32 Open source hardware

The Open Hardware and Design Alliance (OHANDA) aims at encouraging the sharing of open hardware and designs. The core of the project is a free online service where manufacturers of Open hardware and designs can register their products with a common label. This label maps the four freedoms of Free Software to physical devices and their documentation. It is similar to a non-registered trademark for hardware and can be compared to other certificates such as U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) or CE mark. OHANDA thus has the role of a self-organized registration authority.

Open-source hardware

Open-source hardware (OSH) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.

Adafruit Industries is an open-source hardware company based in New York City. It was founded by Limor Fried in 2005. The company designs, manufactures and sells a number of electronics products, electronics components, tools and accessories. It also produces a number of learning resources, including live and recorded videos related to electronics, technology, and programming.

AXIOM is an open hardware and free software digital cinema camera family of devices being developed by a DIY community around the apertus° project.

Copenhagen Suborbitals is an amateur crowd-funded, non-open source human space programme. Since its beginning in 2008, Copenhagen Suborbitals has flown five home-built rockets and two mock-up space capsules. Their stated goal is to have one of the members fly into space, on a sub-orbital spaceflight, in a space capsule on the Spica rocket. The organisation was founded by Kristian von Bengtson and by Peter Madsen, who was convicted of the murder of Kim Wall in 2017. Peter Madsen was excluded from Copenhagen Suborbitals in 2014. The organization successfully launched its Nexø II rocket in summer 2018.

Limor Fried is an American electrical engineer and owner of the electronics hobbyist company Adafruit Industries. She is influential in the open-source hardware community, having participated in the first Open Source Hardware Summit and the drafting of the Open Source Hardware definition, and is known by her moniker ladyada, a homage to Lady Ada Lovelace.

Hardware Freedom Day is an annual celebration organized by the Digital Freedom Foundation. The goal of Hardware Freedom Day is to celebrate the spirit of open hardware and make more people aware of using and contributing to free and hardware projects. The first Hardware Freedom Day was held on April 20, 2013. The 2017 date is April 15.

InMoov is a humanoid robot, constructed out of 3D printable plastic body components, and controlled by Arduino microcontrollers.

IOIO is a series of open source PIC microcontroller-based boards that allow Android mobile applications to interact with external electronics. The device was invented by Ytai Ben-Tsvi in 2011, and was first manufactured by SparkFun Electronics. The name "IOIO" is inspired by the function of the device, which enables applications to receive external input ("I") and produce external output ("O").

The Journal of Open Hardware is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal for open-source hardware development. The Journal publishes Hardware Metapapers which describe open-source research hardware, and is the currently the only scientific journal extending its peer review to hardware documentations hosted on external platforms. The Journal also publishes full-length articles on Issues in Open Hardware—including socio-economic and legal issues related to open hardware—and review articles. The journal's encourages papers from across academic, professional, and non-academic communities.

LibrePilot is a Free software unmanned aerial vehicle project for model aircraft aimed at supporting both multi-rotor craft as well as fixed-wing aircraft. Initially founded by David Ankers, Angus Peart and Vassilis Varveropoulos in late 2009, under the name OpenPilot, it was conceived as both a learning tool and to address areas the developers perceived were lacking in other small UAV platforms. In July 2015 OpenPilot, was forked to create LibrePilot.

littleBits is a New York City-based startup that makes an open source library of modular electronics, which snap together with small magnets for prototyping and learning. The company's goal is to democratize hardware the way software and printing have been democratized. The littleBits mission is to "put the power of electronics in the hands of everyone, and to break down complex technologies so that anyone can build, prototype, and invent." littleBits units are available in more than 70 countries and used in more than 2,000 schools. The company was named to CNN's 10 Startups to Watch for 2013.

The Lyman filament extruder is a device for making 3-D printer filament suitable for use in 3-D printers like the RepRap. It is named after its developer Hugh Lyman and was the winner of the Desktop Factory Competition.

The multimachine is an all-purpose open source machine tool that can be built inexpensively by a semi-skilled mechanic with common hand tools, from discarded car and truck parts, using only commonly available hand tools and no electricity. Its size can range from being small enough to fit in a closet to one hundred times that size. The multimachine can accurately perform all the functions of an entire machine shop by itself.

