"Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better"
Don’t spend any more time browsing desperately the internetz to find parts for your RepRap, Arduino kits or local sensors and PCBs distributors for your new project. I put together this worldwide list of online stores selling open source hardware. There is a big chance your country is in it and that you will finally find your favourite local online store to get open source electronics, robotics, parts, kits, materials and supplies for your hardware projects.
When we left New York City to explore what it would take to create a way of life in which we could be full time makers we had no idea that it would lead to a return to Maker Faire this time to launch a book about our experiences. The Good Life Lab is a manual for post consumer living. We did discover a lifestyle that allowed us to be full time makers. Along the way we learned to wildcraft, grow food, ferment, weld, build and home manufacture electronics. By developing mad skills we learned to live out of the waste stream and harvest from nature. When we applied technology to old problems we found new ways to solve them. Then we shared what we knew and put our work in the commons. In retrospect we noticed that jobs can be expensive. Especially if they prevent us from discovering the things we most love to do. What would you do if you could be a full time maker, if you didnt have to go to work tomorrow? If your in N. California meet us at the Maker Faire and tell us about it.
The Good Life Lab is pre-launching at Maker Faire. It comes out in stores everywhere June 5 and can be preordered on Amazon
Bios
Wendy Tremayne was a creative director in a marketing firm in New York City before moving to Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, where she built an off-the-grid oasis in a barren RV park with her partner, Mikey Sklar. She is the founder of the textile repurposing event Swap-O-Rama-Rama, which has spread all over the world. She has written for Craft’s webzine and Make magazine and, with Mikey Sklar, keeps the blog Holy Scrap.
Mikey Sklar is a digital homesteader, open source hardware developer and anti-griddle master. Mikey has worked for Adafruit, Hack-A-Day and Popular Science.
Wendy & Mikey are giving three presentations @ Maker Faire, San Mateo, CA
Meet the Maker Stage
Saturday May 18, 2013 03:30PM – 3:50
Homegrown Village Stage
Sunday May 19, 2013 11:30AM – 12:20
Swap-O-Rama-Rama – Talk and Book Signing
May 20, 2013 03:20PM – 3:40
Note from Ladyada & pt @ Adafruit:We’ve known Wendy & Mikey for years, we’ve visited their place in Truth or Consequences and it was one of the best experiences ever. They shared a preview of the book with us and it’s inspirational tale for all makers. If you’re at Maker Faire this weekend, go see them and either way, pick up this book!
This is an Arduino porting of the excellent work by Markus Frejek. The final aim is to create an economic component tester using Arduino and a few passive components;
This Article shows how the maturing technology of three-dimensional printing can be used to construct an enforceable open hardware license. Open hardware lacks the legal tools which allow the easy implementation of enforceable open source software licenses. As such, existing licenses cannot successfully implement open hardware principles. The author proposes the “Three-Dimensional Printing Open License” (the “TDPL”). The TDPL draws on the unique characteristics of three-dimensional printing to construct a license that incorporates enforceable documentation, attribution and copyleft provisions. As the technology of three dimensional printing improves and is gradually integrated into a broad range of industries, the scope of the license’s application will increase.
Griffey showed many examples where Arduino-based hardware cost a third or even a tenth of retail goods. Assuredly some had added features and may have been more aesthetically pleasing, but even this customization is likely not far in the future, and as the software is open source, it can be modified to meet individual needs.
For libraries this serves two purposes.
First, it joins an arsenal consisting of 3D printers, knitting clubs, soldering torches, library farms, recording studios and other maker spaces. Some have asked whether these devices are just expensive toys with little in the way of utilitarian value. By incorporating devices that serve obvious real world concerns, it becomes easier (and more cost effective) to incorporate a maker space into a wide variety of libraries.
Second, as library budgets continue to be reduced in many communities, these devices offer an opportunity for cost-saving measures that unlike some open source software solutions will not see all of their savings lost through highly technical hours of labor.
Open source hardware is fairly new (Arduino and Raspberry Pi first came onto the scene in 2005 and 2006, respectively) and it is possible to overestimate their future impact. However, I believe that they have the possibility to inspire a new form of technical interaction for our culture, built not on consumption, but on participatory creation. Where better to start than your local library?
The twenty-fifth meeting marks our third anniversary, and will feature a talk on writing embedded firmware and a panel discussion that will explore the future of open source hardware.
Writing firmware for the AVR: A Morse Code Beacon
In this talk we will look at a number of techniques for making the most of the miniscule MSP430 and ATTiny embedded microcontrollers. Explaining how to approach the task of developing software for constrained systems such as those with only a few hundred bytes of RAM or a few kilobytes of Flash. Predominantly writing in C and using Chris Swan’s Morse Code Beacon as an example, revealing why code needs to be structured in ways that may initially seem counter-intuitive or undesirable, as well as how the resources are used and allocated.
Such techniques are essential for getting almost any useful program to run in small systems, and when applied to slightly bigger machines such as the ATmega — found in platforms such as Arduino — they can allow really comprehensive programs to be executed successfully….
Panel discussion: The Future of Open Source Hardware
Interest in open source hardware continues to grow unabated and the movement has come a long way in the three years since our first meeting. However, could it ever provide opportunities on the same scale as those afforded by its much older and now well understood cousin, open source software? What are the barriers to growth? How are the intellectual property and economic considerations different to those of open source software? These are just some of the questions that we plan to explore as part of this panel discussion.
Limor Fried aka Ladyada is the founder of the Adafruit Industries. Besides having been featured on Wired’s cover she is a continue inspiration for hackers and entrepreneurs worldwide. We had the chance to interview her on a quite long bunch of topics and she was so awesome to find time to answer.
