P2P Foundation

Canadian Stephen Vermeulen keeps a regularly updated list of open hardware initiatives, which he calls product hacking.

This is a good occasion to refer readers to our own page, which contains a full listing with links, on the various projects we know of. Go to that page for the links and further exploration.

We can now say with some confidence that the earlier doldrums of open hardware projects has been mostly overcome and that is becoming a sustainable trend that will echo the earlier growth of open software.

It seems now that the field can be distinguished in some subdomains.

1) a thriving field of open hardware hackers in high tech fields; these can be both community or corporate driven (see Neuros OSD for the latter)

2) an equally thriving field of open sustainability and appropriate technology communities which gear their works to the developing countries

3) a pressure to hack also proprietary products such as the Ikea hackers movement of LugNet for Lego, creating a thriving field of co-design and co-creation.

Here’s the list of what you can find there. If we are missing anything, many thanks for letting us know. We will also keep updating this field here.

Examples

Click here for the full clickable list.

1. Arduino, an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software.
2. Bug Labs, a programmable hardware device, The Bug, run on open source software Bugbase
3. Chumby, a powerful little device with Wi-Fi, a 3.5-inch screen and an interface that you can customize
4. Concentrated Solar Power Open Source Initiative
5. Daisy MP3 Player
6. Free Telephony Project, provides free reference designs for embedded telephony. Both the hardware and software are open.
7. Grid Beam Building System, reuseable parts for building
8. Hexayurt, an open source disaster relief shelter
9. Ikea Hacker
10. Jaldi Battery Charger
11. Lego Factory, design your own kits, in the corporate framework
12. LugNet, design your own Lego kits, outside the corporate framework
13. Movisi Open Design Furniture
14. Neuros Technology and its OSD Open Source Device
15. Night Brights, the entire making process of the lights is open source and shared publicly
16. Open Cola
17. Open EEG
18. Open Micromanufacturing and Nanomanufacturing Equipment
19. Open Moko, an Open Mobile Telephony project
20. Open Source Green Vehicle
21. Open Source Pharma
22. Open Source Scooter, a project to make a Segway-type vehicle
23. Open Source Sewing Patterns such as Burdastyle
24. Open Source Velomobile Development Project
25. Ronen Kadushin Open Design
26. Ronja by Twibright Labs, optical point-to-point data link device
27. Roomba, hackable Vacuuming Robots
28. SHPEGS Open Energy Project
29. Whirlwind Wheelchair International
30. Worldbike
31. x0xb0x, “Roland” MIDI synthesizer
32. Ybox, an internet connected set-top box

Reference Sites

Click here for the full clickable list.

1. Appropedia
2. Instructables
3. Open Circuits, a wiki for sharing open source electronics knowledge, schematics, board layouts, ports and parts libraries
4. Open Cores, a loose collection of people who are interested in developing hardware, with a similar ethos to the free software movement”
5. Open Sustainability Network and its Standarrd blog
6. TaskForge

Related Concepts

Click here for the full clickable list.

1. Citizen Product Design
2. Co-Creation
3. Co-Design
4. Crowdsourced Advertising
5. Crowdsourced Design
6. Open Customization
7. Open Design
8. Open Source Hardware
9. Open Hardware
10. Open P2P Communities
11. Open Peer to Peer Design
12. Open Source Hardware
13. Open Source Product Design
14. Open innovation
15. Peer Production Entrepreneurs
16. Personal Fabricators
17. RepRap
18. Self-organized Design Communities