Albany, NY

Open Source Hardware: Makers Unite

4/7/2020 by Red Hat

Web player: https://podplayer.net/?id=101288477
Episode: https://tracking.feedpress.it/link/18442/13427218/84559c59-7868-461d-af3f-a002e1d0646f.mp3

People never stop tinkering. Hardware hacking didn’t disappear after personal computers became mainstream. But it did change. A new generation of artists, designers, and activists are banding together to change the world—with open source hardware. Hardware hacking used to be expensive and time-consuming. Adaptable microcontrollers are making tinkering much easier. But even as the barriers to entry started falling, the practices around selling hardware have continued to veer toward secrecy. Ayah Bdeir, Alicia Gibb, and Limor Fried are working to keep hardware open. These leaders share how they helped build the open source hardware movement, and navigated fierce disagreements to make engineering accessible to all. If you want to read up on some of our research on open source hardware, you can check out all our bonus material over at redhat.com/commandlineheroes. You’ll find extra content for every episode. Follow along with the episode transcript.

I use open source software every day, it’s, critical for all the mapping and other activities I do. But hardware? Not so much although I’m glad for the Arduino and other inexpensive microprocessors like the ESP32 that making hacking small electronics projects a lot of fun to do.