open source hardware

41 Articles

With Core ONE, Prusa’s Open Source Hardware Dream Quietly Dies

November 20, 2024 by 85 Comments

Yesterday, Prusa Research officially unveiled their next printer, the Core ONE. Going over the features and capabilities of this new machine, it’s clear that Prusa has kept a close eye on the rapidly changing desktop 3D printer market and designed a machine to better position themselves within a field of increasingly capable machines from other manufacturers.

While some saw the incremental upgrades of the i3 MK4 as being too conservative, the Core ONE ticks all the boxes of what today’s consumer is looking for — namely high-speed CoreXY movement with a fully enclosed chamber — while still offering the build quality, upgradability, and support that the company has built its reputation on. Put simply it’s one of the most exciting products they’ve introduced in a long time, and exactly the kind of machine that many Prusa fans have been waiting for.

Unfortunately, there’s one feature that’s ominously absent from the Core ONE announcement post. It’s easy to overlook, and indeed, most consumers probably won’t even know it’s missing. But for those of us who are concerned with such matters, it’s an unspoken confirmation that an era has finally come to an end.

With the Core ONE, Prusa Research is no longer in the business of making open source 3D printer hardware, but that doesn’t mean that the printer isn’t hackable. It’s complicated, so read on.

Continue reading “With Core ONE, Prusa’s Open Source Hardware Dream Quietly Dies” →

Prusa Picks Up The Pace With New MK4S Printer

August 12, 2024 by 28 Comments

One of the things you’re paying for when you buy a 3D printer from Prusa Research is, essentially, your next 3D printer. That’s because Prusa’s machines are designed to be upgraded and modified as time goes on. An upgrade kit is always released to allow each older printer to be converted into its successor, and while there’s occasionally been some debate about whether or not it’s the most cost-effective choice, at least it is a choice you have as an owner.

If you’ve got a Prusa MK4, you’ll soon get to make that decision for yourself. Announced earlier today, the new MK4S brings some notable changes to last year’s printer. The $99 upgrade is scheduled to be available by the end of the month for existing owners, but if you’ve been on the fence about joining Team Orange and Black, you can purchase the MK4S right now in both kit and assembled forms for the same price ($799 and $1,099 respectively) as the previous MK4.

Continue reading “Prusa Picks Up The Pace With New MK4S Printer” →

A map of the world with continents in light grey and countries outlined in dark grey. A nuber of yellow and grey circles with cartoon factories on them are connected with curved lines reminiscent of airplane flight paths. The lines have seemingly-arbitrary binary ones and zeros next to them. All of the grey factories are in the Americas, likely since IoP is currently focused on Africa and Europe.

Internet Of Production Alliance Wants You To Think Globally, Make Locally

February 29, 2024 by 19 Comments

With the proliferation of digital fabrication tools, many feel the future of manufacturing is distributed. It would certainly be welcome after the pandemic-induced supply chain kerfuffles from toilet paper to Raspberry Pis. The Internet of Production Alliance (IoP) is designing standards to smooth this transition. [via Solarpunk Presents]

IoP was founded in 2016 to build the infrastructure necessary to move toward a global supply chain based on local production of goods from a global database of designs instead of the current centralized model of production with closed designs. Some might identify this decentralization as part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They currently have developed two standards, Open Know-Where [PDF] and Open Know-How.

Open Know-Where is designed to help locate makerspaces, FabLabs, and other spaces with the tools and materials necessary to build a thing. The sort of data collected here is broken down in to five categories: manufacturing facility, people, location, equipment, and materials. Continue reading “Internet Of Production Alliance Wants You To Think Globally, Make Locally” →

Hack Club OnBoard

Hack Club Grants Encourage Open Source PCB Designs By Teens

June 15, 2023 by 6 Comments

[Hack Club] is a nonprofit network of coder and maker clubs for teenage high school students around the world. With an impressive reach boasting clubs in about 400 schools, they serve approximately 10,000 students. Their OnBoard program asserts, “Circuit boards are magical. You design one, we’ll print it!”

Any teenage high school student can apply for a [Hack Club] OnBoard Grant to have their Printed Circuit Board design fabricated into real hardware.  The process starts by designing a PCB using any tool that can generate Gerber files. The student then publishes their design on GitHub and submits the Gerber files to a PCB manufacturer.