The name Ed Felten may not exactly be a household word, but if you think people should be able to jailbreak their mobile phones, then you probably owe him a debt.
For more than a decade now, Felten has promoted an important idea that has sometimes put him at odds with the music industry and big technology companies: the notion that consumers should be able to take apart and learn about the software and hardware on devices that they own.
At Google we believe that open systems win. Open-source software has been at the root of many innovations in cloud computing, the mobile web, and the Internet generally. And while open platforms have faced growing patent attacks, requiring companies to defensively acquire ever more patents, we remain committed to an open Internet—one that protects real innovation and continues to deliver great products and services.
Today, we’re taking another step towards that goal by announcing the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge: we pledge not to sue any user, distributor or developer of open-source software on specified patents, unless first attacked.
We’ve begun by identifying 10 patents relating to MapReduce, a computing model for processing large data sets first developed at Google—open-source versions of which are now widely used. Over time, we intend to expand the set of Google’s patents covered by the pledge to other technologies.
Let’s celebrate Hardware Freedom Day on 20th April 2013
Hardware Freedom Day is a yearly celebration of Open Hardware! Every year since 2004 hundreds of teams have been celebrating Software Freedom Day, often showcasing Open Hardware in the process. At the Digital Freedom Foundation (formerly known as SFI) we thought it was about time to have a special day just for Open Hardware. So get your hackerspace in order, your team up to speed and register your event right now!
Support HFD
Your organization believes hardware should be hackable and/or is deeply involved in Open Hardware. You believe that Hardware Freedom Day needs traction and are willing to help us with the promotional efforts by putting one of our web banners and countdown on your website.
Let us thank you for the help, as every contribution is important and follow that link for more details.
Organize HFD
You love to hack all the gadgets you have a chance to put your hand on and/or are a member of a hackerspace?
The time has come to join all the other hackerspaces in the world and celebrate Hardware Freedom Day on April 20th: We have drafted a guide to get you started, simply register your event but don’t hesitate to join our mailing list and exchange ideas with others.
Attend HFD
You’ve heard about Open Hardware and would love to discover more, be able to ask questions and see some live action? You already have some hackable stuff and would like to meet with like-minded people in your neighbourhood?
Then Hardware Freedom Day is for you: check out our events map and find a location in your area celebrating HFD.
We created this guide to walk you step by step through using Git and Github – really useful tools in open source. At the same time, it is walking you through completing all of the challenges for the Open Sourcerer Skill!
Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam. A 3-day co-design jam to improve Open Source Hardware documentation practices and facilitate collaborative innovation!
On April 26-28, 2013 in New York City: a unique event during which developers, designers, and hardware hackers get together to bring Open Source Hardware to the next stage.
“The power of open source hardware lies in the ability to build upon others’ work and good documentation is the key to making this happen.” – The Jam Hosts.
Documentation best practices can increase contributions to OSHW projects significantly. A shared understanding of what documentation should look like, more powerful and cooperative software to handle it and new graphical tools could be the keys to the next revolution in product design and manufacturing. For this reason, we decided to host a collaborative event: to generate ideas and projects that could enhance the User Experience of people who are new to OSHW – whether they are individuals or businesses – and want to contribute to a shared vision and shared objectives.
Given the wide scope of the challenges, the organization team designed a first 3-day event, that will be based on a mashup of well known design and collaborative creation formats for group cooperation such as Service Design Jams (http://www.designjams.org/) and Hackathons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackathon). The event will be focused on identifying and sharing outstanding problems concerning the diffusion of OSHW (especially those related to documentation and technology transfer best practices), in generating creative solutions and prototyping them collaboratively.
It will be a great opportunity to learn, build relationships and start new projects. The team behind the Jam currently opened a form for people to submit their applications (apply) and is looking for several different profiles, as the challenge behind the mission of the event – improving the way OSHW is designed and documented to enhance reuse, replication, remix – is huge and implies a large set of skills.

Every organization interested in Open Source Hardware shall participate: the team is looking forward for cooperation and involvement and can be contacted at info@opensourcewarehouse.org.
See the updated list here > http://www.opensourcewarehouse.org/be-a-partner/
This week brings promising news in the fight against patent trolls. We have written before about how a broken patent system has led to an explosion of lawsuits by patent trolls (companies that assert patents as a business model instead of creating products). In the hands of trolls, patents become a tax on innovation.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, along with Rep. Jason Chaffetz, has re-introduced the SHIELD Act (the backronym stands for Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes) in the House of Representatives. The SHIELD Act (H.R. 845, pdf) is designed to help the innocent victims of patent trolls.
Patent trolls use the sky-high cost of litigation as a weapon. It costs millions to defend a patent lawsuit. So while a few targets—including Newegg and Twitter—have fought back and won, even large companies are understandably reluctant to spend a fortune and waste employee time fighting a lawsuit. And smaller companies, like start-ups, might not have the resources to defend a patent suit at all. So even if the troll’s claims are weak, it can pressure its victims into settlement.
The SHIELD Act will help fix this problem. Under the Act, if the patent troll loses in court (because the patent is found to be invalid or there is no infringement), then it pays the other side’s costs and legal fees. We think this proposal—which is also one of the reforms proposed at our Defend Innovation project—is a great first step.
Momentum is building for patent reform. President Obama recently acknowledged that we need new laws to deal with patent trolls. This is the perfect time to tell Congress that it needs to act.
Each week on the Adafruit blog we post up about amazing companies, people and articles about being a MAKER and a business. Over the years we’ve shared how we run Adafruit, published code from our shopping cart system and given presentations on running an open-source hardware company. Every Monday we’re going to try to collect some of these resources and tag them #makerbusinessmonday & #makerbusiness. They’re in our popular Maker Business category as well, enjoy!
Printable catalog (PDF)
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