open hardware - Page number 2

Do you remember HeathKit? The company that sold circuit board and resistor kits you could assemble to make your own electronics?

Building a HeathKit was no great feat of engineering—it came with a fixed list of parts and the schematic—but it helped you understand how electronics work by letting you assemble your own electronic products. And back in the day, a well-built HeathKit radio was every bit as good as the store-bought ones. » Read more

Last month, we put the Raspberry Pi, a tiny $25 Linux computer, in our open source gift guide. It led overwhelmingly as your favorite on the list. But other similar options have been popping up, like the Allwinner A10 ($15) and the CuBox (quite a bit more). » Read more

IEEE Spectrum, the flagship publication for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, recently carried an article on the history of the popular open hardware microcontroller board, the Arduino. » Read more

Peter Kirn at the Create Digital Music blog wants to know about your open source hardware music projects--or even just projects you know about. He writes: » Read more

The Open Hardware Summit (OHS), now in its second year, brings together folks from all different backgrounds and truly represents a melting pot of those with interests in the open hardware (open source designs, firmware, software, process) movement. In fact, I’d argue that the open hardware movement is more inclusive than open source software is at this point. There are far more women attending and speaking at these events (OHS is even organized by women), combined with a lot less of the pretentious prima donnas you see in male-dominated open source software. » Read more

If you're interested in open hardware, you should point yourself towards New York next month. Registration has opened for the second Open Hardware Summit, to be held September 15. Conveniently, this again will take place two days before Maker Faire: NYC. Both will be in the New York Hall of Science. What more could an open hardware lover ask for?

Open Hardware Summit » Read more

Not long after Nintendo announced its newest handheld, the Nintendo 3DS, gamers began asking the perennial question: Would the device be region locked? And much to the dismay of would-be importers, the answer was an unambiguous "yes": Nintendo does indeed prohibit consoles sold in one geographic territory (like Japan) from playing video games purchased in another (say, the United States, Europe, or Australia). » Read more

The Open Source Hardware and Design Aliance (OHANDA) aims to do for hardware what the Creative Commons does for intellectual property and the GPL does for software: open it up. By applying open source principles to trademarks, OHANDA hopes to free devices from some restrictions imposed by patent law and foster "sustainable sharing of open hardware and design." » Read more

Over at Make: Online last week, Phillip Torrone posted "If You're Going to Kill It, Open Source It!"--his wish list of dead products that he'd like to see given to an open source community for new life. It's a great suggestion--freeing the knowledge that went into a product gives it a little life after death and could give a unprofitable or seemingly useless project a better reason for existence. » Read more

After last September's Open Hardware Summit, today version 1.0 of the Open Source Hardware Definition was released.

Last summer, people and groups that included Bug Labs, MakerFaire, Creative Commons, The New York Hall of Science, and littleBits gathered to plan the first Open Hardware Summit. The event was held with the goal of creating the Open Source Hardware Definition announced today, similar to the OSI's Open Source Definition regarding what is and isn't open. Today's release marks a big milestone for those efforts. » Read more