Open Source Hardware Projects, 2009 77
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."
Re:Bad news (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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Mind_share [wikipedia.org]
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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.
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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.
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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.
Don't feed the trolls (Score:2)
Ignore this idiot, please.
Now there's a geeky Christmas card! (Score:4, Interesting)
Look under the "religious" projects. Finally a Christmas card that looks more geeky than the "iphone with cardboard" posted earlier on /.
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Look under the "religious" projects. Finally a Christmas card that looks more geeky than the "iphone with cardboard" posted earlier on /.
Don't make one for anyone who's not local - either the TSA or the Post Office will arrest you for being a terrorist if that gets anywhere near either of them.
Blueprints (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you have the tools and skills doesn't mean you don't need the blueprints.
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Re:No universal machine (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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
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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 (al
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Hardware and Software Projects are Awesome (Score:1, Interesting)
"Culture Jamming" = Tools for Sociopaths (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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> Area Effect Sickness Generator
4chan isn't a hardware device.
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Long distance TV turner-offer is the opposite of sociopathy. RF jamming has a lot of interesting and enlightening uses; it's also apparently a super-advanced project. The Area Effect Sickness thing is sociopathic, unsurprisingly considering it's modeled after a device engineered for crowd control by the government.
Re:No (Score:5, Informative)
A lot of people confuse "use" with "derivative works". Use means run the program.
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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.
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Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
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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? [gnu.org]
Make magazine (Score:1, Interesting)
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PS: I not way endorsing them, I have no comment on whether I like or hate them.
Re:Make magazine (Score:5, Insightful)
Make is not about making stuff cheaper than off-the-shelf, so if the price of mag puts you off, you're not going to make anything with it anyway. The idea behind Make is a form of self-empowerment, to understand hardware and to enable individual constructions. One-of prices are always going to be much higher than the price of mass-produced merchandise.
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I can't fully agree - many of the projects in this story simply aren't mass produced. Few of them that can be bought off-the-shelf (robotic arm? UAV?) are quite expensive there, targetting niche markets, and not consumers.
Buzz-Word Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Buzz-Word Bingo (Score:5, Insightful)
Because unlike a Popular Mechanics article, you're allowed to re-publish identical or modified versions of these guides and the attached sources?
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Negating accidental 'Redundant' moderation. Sigh.
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All the minicomputer and mainframe companies in the 60's and 70's had huge users groups and distributed user contributed software.
Digital's Decus was IMHO the greatest organization and distributed megs of software. Languages, editors, communications, games.
All were available for free. Hardware manufactures saw this as a plus as it would only run on their hardware.
Then, Microcomputers and microprocessors, supplied by manufactures that had no tied-in (other then an a chip ) to the customer base appeared.
At t
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As soon as they automate this... (Score:1, Offtopic)
...we can add "swag optimization" to "search optimization". Except, Microsoft has nothing i want!
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This seems to be attached to the wrong article.
Build It. Share It. Profit. (Score:2)
The "Arduno" cult (Score:2)
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 [microcontrollershop.com] 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.
Re:The "Arduno" cult (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Arduino" is innovative in the way it's packaged and used. I'm not much of a hardware guy, but I looked into microcontrollers like six or seven years ago and was pretty much scared away. The Arduino has made entry into the world of microcontrollers very easy and lets people get really creative without a steep learning curve. Rather than just getting a microcontroller to work, you can think about what you can hook up to it and the software, which is great for software nerds like me who have little experience in hardware. Before this the most I had done was build a kit distortion pedal in high school. If you know how to write simple programs, that same level of hardware knowledge can now be used to do far more interesting and useful things.
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I agree with you. I looked into micro controllers six or seven years ago and thought the same thing. Now with some much going on with Arduino and some many cool projects out there, I'm finally going to jump in and start doing instead of just reading.
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I looked into microcontrollers like six or seven years ago and was pretty much scared away.
The Arduno's ecosystem has helped in that area. There was a previous generation of microcontrollers with hobbyist support, the PIC and the Basic Stamp. Those devices were getting rather dated; the Basic Stamp is descended from a 1970s National Semiconductor part. Moving to Atmel's ATmega128 was a step up, with 32-bit registers and a hardware multiplier. The industrial world made that step up a decade ago, but th
Re:The "Arduno" cult (Score:4, Informative)
(Actually, not 32-bit -- it's all still 8-bit, except for the AVR32 line which is another set of chips altogether.)
You're right, there was a lot lacking and people could be "scared away" from getting started with microcontrollers, but what we're trying to do with NerdKits [nerdkits.com] is make it less scary without hiding the complexity or the conceptual learning. Our hypothesis is that people are actually smart enough to handle real tools, if you show them how, and will be far better off with that experience. Guide newbies through looking at the datasheet, setting registers, etc. Add some unique content [nerdkits.com] that really makes you use your brain, and we've got a lot of very happy customers!
The PICAXE chipset won't scare you away then (Score:2)
creative vocabulary != cult (Score:3, Insightful)
Choosing an odd word to name an interface specification doesn't qualify its users as belonging to a 'cult'.
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The Arduino is all about the "cult," however.
That "cult" has created an ecosystem around the ATMega8/168/328 - in fact, what makes the Arduino so interesting isn't the hardware, or even the shields (although they are nice - a de-facto standard for expansion,) it's the software. The software reduces the barrier of entry to microcontroller programming drastically.
You can make an Arduino that doesn't use their hardware at all, only their software, and get quite a lot of the benefits. In fact, there are officia
is this also an example of open source? (Score:2, Interesting)
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What makes it "Open Source" is giving away the plans, because "Open" means "interoperable" and "Open Source" means you can get the source, period, the end. Bruce Perens and the OSI would like you to believe it means something else, but it had an established meaning before Mr. Perens even claims to have coined the term.
Your airplane design is "Free" if you permit redistribution of [un]modified plans for any purpose. But even those plans in popular mechanics were Open Source — and you can still get acce
no 3g based? (Score:1)
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
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And the FCC wouldn't certify a baseband that you can hack easily, because it can be hacked easily.
I believe those NDAs are pretty much required by law, even if there weren't trade secrets they were trying to protect.
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Shouldn't we have a different word for that ? (Score:2)