3 Trends from the Open Hardware Summit
Pulse
Octopart Staff
Oct 10, 2017

Following our visits to the NYC Hardware Workshop and Maker Faire, we went to the Open Hardware Summit (OHS) last week in Portland. It was great to meet hackers, makers, PCB designers, industrial designers and everyone involved in the hardware space. We also got to meet lots of people who use Octopart to find electronic components, which was really fun!  

open-hardware-summit

While we were at the Open Hardware Summit and Hardware Workshop, we noticed a few trends that kept coming up.  

1. People are focusing more on Design for Manufacturability (DFM): With the rise of development boards, software platforms, and desktop manufacturing, prototyping is getting easier but getting prototypes to production is still a big challenge. Over the last week, we have noticed that there is an increasing emphasis on designing for manufacturability (DFM). Making sure that a prototype is manufacturable early on in the process ensures that the final product can be shipped in time and within expected costs. Dakota Boin from Highway1 mentioned about keeping the end-of-lifecycle (EOL) status of parts in mind while starting the designs. Peter Bakhirev from PCB:NG talked about making sure that the parts in your design can be assembled with reflow soldering to avoid having parts melt, like this one does. Anna Thornton from Dragon Innovation mentioned the importance of keeping assembly, testing as well as transportation/shipping in mind while designing a product. As more and more product creators go to Kickstarter and IndieGoGo for crowdfunding their ideas, DFM planning will be critical in making sure that products are delivered on time. Choosing parts that are widely available in the supply chain, using IPC-compliant symbols and footprints for PCBs, keeping well-managed BOMs, and choosing the right CM early on in the process are some of the steps that can be taken to ensure it. Tools like the Common Parts Library and SnapEDA are helpful for choosing parts that are available in the supply chain, and for managing BOMs, check out Octopart’s BOM tool or Google Docs Add-On. 2. Licensing for open hardware products is getting more attention: While the open gear logo is ubiquitous now for open hardware products, lots of creators are using the open gear logo without complying with the community definition.  There was a discussion on how to improve the licensing such that it is enforceable and the creators who are using it are traceable. Michael Weinberg from OSHWA announced a new open source hardware certification program to make the community definition legally enforceable. Adafruit, Sparkfun and Lulzbot among others have agreed to certify atleast one of their products by end of 2016.        

                    open-source-hardwareosh As the open hardware movement grows, it will be essential to have clear and enforceable licensing for products. It will be interesting to see how the open hardware community adopts it. The White House mentioned about the new certification in an article on resurgence in American manufacturing. The new certification program for open hardware is a step in the right direction.

3. Open hardware is expanding into more and more non-traditional areas: The open hardware movement is growing quickly, and we saw open hardware projects being used in non-traditional areas such as music, space industry, and exhibits in national parks. David Perry introduced his 3D printed violin and also played a tune on it - and it sounded pretty nice. David has publicly released the CAD files and people have been doing interesting variations.

open-source-hardware

Aaron Baker and Andrew Greenberg talked about how they are using open hardware in space vehicles at the Portland State Aerospace Society. They have been using open software and open hardware systems to build rockets. Rianne Trujillo talked about how she has been working to use open hardware to make the interactive displays and exhibits in national parks. All these projects have grown out of the traditional hardware movement, and are already making open hardware more accessible to the public  — people with different interests who the movement may not have originally reached. 

open-source-hardware-booth

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We loved talking to you at the OHS! You can also reach out to us on our Slack channel or drop a comment below. 
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