Open Source Tools for Making Open Source Hardware

Open Source Tools for Making Open
Source Hardware
Leon Anavi
Open Hardware Summit 2022

Open Hardware Summit 2022 - Open Source Tools for Making Open Source Hardware, Leon Anavi
 Markdown (.md), LaTeX, HTML, etc.
 MediaWiki with wiki markup, DokuWiki, Wikifactory, readthedocs.org, etc
 Pandoc - convert files from one markup format into another, including PDF
 DIN SPEC 3105 - a specification produced by Deutsches Institute fur Normung
defining the standards for the documentation of open source hardware
Documentations

What are the benefits of open source hardware?
Open source hardware is good for:
 Giving confidence that the design will be available if the original manufacturer
stops production or stops selling in certain regions
 Keeping the prices low and fair
 Repairing and maintaining hardware
 Enabling customizations and integration in 3rd party products
 Sharing knowledge, educating students and getting feedback and contributions
from the community

Open Source Hardware Certification
Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA):
 Maintains Certified Projects Directory
 Ensures that the definition of “open source hardware” used by a specific project
matches the community definition of open source hardware
 Provides an unique ID for certified hardware based on the country code and a
number, for example: BG000007
 Provides an unique logo for the certified ID
 https://certification.oshwa.org/

Does it make sense to use proprietary software for open hardware?
 Is it worth designing open source hardware with expensive proprietary software
tools?
 Can you build a sustainable community if your contributors have to pay gazillions
for software licenses to modify and contribute back to your open source hardware
project?

Does it make sense to use proprietary software of open hardware?
NO

Ingredients of an Open Source Device
Hardware
Software Documentation

Free and Open Source Design Automation (EDA)
 KiCAD
 Fritzing
 gEDA
 Other tools (Electric, FreePCB, KTechLab, Magic, Ngspice, Oregano, Quite
Universal Circuit Simulator, XCircuit)

KiCad
 Free & open source EDA software (GPLv3+)
 Cross platform (works on GNU/Linux distributions, MS Windows and Mac OS X)
 Integrated 3D viewer
 Up to 32 copper layers + 14 fixed-purpose technical layers
 Contributions from CERN developers
 Already adopted by the industry
 https://www.kicad.org/

Made with KiCad

Made with KiCad: Olimex A64-OLinuXino

 OpenSCAD
 QCAD
 FreeCAD
 LibreCAD
 SolveSpace
 Blender
Free and Open Source Computer-Aided Design (CAD)

Open source systems:
 Git
 Mercurial
 Subversion (SVN)
Version Control
Popular services:
 GitHub
 GitLab
 BitBucker
 SourceForge

My First Own KiCad Project from Scratch
 It all started with an add-on board for Raspberry Pi
 Thanks to friends for helping me to get started with KiCad
 For details have a look at FOSDEM 2017: Making Your Own Open Source Raspberry Pi HAT
https://archive.fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/diy_pi_hat/

It Becomes Easy After Getting Used to KiCad and Open
Source Hardware

Community
 Community matters
 Keeping the hardware, the software and the documentation in public repositories
allows people to contribute back
 Using popular tools and services such as Git and GitHub makes it easier to attract
more contributors
 Excellent documentation is always an advantage
 Bloggers have the power to spread to word among the community and influence
it
 People enjoy step by step tutorials in YouTube, Instructables, Hackster,
hackaday.io, etc.

Building a Community
 Use de-facto industry standard version control system like Git and a popular
services like GitHub and GitLab to attract more contributors
 Submit often to version control system with a public repository to get early
feedback from the community
 Using popular tools and services such as Git and GitHub makes it easier to attract
more contributors and review contributions quickly
 Be respectful and thankful for each contribution
 Excellent documentation is always an advantage
 Share often posts and videos in blogs and social media platforms, contact bloggers
as they have the power to spread to word among the community and influence it

Harware is Hard
 Hardware prototyping and low-volume manufacturing is expensive
 Sourcing components nowadays is hard
 Often you can’t easily built hardware at home
 Making hardware prototypes takes more time
 Soldering requires skills and practice
 Debugging hardware requires specific physical tools
 Fixing bugs requires a new version of the hardware
 Testing hardware can be dangerous

Hardware Improvements
 GitHub pull requests with modifications of the KiCad sources are rare because it
could be difficult to tests the change
 Often hardware recommendations are provided by the community and the author
should implement them
 It is a good practice to add a note to give credit to the people involved in the
modification, for example with a trailer in the Git commit message

Hardware Modifications
 esp01-i2c-little-board by Nicolas Vion
https://github.com/zmoostik/esp01-i2c-little-board
 Modified Infrared pHAT by Lazar Hristov
https://github.com/lazarh/anavi-infrared

Road to Market
 Danish Design Center working on OS Business Model Toolkit as part of the
OPENNEXT project https://ddc.dk/
Open source hardware friendly marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms:
 Tindie https://www.tindie.com/
 Lectronz https://lectronz.com/
 Crowd Supply https://www.crowdsupply.com/

Conclusions
 Open source hardware certification by OSHWA is free and guarantees that the
products are really open source
 High quality free and open source software tools for designing open source
hardware are available
 Established open source software development workflows can be adapted to open
source hardware projects and products
 Open source hardware is a viable business model already used by a lot of well-
known companies in the industry and supported by several web stores
 Community always matters

Thank you!
Useful links:
 https://www.oshwa.org/
 https://certification.oshwa.org/process.html
 https://www.kicad.org/made-with-kicad/
 https://github.com/AnaviTechnology/
 https://opennext.eu/
 https://www.crowdsupply.com/
 https://www.tindie.com/
 https://lectronz.com/

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