It is time again for your monthly OSHWA Certification update. Our newly certified projects this month reflect the Coronavirus pandemic. These certification fall roughly into two groups, projects directly trying to address the pandemic, and organizations impacted by the pandemic using recent social distancing rules to catch up on the certification of existing products.
REAMIMA – Ventilator
The first project you should check out is the first of what will most likely be many DIY ventilator projects. This project focuses on using commonly available components and water displacement to create a ventilator. This project comes from Spain which has been particularly hard hit. It is unclear if the project has been evaluated or approved for clinical settings. That notwithstanding building a successful ventilator will require lots of groups contributing ideas and subsystems, that build upon one another to achieve success.
Creator Transfer Chamber
Another Coronavirus related project is the Creator Transfer Chamber. Creator is the California burger joint that uses robots to cook the burgers and fixings. Creator wanted to solve the problem that many of us our concerned with, “how to safely exchange packages without exchanging viruses.” To this end they created a “positive pressure self sanitizing transfer chamber.”
Field Ready!
Last month’s certification update was heavy on projects related to FieldReady.org. According to Field Ready’s charter speaks for itself regarding disaster response, “We believe that by making useful things locally, we can make the world a better place and that people should have essential items where and when they need them.” We’ve heard the stories from Italy of 3D printers being used to build ventilator adapters. To combat such situation Field Ready is creating a list of open hardware medical essentials for communities to engage in mutual aide. You can find a full list of their offerings here.
BeagleBoard Black
A maker favorite that is finally able to show off its open hardware street cred is the BeagleBoard Black. The BeagleBoard Black is a workhorse single board computer that has been with us for a long time, and now it is finally certified open hardware. Just like the trinket this is a big win for open hardware, and allows down stream open hardware projects to become more open. In large engineering projects we often call these sorts of things systems of systems, and the fact that we are building open hardware systems of systems is a big win for the open hardware movement. I reached out to Jason Kridner, the co-founder of BeagleBoard.org about certifying the Beagle Board. I asked him about the motivations for certifying the BeagleBoard Black to which he responded, “Certification enables us to be clear that anyone can use our designs and make their own boards. It sets us apart from other small Linux computers and lets our values be known.”
CRAFTALIGHT
The last open hardware certified project on the list for this month is the Craftalight. Are you a person that carries around a purse or a bag? Do you ever have trouble finding stuff in your purse? I know I do. Half the time I am looking for my keys that have my trusty miniature flashlight that I use to find things in my bag. The whole situation is a mess. I am a mess and my constant bag rummaging reflects poorly on me as an individual. The Craftalight brings sanity back to the bag world and makes it such that you don’t need to remove all of your possessions from your bag just to find your keys. The Craftalight is a tiny little board with a couple of LEDs and Hall effect sensor. If your bag or purse uses a magnetic snap enclosure the Craftalight will detect the change in the enclosure’s magnetic field and turn on the lights. The whole thing runs off of a standard USB power bank which you probably are already carrying in your purse already. The whole thing is just genius and certified open hardware.
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