Hardware design uses open source too!

[ghost]

Hey guys, Love the show, I have a 1+hr commute and listen to every show you put out for ideas and inspiration. I do design of SoCs (The chips powering mobile devices and other behind the scenes tech). Though many companies are closed source and very protective of their intellectual property, many are not. It would be awesome to hear about that side of the aisle; Open Source Hardware.

Also, many HW developers use open source (Linux, GCC, Perl, Python, Git. ...) to speed up innovation and get an edge in the market when it comes to delivering quality products. I wish I could share some of my experiences but I'm sure someone out there can talk about open embedded projects and hardware design tools. If anyone can find those types, it would be you guys!

Thanks, Kris

[jerodsanto]

@bechamp glad to hear you enjoy the show! We'd love to have more hardware-oriented conversations. Do you have any specific guest ideas or hardware solutions using open source that you'd like to hear more about?

[ghost]

@jerodsanto Thanks for the response!

There are great open hardware projects out there and also a lot of software that is used that have not been featured on your show as much, lower level things. Kickstarter is great for exploring these types of new project and also searching GitHub and electronics hobbyist sites. I can think of some projects but your community of listeners can definitely add to the list.

• AXIOM, A 4K Cinema camera that looks awesome and has a great company model/philosophy.
  • https://www.apertus.org/axiom
• Crazyflie, A Hackable quadcopter platform that is a great idea for exploring autonomous control in 3 space.
  • http://www.bitcraze.se/
• Bus Pirate, A USB to embedded interfaces for prototyping/teaching.
  • http://dangerousprototypes.com/docs/Bus_Pirate
• YOCTO, Embedded Linux Distribution Generation when custom hardware requires custom kernels.
  • https://www.yoctoproject.org/
• Red Pitaya, Awesome application of a handheld HW analyzer that you can program yourself.
  • http://redpitaya.com/
• Raspberry PI, Affordable Linux board if you haven't heard by now...
  • www.raspberrypi.org
• Icarus Verilog, Open Verilog HDL Compiler for designing the logical representation of project
  • http://iverilog.icarus.com/
• GTKWave, Open Source Waveform Viewer that's great for getting visibility into HW designed with iverilog.
  • gtkwave.sourceforge.net
• GIT, The core development of git would be great to hear about
• More about RUST www.rust-lang.org, GO www.golang.org, and Python

There is so much out there and never really enough time (and $) to explore them all... Other enjoyable topics in this domain are the types of things being talked about in professional conferences right now, e.g.

• Low power design that encompass both efficient HW and system software
• ARM Processor integration
• Open Computer Aided Design Tools and solutions, also IP Interchange

Some questions I'd ask the more HW oriented open projects are:

• "Free as in Beer" is hard to justify when considering tangible products, given cost of parts and manufacturing. What incentive do you have for opening up your development?
• When the end product generates revenue for the core development team, what incentive does the community have for contributing when they do not expect to be beneficiaries of the revenue?
• Because integrated circuit design requires prohibitively expensive fabrication processes, open IC design is not very attractive. Because of this, open HW products use commercially available components in their applications. What would it take for the industry to enable open fabrication so that open source HW products can be based upon open components?

Happy New Year! Looking forward to great shows in 2015 as always.

• Kris

[jerodsanto]

@bechamp wow! Thank you so much for the thoughtful reply. We will definitely reference this as we put together show ideas in the coming weeks. Let me ask you this: Spark had caught my eye. Is this something interesting to you as a hardware hacker?

[ghost]

@jerodsanto, Sure is! This is another great example of open HW development. What would be interesting is the process they and other board makers follow to get their boards manufactured and to market. Something tells me they're not fulfilling orders by soldering surface mounts all day in their garage.

Spark is a good find because it bridges between HW and the types of SW topics you have on your show already. Their development tools are web based and use other open source projects that you have featured. A lot of your listeners could break into the IoT segment with a project like this.

Thanks, Kris

[jerodsanto]

Kris–

Awesome. We're gonna try to get somebody from Spark on the show. Thanks again for all your input!

[ghost]

Awesome!!! Glad I could help! I'll be listening.

Thanks, Kris

[samyakbhuta]

Having somebody from Spark would be indeed awesome.

[jerodsanto]

Thanks for the prod, @samyakbhuta.

I reached out to the Spark team to see if they're interested in joining us on the show!

[jerodsanto]

Spark show is now live!

https://thechangelog.com/150/

Thanks for all the input, fellas. I'm going to close this issue, but I'll keep it in mind in the future when we're looking for inspiration! :beers:

[ghost]

Cheers! Downloading now. @jerodsanto Thanks for making it happen!