In the Blackberry-keyboard-based project lineage story last week, I covered how a series of open-source projects turned into Beepy, a cool Linux PDA with a lively community. To me, it’s yet another demonstration of power that open-source holds, and more importantly, it shows how even a small pet project of yours could cause big moves […]
Right now, you can get a diode laser engraver on eBay for around $100 USD. That sounds like a deal, but it’ll probably use some arcane proprietary software, won’t be terribly accurate, and the laser itself will almost certainly be fully exposed. Of course there’s no shortage of DIY builds which improve upon this situation […]
Hackaday has open-source running deep in our veins — and that goes for hardware as well as software. After all, it’s great to run open-source software, but if it’s running on black-box hardware, the system is only half open. While software has benefited mightily from all of the advantages of community development, the hardware world […]
On the whole, hackers aren’t overly fond of other people telling them what they can and cannot do with the hardware or software they’ve purchased. Unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more difficult to avoid DRM and other Draconian rules and limitations as time goes on. Digital “eBooks” and the devices that are used to view […]
Join us on Wednesday, October 23 at noon Pacific for the Open Hardware Month Hack Chat with Michael Weinberg! It seems like everything and everyone has a special day set aside on the calendar. You know the drill – a headline declaring it National Grilled Cheese Day (sorry, you missed it – April 12) or […]
The Glia project aims to create a suite of free and open-source medical equipment that can be assembled cheaply and easily when and where it’s needed. Even essential tools like stethoscopes and tourniquets can be difficult to acquire in certain parts of the world, especially during times of war or civil unrest. But armed with […]
By pretty much any metric you care to use, the last couple of decades has been very good for the open source movement. There was plenty of pushback in the early days, back when the only people passionate about the idea were the Graybeards in the IT department. But as time went on, more and […]
We’ve all seen the little USB power meters that have become popular since nearly every portable device has adopted some variation of USB for charging. Placed between the power source and the device under test, they allow you to see voltage and current in real time. Perfect for determining how long you’ll be able to […]