Open source hardware

Free Hardware (English open source hardware ) is a hardware or other technical device, which are produced by license-free building plans.

Legal framework

Although Free hardware has a liberal copyright, but may very well involve patents. In addition, subject to independent parts of a project other licenses. This means that some interfaces, software and hardware may have different licenses. In most cases, noting the following licenses are used:

Concept ( sample projects )

The " hardware " must not have necessarily to do with information technology. For example, the project tries to develop OScar free blueprints for a car ( acronym for "Open Source Car" ). When it comes to Thingiverse to make printable 3D objects as CAD files. The project Solar trying to spread in developing countries cheap DIY solar systems to cooking and heating, for example, without firewood can.

Also the project coreboot (formerly LinuxBIOS ), which aims to replace the proprietary BIOS supplied, is sometimes referred to as free hardware. The bios is often associated with the hardware for historical reasons, since at that time because of the hard-wired logic, the boundary between hardware and software was not clearly separated. During the early days of computers, the BIOS was completely stored in ROM and therefore inextricably rooted in the hardware, this is now, by analogy with any other software, completely interchangeable.

As one of the first computer in series production, the profit Project 100 dollar laptop wants to equip all of its computers with coreboot. With a planned production volume of 100 to 200 million units, the BIOS will probably find widespread, particularly in the developing and emerging countries and thus contribute to development aid. On 14 February 2006 the company Sun Microsystems has surprisingly revealed completely the design of their famous SPARC processor architecture under the name OpenSPARC and made available under the free software license GNU General Public License of the public. Under the name of the Open Compute Project, Facebook has both the architecture of the server as well as a data center released.

Free hardware can be shared to different extents depending on the project. Many manufacturers often provide only parts of their implementations for your own projects the user on. Examples are:

  • The firmware of the wireless router from Linksys WRT54GL, which was placed under GPL
  • The open programming interface of the robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba
  • The flare Ambient Orb, the self is not free though, but the wiring diagram is for your own development freely available.

Other projects

More example projects for free hardware are:

  • The Open Compute Project, which includes a collection of free hardware to build a data center
  • Project the open cores, in which not only main processors such as the processor OpenRISC but generally microchips of various types ( such as a USB communication control unit ) to be developed
  • Knuffy the project for free electronics and computer technology
  • The microcontroller developers Board Arduino
  • The 100 dollar laptop OLPC XO -1
  • Ethernut the project which created single-board computer and software on AVR and ARM - based
  • The project Parallella that wants to develop a supercomputer for $ 99
  • The Simputer, a low-cost portable computer
  • The 3D Printer RepRap, MakerBot and Fab @ Home
  • The project smarthomatic (formerly Open Home Control), which includes a complete home automation system with sensors and actuators
  • TinkerForge Bricks and Bricklets - hardware modules to control motors and read sensors
  • The MIDIbox project, a hardware and software platform for a MIDI controller, sequencer and synthesizer
  • X0xb0x, a replica of the MIDI synthesizer Roland TB -303
  • The mobile phone Openmoko GNU / Linux
  • The MP3 player Daisy
  • The digital camera francs Camera ( description)
  • The battery charger MintyBoost for the USB port
  • The bicycle lighting SpokePov and MiniPOV
  • RF Jammer Wave Bubble
  • Developed the project Open Source Ecology, the free agricultural machinery
  • The free tool LME Hexapod
  • The free portal milling machine Pervado OSMilling with accessories (movies )
  • Developed the Open Prosthetics Project, the prosthetic
BSD licenses Tucson Amateur Packet Radio Computer-aided design Read-only memory OLPC XO-1 ARM architecture MakerBot Industries FabLab
351123
de