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Open Source Hardware Projects, 2009 77

Posted by kdawson
from the hard-way dept.
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."
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Open Source Hardware Projects, 2009 More

Open Source Hardware Projects, 2009

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  • Now there's a geeky Christmas card! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Lord Lode (1290856) on Saturday December 12 2009, @06:44PM (#30417996)

    Look under the "religious" projects. Finally a Christmas card that looks more geeky than the "iphone with cardboard" posted earlier on /.

  • Hardware and Software Projects are Awesome (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Murdoch5 (1563847) on Saturday December 12 2009, @07:17PM (#30418224)
    About 2 years ago I built a 68000 full hardware and software board in my second year of college. I wrote the firmware in ASM and had to then reprogram the ASM to Srecord and yes that's reprogram not just use a converter. The board was wire wrapped which took more time then I want to remember. Over all a fun project it took a total of about 6 weeks and we had to reprogram the ROM about 100 times because the rom burner was broken but no one knew till I suggested.

  • Re:No universal machine (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rphy (1614581) on Saturday December 12 2009, @07:25PM (#30418280)
    Agree with you. And also, software should be free (as in free speech) due to the inherent nature of software (lines of code). OTOH, one can choose not to display the schematics of the hardware thus preventing someone from duplicating it. Of course, in most cases, one can open it up and reverse engineer it; however not so easy with microchips and the like. I find "open source hardware" just a fashionable tag people use to promote themselves.

  • Make magazine (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 12 2009, @07:32PM (#30418318)
    Ah Make magazine. Sadly this journal is so difficult to find here in Australia, and when you do, the cost is so astronomically expensive per issue that anyone who can afford it can just go and buy off-the-shelf stuff and probably has no need to make their own on the cheap anyway. Well that is the feeling that always springs to mind :(

  • is this also an example of open source? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by JumpSocial (1157627) on Saturday December 12 2009, @11:19PM (#30419410) Homepage
    I consider my model airplane design open source because I made the plans available. People have built them all over the world and have added revisions to the plans. Is that what makes it open source? Here is the URL: http://www.rubber-power.com/ [rubber-power.com]

  • Re:The "Arduno" cult (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Animats (122034) on Saturday December 12 2009, @11:36PM (#30419536) Homepage

    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 the hobbyist world was still struggling along with limited hardware. This is one of the reasons that entry-level hobbyist robots hadn't gotten much smarter for over a decade.

    Although Atmel offered a complete set of free development tools for the ATmega line [atmel.com], they were never presented in a hobbyist-friendly format. Atmel has a huge range of products, and this is just one of many. It's not at all obvious what to order and download.

I hate babies. They're so human. -- H.H. Munro