a few years ago) but are now posting 90% boring & trivial things. When you’re a beginner, it’s good to blink a LED, and I had to do that, too. But do not stop here and call that good.
    Sure, you need sometimes to post articles to make beginners learn. But why post, for example, 10 different ways of blinking a LED with an AVR instead of a 10-post-long series of how to build and program the Uzebox?

    1. Phillip Torrone says:

      you wrote >>”I sent a couple of things to hack a day, Uzebox for example. Most of them never got posted; instead, LED blinkers flourished.”

      i wonder why? maybe mean spirited comments and not-helpful attitude makes it hard for anyone to want to post some projects. and because they have not posted your project you are “pissed at arduino” and “arduino-crap” you’re taking it out on this thread!

      and to be clear the uzebox *was* posted on hack-a-day. and it’s also included here in the OSH guide. i have one on my desk, it’s great!

      >>To criticize what? Electronics beginners? I don’t.

      that’s not true, you obviously hate arduino, you’ve said it many times! you don’t like blinking LED projects! if i recall correctly your hackaday comments on arduino are not very nice at all.

      >>projects that claim to be open source hardware but are not doing that much to be really open source.

      all the projects here are open source hardware projects. everyone agrees but you it seems and you want to start a petition claiming the arduino is not OSH or some nonsense because it uses an AVR. i think my previous posts destroyed that argument, we don’t need AVRs. so – post actual masks and transistor level layouts so your project can be fabbed, otherwise we’re just doing open source software using expensive dev boards, right? :)

      >>I mentioned and many others deserve the “open hardware” title a lot more than some projects that you listed (I am not saying they are bad, just that they are not open hardware) – but you keep ignoring them in your “definitive” guide. Perhaps we should better define what “open source hardware” is, we definitely do not share the same view on this point.

      you didn’t read this post, why don’t you outline them and email them to me as opposed to the arduino comments. here is the human-friendly definition of OSH that everyone (maybe not you) seems to agree with… “What is open source hardware? These are projects in which the creators have decided to completely publish 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. Similar to open source software like Linux, but this hardware centric”.

      are you upset that the open graphics project isn’t in here yet, is that it? this guide isn’t the end-all, just the guide that i do each year. i hope someone makes a better one :)

      >>””hacking” blogs/electronics magazines that used to be good (I used to enjoy reading Hackaday a few years ago) but are now posting 90% boring & trivial things. When you’re a beginner, it’s good to blink a LED, and I had to do that, too. But do not stop here and call that good.”

      ideas: don’t read them, start a new site, put your projects out there. maybe you’re interests are not the same as others. if you keep sitting back with arms folded hating blinking LEDs and your only output is snarky comments on blogs no one will want to do collaborate.

      >>Sure, you need sometimes to post articles to make beginners learn. But why post, for example, 10 different ways of blinking a LED with an AVR instead of a 10-post-long series of how to build and program the Uzebox?

      there are fuzebox and uzebox posts here and make, on adafruit (she make the fuezebox) – it sounds like your just upset that arduino is the girl with the most cake at the moment. all i can suggest is that you reconsider your attitude towards beginners and make things that are interesting for site to post if you want to see change :)

  28. lekernel says:

    >> “I sent a couple of things to hack a day, Uzebox for example. Most
    >> of them never got posted; instead, LED blinkers flourished.”

    > i wonder why? maybe your mean spirited comments and attitude make
    > it hard for anyone to want to post your projects. and because they
    > have not posted your projects you are “pissed at arduino” and
    > “arduino-crap” and taking up time here? if you’re a jerk online
    > sometimes people do not want to help you!

    > all i can suggest is that you reconsider your attitude towards beginners
    > and make things that are interesting for site to post if you want to see change.

    Ironically enough, some of my projects were actually posted at hackaday, and I did not even submit them. Furthermore, many of the submissions I am talking about were not offensive and either date back from before the LED blinker craziness and/or were submitted anonymously.

    >>To criticize what? Electronics beginners? I don’t.
    > that’s not true, you obviously hate arduino,
    > you’ve said it many times! you don’t like blinking LED projects!

    No, I hate seeing them 50 times in media that used to write good stuff, and I dislike people stopping there and calling that good. That’s hardly the same thing.

    > Similar to open source software like Linux, but this hardware
    > centric”

    Not so similar, as Linux is, for example, fighting firmware blobs from the kernel while you allow big proprietary chips to be the core of some “open hardware” projects, and even argue this is good.

    > post actual masks and transistor level layouts so your project
    > can be fabbed

    Sure, if I make an ASIC, that will be planned.

  29. Phillip Torrone says:

    >>Ironically enough, some of my projects were actually posted at hackaday, and I did not even submit them. Furthermore, many of the submissions I am talking about were not offensive and either date back from before the LED blinker craziness and/or were submitted anonymously.

    some of your projects *were* posted on hack-a-day and you’re still “pissed at arduino” and for some reason want to take over the comments here because you don’t like arduino. it seems there is no way to make this deep seeded hatred for this wonderful open source hardware project subside. lighten up! :)

    please do not make this thread about hack-a-day!

