Open Hardware Journal

I just saw Slashdot posting mentioning Open Hardware Journal. Open Hardware Journal is a new open technical journal on designs for physical or electronic objects that are shared as if they were Open Source software. It’s an open journal under a Creative Commons license. You can download the magazine in pdf file format and redistribute it for free.

The first issue opens with words “There’s a lot of excellent Open Hardware that you might not have heard of”. It contains articles on many subjects. ‘Producing Lenses With 3D Printers’ explorers the techniques for producing optical quality lenses with 3D printers. Low-quality lenses are produced, and the causes of failure are discussed.

‘Teaching with Open Hardware Submarines’ tells about the MIT Sea Grant College Program that recognizes a need to encourage students of all ages to develop skills in marine science and ocean engineering. MIT Sea Grant transformed the basic outline of a PVC-pipe-based vehicle into a full-fledged build process, and began offering teacher trainings. The open, publicly available build instructions are central to the success of the program.

‘An Open Hardware Platform for USB Firmware Updates and General USB Development’ tells about project that provides the hardware design and software library to implement firmware upgrades and general USB access, as a serial port or a human interface device (HID). The solution, including the USB port, currently fits on a thumbnail-sized section of a PCB, and has component costs of about $4. It is currently in use in the Lightuino LED-driver circuit board and can also connect to the Arduino ICSP port, SPI, i2c, or GPIOs. It can therefore be used to “USB-enable” other simple hardware designs. This project is hosted on github at https://github.com/gandrewstone/toastedCypressUsb.

The Open Hardware Journal needs more stories for next issues. The magazine is also constructing a global catalog of Open Hardware projects at http://wiki.openhardware.org/Catalog.