Journal: News & Comment

Phil Torrone from MAKE magazine on open source hardware at Gnomedex

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Are we returning to another "kit era?" Let's talk about open source hardware.

• Tries his best to make things better by hacking things that need changing.
• Open source and open standards are good.
• So what about open source hardware?
• That's what Popular Mechanics and similar magazines were about.
• There were dozens of books.
• Soon enough, physical objects will be programmable.
• The MP3 player is the new AM radio, and it's how PT tricks kids into playing with electronics.
• Tons of how-tos online now.
• Parts are getting so cheap that they're more expensive to ship than to buy.
• And we're getting pissed off too.
• The Maker's Bill of Rights.
• Return of the kit.
• Russian number display tubes are turning into a neat parts supply.
• All sorts of bizarre devices and kits are now available, and people are buying them.
• Roomba has created the Open Interface on their robo-vacuum.
• Companies make kits to control your Roomba.
• Lego MindStorms allows something similar.
• What if you could create a SketchUp design and have the parts shipped to you?
• What needs to be a kit? What should be open source?
• Voting machines, water purification, medical equipment, public transport.
• Power measurement and management.
• Telecommunications boxes and receivers.
• Open-source heating/cooling HVAC systems.
• Last-mile Internet infrastructure.
• Standardized interfaces for logging data from GPS, sensors, data logging.
• Home automation.
• Personal are cell phone jammer.
• Event in a Box, Event in a Suitcase.
• Agricultural devices, anything else for the developing world.
• Things where there's a lot of good, but not a lot of money.
• Instructibles.com is built as a howto repository.
• Traffic and transit information.
• Musical instruments.
• Houses, solar panels, biodiesel stills.
• Self-contained sewage processing.
• Monitor current rainfall via wiper activity on taxis.
• Solar cookers, dry toilets, bike-powered grain grinders.

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