Novena is an open-source computing hardware project designed by Andrew "bunnie" Huang and Sean "Xobs" Cross.

Open Architecture Network was a free online, open source community dedicated to improving global living conditions through innovative and sustainable design. It was developed by Architecture for Humanity.

The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products and best practices among companies, including Facebook, IBM, Intel, Nokia, Google, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Cisco, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Lenovo and Alibaba Group.

The open-design movement involves the development of physical products, machines and systems through use of publicly shared design information. This includes the making of both free and open-source software (FOSS) as well as open-source hardware. The process is generally facilitated by the Internet and often performed without monetary compensation. The goals and philosophy of the movement are identical to that of the open-source movement, but are implemented for the development of physical products rather than software. Open design is a form of co-creation, where the final product is designed by the users, rather than an external stakeholder such as a private company.

Open Firmware is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun Microsystems, where it was known as OpenBoot, and has been used by vendors including Sun, Apple, IBM and ARM. Open Firmware allows the system to load platform-independent drivers directly from a PCI device, improving compatibility.

The Open Graphics Project (OGP) was founded with the goal to design an open-source hardware / open architecture and standard for graphics cards, primarily targeting free software / open-source operating systems. The project created a reprogrammable development and prototyping board and had aimed to eventually produce a full-featured and competitive end-user graphics card.

The Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs by Joshua M. Pearce was published in 2014 by Elsevier.

An open-source ventilator is a disaster-situation ventilator made using a freely licensed (open-source) design, and ideally, freely available components and parts. Designs, components, and parts may be anywhere from completely reverse-engineered or completely new creations, components may be adaptations of various inexpensive existing products, and special hard-to-find and/or expensive parts may be 3D-printed instead of purchased. As of early 2020, the levels of documentation and testing of open-source ventilators was well below scientific and medical-grade standards.

Opendesk is an initiative to produce furniture on the principles of Open Making. Designs are released under Creative Commons licenses. One of Opendesk's goals is to eliminate the cost of shipping completed products in favour of local fabrication.

OpenROV is a low-cost telerobotic submarine/underwater drone built with the goal of making underwater exploration and education affordable.

The Parallax P8X32A Propeller is a multi-core processor parallel computer architecture microcontroller chip with eight 32-bit reduced instruction set computer (RISC) central processing unit (CPU) cores. Introduced in 2006, it is designed and sold by Parallax, Inc.

Purism, SPC is a computer technology social purpose corporation based in San Francisco, California and registered in the state of Washington.

The RepRap project started in England in 2005 as a University of Bath initiative to develop a low-cost 3D printer that can print most of its own components, but it is now made up of hundreds of collaborators worldwide. RepRap is short for replicating rapid prototyper.

SatNOGS

SatNOGS project is a free software and open source hardware platform aimed to create a satellite ground station network. The scope of the project is to create a full stack of open technologies based on open standards, and the construction of a full ground station as a showcase of the stack..

The Simputer was a self-contained, open hardware Linux-based handheld computer, first released in 2002. Developed in, and primarily distributed within India, the product was envisioned as a low-cost alternative to personal computers. With initial goals of selling 50,000 simputers, the project had sold only about 4,000 units by 2005, and has been called a failure by news sources.

SparkFun Electronics is an electronics retailer in Niwot, Colorado, United States. It manufactures and sells microcontroller development boards and breakout boards. All products designed and produced by SparkFun are released as open-source hardware.

UPSat was the first satellite manufactured in Greece, by the University of Patras and Libre Space Foundation. It was part of the QB50 mission with ID GR-02. The UPSat mission was the first satellite launched into orbit made entirely of open-source software and open-source hardware.

WikiHouse is an open-source project for designing and building houses. It endeavours to democratise and simplify the construction of sustainable, resource-light dwellings. The project was initiated in the summer of 2011 by Alastair Parvin and Nick Ierodiaconou of 00, a London-based strategy and design practice, in collaboration with Tav of Espians, James Arthur now with 00 and Steve Fisher of Momentum Engineering. It was launched at the Gwangju Design Biennale in Gwangju, South Korea. The project has since grown to become a worldwide community of contributors.