Alexander Robotics

It was a big week for the open source hardware movement, starting with the first conference dedicated to open hardware: the Open Hardware Summit. Yep, a conference just for open hardware. And it sold out. Big name presenters in the rather nascent field include Limor Fried of Adafruit, Chris Anderson of DIYdrones, Massimo Banzi of Arduino, and Bunnie Huang of Chumby. The OHS was followed by the New York Maker Faire.

While plenty happened, two big announcements were new Arduino boards and an updated draft for the Open Source Hardware (OSHW) Definition.

New Arduino boards

Massimo and the rest of the Arduino team announced the successor to the Duemilanove: the Uno. The Uno and the more recent Duemilanoves share the same ATmega328 chip with 32 KB of flash memory (for storing programs), 2 KB of SRAM (for storing variables), and 1 KB of EEPROM (for storing “long-term” data). The Uno is also FCC certified, opening the door for using the Arduino in new fields with regulation requirements.

The biggest change is a new USB-to-Serial chip. When you plug an Arduino into the computer using a USB cable, the computer sees the Arduino as a serial device. This allows sending commands and getting feedback between the computer and the Arduino. The previous chip — the FTDI FT232RL — has been replaced with the Atmel Atmega8u2 chip. Before, the computer only saw the Arduino as a serial device, with the Atmega8u2 the computer can see the Arduino as a keyboard, or a mouse, or whatever the developer decides.

The flagship Arduino — the Mega — was also updated to the Mega 2560. The ATmega2560 chip used in the Meaga 2560 has 256 KB of flash memory, twice that of the Mega while keeping the same size of SRAM and EEPROM. The Mega 2560 also uses the Atmega8u2 USB-to-Serial chip found in the Uno.

Though capable of speeds up to 20 Mhz, both the Uno and the Mega 2560 remain calibrated at the previous speed of 16 Mhz.

Updated Open Source Hardware Draft Definition

Back in July, several news outlets reported OSHW ratified a constitution. What was agreed upon was version 0.3 of the definition of Open Source Hardware by several players in the community. While ratified, the definition/license is still evolving, as Bunnie Huang described in his post.

Version 0.4 came out during the week with some minor changes and clarifications. These changes include:

• Adding a Scope criteria specifying what part of the hardware falls under the license
• Preferring native file formats as documentation, for example, the CAD files over a PNG
• Requiring sufficient documentation on how to interface with the hardware in software

Honestly, when I started this post, I was expecting more changes between the drafts. Diffing the two definitions showed otherwise. Oh well, that’s a good sign there’s still a general consensus.

To the future

The Open Hardware Summit was the culmination of the growing OSHW movement. Yet the summit is just the beginning. There’s a strong community of hardware hackers, not only online, but in your city. Hackerspaces are forming, meetups are starting, and the local community is growing. It’s an exciting time to get started!