Archive for the ‘Open’ Category

OLPC “Give 1 Get 1″ in Europe

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

OLPC’s G1G1 program is coming back and will also be available in Europe this time. In the G1G1 you pay for two OLPCs, one of which is donated to a third world country and one of which you receive yourself.

  1. When will G1G1 v2 be available in Europe? Monday, November 17, just like in the United States.
  2. At what price?Around $399 | £254 | €312 (No VAT will be applied only shipping costs!).
  3. Which countries will be included? The 27 member states of the EU, plus Switzerland, Russia and Turkey.
  4. Will we get customized keyboards? No, there will only be English/International keyboards.
  5. Which power-plugs will be available? European and UK.
  6. How will I be able to order or donate? Also via Amazon’s online-store at amazon.com/xo from where you will be redirected to amazon.co.uk.

OLPC News [via Slashdot]

WIRED: Build It. Share It. Profit.

Friday, October 24th, 2008

As you might have read a recent post of mine, I’ve recently been getting acquiented with the Arduino platform.  Indeed I got my hands on my very own Arduino Nano this afternoon when it arrived in the mail.

Now, quite handily, Wired has an interesting article on Arduino and Open Source Computing (titled ‘Build It. Share It. Profit. Can Open Source Hardware Work?‘).

Under the Creative Commons license, anyone is allowed to produce copies of the board, to redesign it, or even to sell boards that copy the design. You don’t need to pay a license fee to the Arduino team or even ask permission. However, if you republish the reference design, you have to credit the original Arduino group. And if you tweak or change the board, your new design must use the same or a similar Creative Commons license to ensure that new versions of the Arduino board will be equally free and open.

The only piece of intellectual property the team reserved was the name Arduino, which it trademarked. If anyone wants to sell boards using that name, they have to pay a small fee to Arduino. This, Cuartielles and Banzi say, is to make sure their brand name isn’t hurt by low-quality copies.

Wired on Arduino [via Creative Commons Weblog]

Arduino, a brief introduction.

Thursday, October 23rd, 2008

This week I’ve been on a introductory course for Arduinos, so I thought I might share some of what I’ve learned. Arduino is an open source rapid prototyping platform based on easy to use hardware and software. It’s intended to be used by hobbyists, artists, designers, and anyone who’s interested in quickly and easily creating their own gadgets.

It is possible to connect almost anything to the Arduino board. I myself have successfully experimented with servos, ultrasound distance sensors, and the Wii Nunchuck, among others. What’s more, an Arduino can easily be connected up to a computer that can control the Arduino, and can receive data from it.

The Arduino can work with pretty much any computing platform, and the official IDE is available for Linux, Mac OS X, and even Windows.

I’ll soon post some of my projects here, and in the meanwhile you can get more information on Arduinos on the Arduino home page and on the Arduino Wikipedia article.

For an idea of some of the things that you can do with Arduinos, go to Arduino Playground.

If you understand Finnish, you can also go to Sulautetut.fi

Open set-top box

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

Neuros Technology is shipping its new open set-top box.  The HD-capable Open Source Device 2.0 runs several Linux stacks on a Texas Instruments CPU.

The OSD2 aims to be more than just a consumer device, however. Describing it as a “super-reference design,” Born explained that one aim for Neuros has been to create an open hardware design that can be used as the basis for other products, by customers who want to make set-top boxes, but do not want to design their own hardware. “We’re trying to do for the TV set what the IBM PC did for the computer — provide an open platform so Visicalc doesn’t have to be in the hardware business,” [Neuros CEO Joe Born] explained.

LinuxDevices.com

OpenMoko to publish Neo FreeRunner schematics

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

OpenMoko have promised to publish schematics for their latest phone, the Neo FreeRunner. The free availability of the schematics should ease the development of alternative firmware for the phone.

Schematic diagrams are representations of electrical circuits. Publishing them does not allow others to duplicate a circuit board design — Gerber files would be needed for that — at least not without considerable time and effort. Instead, having access to schematics will enable firmware developers to adapt other bootloaders to the platform.

Earlier OpenMoko published CAD files of the Neo FreeRunner.

LinuxDevices.com

OpenMoko Neo FreeRunners arrive in North America

Wednesday, July 16th, 2008

OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner cell phones are starting to arrive in North America.  The Neo FreeRunner still has somne problems that need to be fixed, but if you’re brave enough, you can order one for yourself from the OpenMoko store.

Summary Post (and sorry for the silence)

Friday, July 11th, 2008

Sorry for the renewed silence on this blog, it’s been a combination of being busy at work and me being lazy…  Here’s a small post of some of the stories I’ve missed.

By the way, if you experience any problems accessing this blog (particularly if you get a 500 Internal Server Error page) please report this to me through the feedback form.

OpenMoko open source phone begins shipping

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

OpenMoko Neo Freerunner

Linux Devices reports that OpenMoko has begun shipping its Linux-based, open source Neo Freerunner (3D model) phone to five newly announced distributors, in Germany, France, and India.

Specifications:

  • Processor: Samsung S3C2442 500MHz
  • RAM: 128MB
  • Flash: 256MB
  • Display: 4.3″ diagonal 640 x 480 VGA Colour TFT LCD
  • Graphics: SMedia 3362-based 3D graphics acceleration
  • Accelerometers: 2 x 3D accelerometers
  • Audio: “high-quality” audio codec
  • USB: 1 x version 1.1
  • Cellular: 2.5G tri-band GPRS/GSM (900MHz or 850MHz)
  • WiFi: 802.11b/g WLAN
  • Bluetooth: version 2.0
  • GPS: AGPS (assisted global positioning system) receiver

LinuxDevices.com

Open Source Hardware Featured in The Economist

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

Economist Jun 7th 2008

This week’s Economist (June 7th) has an article featuring open source hardware.  The article, titled ‘Open Sesame’, has a good run down of the most popular projects today; the history; and the fears and prejudices faced by the open hardware model.

The Economist [via Joe's Blog (Neuros Technology)]


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