this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Open source hardware is a thing, there are tons of projects on places like Hackaday but it feels to me like it will never quite reach the same level of success as open source software simply because it is much harder to do.
The main exception to this is obviously 3d printing where people happily share their designs and things for people to print and "remix" (i.e. fork) under CC licences.
The problem I think is that electronics is difficult and expensive (especially for "one off" orders for things like PCBs) for the most part which is why you seem to end up with two camps.
Hobbyists making their own electronics at their own cost and making stuff available. If you are lucky there might be a company willing to make batch orders of the custom parts along with the rest of the components as a DIY kit (which, depending on your soldering skill might be easy or extremely difficult with the possibility of ruining it) or they might pre-assemble the kit for you.
Companies making OSH products but there is little appetite for anyone to fork it or create a competing version in such a niche space. ClockWorkPi come to mind here with some neat little hand held computers they sell but also make the plans available for. To date I don't think I've heard of anyone making a clone from scratch or forking it to make their own modified version as the cost would be so extreme compared to just ordering the original.
So yeah, I think there is appetite for open source hardware but the high costs, practical electronic skills and ease of damaging expensive parts means that I think things will stay less active in that space. I'd love to see more, for example if super cheap prototype PCBs and pre-assembled kits could be ordered at far cheaper prices than are currently possible. Or an easy and cheap "PCB printer" with associated parts picker/placer/soldering machine to make the process of prototyping a project as easy as just ordering a bunch of generic and off the shelf parts then downloading a file or two to send to the machines. I can dream can't I?
Edit: Seems desktop PCB printing may be possible for a cool $5k (https://www.voltera.io/v-one) or ยฃ11.5k (https://www.fortex.co.uk/product/sv2-pcb-printer/). Maybe we might see a revolution in this space in the not to far future like we saw with 3d printing that brought the technology to the masses.
Edit 2: Somewhat meta - a hackaday project for a pick and place machine - https://hackaday.io/project/9319-diy-pick-and-place