The Open Source hardware movement had its own triumphs in 2024. Here’s a look at some of the highlights — a kind of New Year’s parade of feel-good stories, for projects big and small. They’re a reminder that some old friends are still around — now joined by some new friends — with everyone determined to show what’s possible in a world with publicly-available designs.
There were several projects this year that showcased both the ingenuity of the community and its commitment to openness and accessibility: And together, 2024 saw them continuing to collectively push the innovation curve forward…
Triumphs of Openness
Open Hardware isn’t just about abstract principles. Several projects this year offered powerful demonstrations of why Open Hardware is needed:
- November saw the launch of the OpenWrt One wireless internet router — touted by the Software Freedom Conservancy as “designed and built with your software freedom and right to repair in mind.”
OpenWrt One with enclosure
- Spotify’s discontinued music-streaming “Car Thing” device finally stopped working altogether on December 9th, TechCrunch reported. But as Ars Technica pointed out, “It was always open source, just not publicly.” And in a kind of happy ending — and a win for open source hardware — they report that hobbyists had spotted the code on GitHub and figured out how to overwrite its firmware to give it a new life as a fully functional DeskThing.https://youtu.be/vQVuGeoqyUc
- UK-based Pragmatic Semiconductor used the open-source RISC-V architecture to create a flexible programmable chip — a cheap 32-bit microprocessor that their lead researcher hopes “will democratize access to computing” while also unlocking “emerging applications.”
And, of course, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is still innovating, and in December released a new $90 computer-in-a-keyboard called the Raspberry Pi 500 — along with a new $100 Raspberry Pi-branded monitor. In a sign of the times, they’ve also been offering a $70 AI kit that upgrades Raspberry Pi boards with a Hailo AI acceleration module…
Raspberry Pi’s products are kind of a corner case, as the Philippines-based OSS PH blog points out. “While the software running on the Pi is open (like Linux distributions), the hardware, especially the Broadcom chip, is proprietary.
“However, its philosophy and widespread adoption make it an integral part of the open hardware movement.”
And Open Source Hardware innovation is being supplied there by an endlessly creative community of Raspberry Pi makers. One delightful example is Justin Tung, a reference librarian based in Austin, Texas, who used his Raspberry Pi Pico W as the base platform for a wireless-enabled barbecue thermometer (to be used when smoking meat).
In October, it was officially certified as Open Hardware by the Open Hardware Association.
Out on https://t.co/MPUlPAnh5l and Make:, the Nov 2024 Certification Round Up! Check out Justin Tung’s Pi-tmaster, HW Media Lab LLC’s WebScreen and Mike Coats Spy! Break! Inject!https://t.co/fvGkBYGGDP pic.twitter.com/boD3pC4GX4
— OSHWA (Open Source Hardware Association) (@oshwassociation) December 16, 2024
The Open Source Hardware Community
The vast community of Open Source Hardware enthusiasts is still going strong. In May the Open Source Hardware Association (or OSHWA) called the community together in Montreal for its annual Open Hardware Summit. (Along with their schedules, attendees received conference badges decorated with tiny flashing lights from Cyber City Circuits — plus instructions for reprogramming them!)
The conference also featured presentations and workshops — including a badge-hacking table — and an inspiring keynote from Danielle Boyer, founder of the tax-exempt public charity called the STEAM Connection which distributes “high-quality, unique, and culturally competent technical educational resources…”
Boyer was introduced as the head of a group “committed to democratizing technical education through personal robots, meticulously designed, manufactured and distributed at no cost to you…”
OSHWA also remained active throughout the year — and for projects both large and small. This autumn, they even launched a monthly “Show and Tell” video series, a monthly broadcast showcasing both the latest certified Open Hardware projects and “what people are making in the community,” according to OSHWA community coordinator Sid Drmay.
In November’s video the group stressed that its goal is to “just really have some fun getting to know what else is out there and get to hear from folks about their projects almost immediately upon being certified.”
Coming up on December 19th at 1pm EST! Show & Tell Monthly featuring the SyncGenie from Weill Cornell Medicine, the Pi-tmaster from Justin Tung and the bATtiny Guard from EDrTech! Join us live: https://t.co/4inq8a4Lb2 pic.twitter.com/83vHDSqSKv
— OSHWA (Open Source Hardware Association) (@oshwassociation) December 12, 2024
But the group also continued certifying dozens of new Open Source Hardware projects throughout the year — including projects from all over the world, and in a wide variety of applications:
- In August, it certified Sweden’s OpenDosimeter, a low-cost, fully open source, radiation exposure dosimeter.
- In September, it certified a project that converts a Nintendo Wii controller into an input device for Arduino projects.
- In October, it certified its first open hardware project from the Baltic Republic of Latvia.
- By November, Drmay was announcing a total of 2910 individual certifications — and that “we added 19 new certifications, from microcontrollers to neuroscience research and everything in between!”
Bringing Crucial Open Hardware to 70 Countries
Late in 2024, a company called AirGradient certified its open-hardware air quality monitor — one of 2024’s big success stories for the open hardware movement…
Founded by Achim Haug, a former CFO at Siemens Energy, AirGradient was started in 2019 “to help a school in Northern Thailand monitor the air quality in classrooms during the highly polluted ‘burning season,’” Haug writes on his LinkedIn profile. Nearly six years later, all its hardware is released under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license. “From the beginning we put a strong focus on open designs, robust and long-lasting hardware,” Haug writes, “and a strong desire to support people from all around the world with affordable and effective air quality solutions….
“Our community of people operating AirGradient indoor and outdoor monitors already consists of thousands in more than 70 countries. They all share the belief that air quality monitoring should be affordable, open and accessible.”
As December came to a close, Haug emphasized the importance of open hardware in ensuring a user’s right to repair. “When you buy something, especially something designed to help you protect your health, it shouldn’t be a disposable item…” Haug wrote in a blog post. “For us, building open-hardware air quality monitors isn’t just about transparency in design; it’s fundamentally about empowering you, the user…” There’s detailed documentation and user guides, since, after all, “These devices are meant to provide crucial information about the air you breathe.”
Out on https://t.co/MPUlPAnh5l and Make:, the Nov 2024 Certification Round Up! Check out Justin Tung’s Pi-tmaster, HW Media Lab LLC’s WebScreen and Mike Coats Spy! Break! Inject!https://t.co/fvGkBYGGDP pic.twitter.com/boD3pC4GX4
— OSHWA (Open Source Hardware Association) (@oshwassociation) December 16, 2024
This year also saw a reminder that some hardware can be abstracted away altogether. In April, the open source, software-defined storage platform Ceph project announced 1 exabyte of combined storage reported by its users on a common distributed cluster foundation (across more than 3,000 Ceph clusters).
I like to see it as a reminder that 2024 saw real commitments to openness everywhere, in our hardware, in our software, and even in software-defined storage systems. It’s a movement that’s spread throughout our product and systems development processes, to countries around the world, and to millions of developers who will keep the fires burning in 2025.
The Open Source Hardware Association reminds everyone that next year’s Open Hardware Summit will happen in Edinburgh, Scotland, starting May 30, 2025.
The post The Year in Open Source Hardware: Car Things and OpenWrt One appeared first on The New Stack.