    >>No, I hate seeing them 50 times in media that used to write good stuff, and I dislike people stopping there and calling that good. That’s hardly the same thing.

    here’s what i would do – make your own site and stop with the mean spirited comments on *other sites* like MAKE and hack-a-day. people love arduino and making projects with them, you’ll need to get over it or make your own site that celebrates things other than “arduino-crap”. i’d love to see another electronics site covering things besides arduino, so please let me know if you ever do this, i’d even help!

    >>if I make an ASIC, that will be planned.

    good luck, i am looking forward to seeing it and the actual masks / transistor level layouts so your project can be fabbed. and then you and maybe jeri e. will be the only *true* open source makers on the planet since you’re actually making chips and not promoting the use of very pricey proprietary dev boards :)

    1. Andrew says:

      Hey Phillip – I can see both sides of the argument here between you and lekernel, but I think it’s a bit much for you to call him “mean”. You’re being far more aggressive in this thread, at least to my reading of it.

      Have a nice day :)

      1. Phillip Torrone says:

        @andrew – maybe, i hope not. i think it’s perfectly acceptable to observe someone “mean” who says they “hate arduino” are “pissed off at arduino” and says “arduino crap” about people’s projects. i read every comment here and most comments at hack-a-day where lekernel frequently comments (and says he doesn’t like because of all the LED blinky projects now). i think i may have more context.

        read some of the comments on hack-a-day about every single arduino project, they’re really negative and harsh, glossolalie! that will not happen at MAKE as long as i am here :)
        http://bit.ly/6Z4Ul7

        you can read the commenters complain about the snarks, i don’t think there as nice as i am about it though :)

        in case it wasn’t clear lekernel has some interesting projects, he’s also very smart, the stuff he is working on is VERY intense. but when someone calls people’s projects “crap” it’s really discouraging. this post shouldn’t be about someone’s dislike of the arduino project and projects that use it.

        it’s also silly to be “launching a petition to pressure websites that sell Arduino to stop marketing it as “open source hardware”. c’mon – really? the arduino is OSH and it’s doing a lot of good.

        the project that he mentioned here is very interesting, but i think he’s upset that it wasn’t included in the guide and the arduino is. he gives the reason too: “Right now, we do not have PCBs for our custom FPGA board (we are working on this), but the chip design in itself is open source and highly portable, and has been shown to work on a number of off-the-shelf FPGA boards.”

        i really don’t mind adding this project, even *without* PCBs, but it’s not on the top of my list right now – it’s extremely expensive, i want to review it, the guide is getting updated each day. but it’s cool, i am checking it out. but let’s be clear, you can’t just download PCBs and have that project fab’ed like an arduino. i have a processor section, that project could go in there, and it just might!

        if you look at all of my comments, i try hard to be polite and respectful, on MAKE i’m not going to let someone be mean towards the makers who use arduinos in their projects and i also didn’t like that his blog has a post that seems to be making fun of bre, doesn’t matter if wrote it or not, he put it on his blog.

        a lot of beginners emails and talk to me all the time says they’re afraid to show their projects online because of mean comments. so if i’m a little aggressive about that, well, i think that’s part of my job – MAKE is safe place.

        windell, ladyada and kevin (above) seem to think i’m not totally out of line and those 3 are way smarter than me :)

        all that said, lekernel has ignored most of the technical points i’ve said and now it’s just nerd-fighting, i don’t mind it, i suspect he likes the debate as well. he’s seems really smart, this might just be one of many nerd-fights to better sharpen one’s position.

        i’d gladly help him get his projects on MAKE (that aren’t blinky LEDs) if he’ll chill out a bit. i likely should have asked him to email me directly more times.

  30. Christian says:

    In January 2009, Daniel Reetz made a cheap, simple book scanner and in April he put the complete plans online. Since then, many people have built their own scanners and made incredible improvements.

    The community has developed a whole ecosystem of scanner designs ranging from crude and expedient to polished and highly sophisticated. They also helped develop and document free, Open-Source software to post-process the images.

    http://diybookscanner.org/

  31. Emanuele says:

    Hello,
    this is my open source hardware (and software) project

    FTPmicro
    http://dev.emcelettronica.com/ftpmicro
    the features are:
    embedded web server
    ftp client
    sd memory storage /free fat16 routine
    smtp
    application:
    Rss reader without PC

    and here the italian version
    http://it.emcelettronica.com/ftpmicro

  32. Lee says:

    SWARM is a fleet of semiautonomous spherical robots that dance, sing and perform light shows. It was built with all open source tools and parts. All the parts, like motor controllers, LED panels, the extensive autonomous driving software, remote Zigbee controllers along with the novel shape are all fully open source.

    Our license was previously open source except for commercial purposes but we opened it up

    http://wiki.orbswarm.com/

    We’d be honored to be included in this list of open source projects!

  33. dan paluska says:

    what about the holy toaster kit?
    i actually just sold out of them so you can’t buy it anymore but it was available for most of 2009 and is totally open source… DXF files and cost breakdown for production. all public domain.
    maybe it goes under culture jamming or religious?

    the holy toaster kit is here->
    http://plebiandesign.com/store.html

    boranj,
    dan

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