In May 2021 the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) certified a wide variety of hardware as open source. we will have a certified variety collection of Open Source Hardwares, Let’s take a look! (And remember, certification is a free and easy way to show that your hardware complies with the open source hardware definition.)
First, many makers are interested in space and astronomy. The Astrohat is a Raspberry Pi 4 compatible hat for all your astronomy equipment. It comes with six 12V controllable outputs @3A each with current monitoring (2 PWM controllable for dew heaters), a temperature, humidity and pressure sensor port (external module), one adjustable 6-12 V output, and one port for serial communication and power to external device like a GPS. It’s the 5th piece of certified hardware from Greece. You can find the details here.
I have worked with many Raspberry Pi projects, most of which use the GPIO pins. One thing I often struggle to do is connect a jumper wire from the GPIO pins to peripherals or IO devices such as motors, lights, and sensors. This can be even harder when I want to put these peripherals far from the Raspberry Pi. In order to make it easy to connect wires of any length to the Pi, Tecknologg created the Raspberry Pi Screw Terminal Shield.
The Raspberry Pi pin header shield lets you use the Raspberry Pi pin headers without having to use dupont cables which can vary in quality. The shield lets you use different types of wires/cables and helps make connections to sensors, actuators and so on without the need to solder. The shield is designed to fit onto most raspberry pi boards out there. The project is open-source hardware and designed with KiCad which makes it a lot easier for the user to modify. You can find more details, including the schematic and gerber, here.
Next we have the ANAVI Macro Pad 2. It is a 2-key mechanical keypad that you can reprogram and use as a macro keypad. Only free and open source software tools like KiCad, OpenSCAD, and Inkscape were used to design ANAVI Macro Pad 2. Quantum Mechanical Keyboard (QMK) with V-USB is the default open source firmware. Source code and schematics are available on GitHub.
Whether you want to speed up copying and pasting, simplify common video conferencing functions, “mute” cameras and microphones, or give pride-of-place to your favorite emojis—to name just a few examples—ANAVI Macro Pad 2 lets you do it in style. Multiple pre-made keymaps are available for working with popular software like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Jitsi, Skype, and Git. You can find its certification page here.
Hardware-based encryption keys are getting more attention to prevent data theft and hacking. The open Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) standards help simplify two-factor authentication in order to make it easier to secure data and protect against phishing and other online attacks.
The SoloKeys SOLO2 is a USB/NFC security key platform. It supports standards including FIDO2/U2F, PIV, and OATH, and is extendable for other standards. The SOLO2 is designed in the US and Switzerland, and manufactured in Italy. It includes a NXP LPC55 microcontroller and runs on Rust-based firmware. You can find the certification details here.
Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 eMMC USB Programming Stick will help you to program the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 over USB. This can be especially helpful if you are programming many units at once. The Programming Stick can act as a programming jig that makes it easy to quickly and accurately program many units.
If you have an old system 8-bit only ISA (aka XT) bus, try this 😀. ISA 8-Bit Ethernet Controller is an open source network interface controller (NIC) card, designed specifically to be used in computers with 8-bit only ISA (aka XT) bus, such as IBM* PC, IBM* PC XT, and various PC/XT compatibles such as the Micro 8088 system. It is based on Realtek RTL8019 ethernet controller and is NE2000-compatible.
Created in India, the Smart Weighing Scale based nRF52 is a very low power weighing scale with BLE and an E-Ink display. It operates on only 3.3V, and connects to a BLE App to share more data about the things being weighed. It is designed for applications where things are weighed everyday continuously, and an inventory required to be maintained for each item being measured.
As always, you can find the full list of certified projects including the 14 certified in May at the OSHWA Certification Directory. As the directory continues to grow, we’ll share highlights each month. If you’ve designed your own open source hardware, consider submitting it for certification for a chance at seeing it featured in a future month’s article!
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