A screenshot from the board house showing the completed design upload and production cost is the main requirement of the grant application.  If approved, the grant provides up to $100 to cover PCB manufacturing costs.

OnBoard encourages collaboration, community, and friends. Designers can share their projects and progress with [Hack Club] teens around the world. Those who are working on, or have completed, their own circuit board designs can share support and encouragement with their peers.

Example hardware projects from [Hack Club] include Sprig, an open-source handheld game console based on the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller.  Teen makers can explore the example OnBoard projects and then it’s… three, two, one, go!

Photograph of a BLDC motor controller circuit board

Take A Ride Through The Development Of A Custom BLDC Motor Controller

March 15, 2023 by 6 Comments

The folks over at the [Barkhausen Institut] are doing research into controlling autonomous fleets of RC cars and had been using off the shelf electronic speed controllers (ESCs) to control the car motors. Unfortunately they required more reliable feedback for closed loop control of the motors, so they created their own open source hardware brushless DC (BLDC) controller.

The motor controller they developed uses an STM32 microcontroller that talks to a TMC6140 3 phase MOSFET driver to drive 6 IRLR 2905 MOSFETs. The [Barkhausen Institut] researchers went with the SimpleFOC library as the basis to program the STM32, with installed hall effect sensors indicating motor orientation for their closed loop control.

Designing a functioning BLDC and ESC controllers can be subtle, and their post goes into details about the problems and solutions they came up with to deal with with what was ultimately improper isolation of the MOSFETs interfering with the power rail for the STM32. The source for their BLDC motor controller is available through their GitLab page. For more information on the parent project that uses the BLDC driver, be sure to check out their work on a connected convoy of RC cars.

There’s now a wealth of open source BLDC drivers and projects, many of which we’ve featured in the past, like the Moteus and haptic smart knob, and it’s nice to see other projects explore different options.

ZSWatch: This OSHW Smart Watch Is As DIY As It Gets

January 16, 2023 by 17 Comments

We say it often, but it’s worth repeating: this is the Golden Age of making and hacking. Between powerful free and open source software, low-cost PCB production, and high resolution 3D printers that can fit on your desk, a dedicated individual has everything they need to make their dream gadget a reality. If you ever needed a reminder of this fact, just take a look at the ZSWatch.

When creator [Jakob Krantz] says he built this MIT-licensed smart watch from scratch, he means it. He designed the 4-layer main board, measuring just 36 mm across, entirely in KiCad. He wrote every line of the firmware, and even designed the 3D printable case himself. This isn’t some wearable development kit he got off of AliExpress and modified — it’s all built from the ground up, and all made available to anyone who might want to spin up their own version.

The star of the show is the nRF52833 SoC, which is paired with a circular 1.28″ 240×240 IPS TFT display. The screen doesn’t support touch, so there’s three physical buttons on the watch for navigation. Onboard sensors include a LIS2DS12 MEMS accelerometer and a MAX30101EFD capable of measuring heartrate and blood oxygen levels, and there’s even a tiny vibration motor for haptic feedback. Everything’s powered by a 220 mAh Li-Po battery that [Jakob] says is good for about two days — afterwards you can drop the watch into its matching docking station to get charged back up.

As for the software side of things, the watch tethers to a Android application over Bluetooth for Internet access and provides the expected functions such as displaying the weather, showing notifications, and controlling music playback. Oh, and it can tell the time as well. The firmware was made with extensibility in mind, and [Jakob] has provided both a sample application and some basic documentation for would-be ZSWatch developers.

While an unquestionably impressive accomplishment in its current form, [Jakob] says he’s already started work on a second version of the watch. The new V2 hardware will implement an updated SoC, touch screen, and an improved charging/programming connector. He’s also looking to replace the 3D printed case for something CNC milled for a more professional look.

The ZSWatch actually reminds us quite a bit of the Open-SmartWatch project we covered back in 2021, in that the final result looks so polished that the average person would never even take it for being DIY. We can’t say that about all the smartwatches we’ve seen over the years, but there’s no question that the state-of-the-art is moving forward for this kind of thing in the hobbyist space.