It also has 1 or 2 USB Host port(s) and one gadget port (Depends on model), HDMI and composite video out and Audio IO.

RPi is targeting price range of 25 to 35 USD, which is it’s main Unique Selling Point (USP). All major Linux based operating system distributions are getting ports for RPi. Some design material for RPi is avaiable and more details are under plan. After Arduino and openmoko, RPi is most widely covered open source hardware project.

Pandaboard has excellent peripherals on board such as, USB (Host and Gadget mode), Ethernet, Audio I/O, Dual Display out, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth. It also has connectors for Camera connection and LCD output. 3rd party modules are available providing camera and touch LCD extension to pandaboard.

Stable version of ubuntu and Android Operating System is available from Linaro to download.

Design material (Schematic, Gerber, BoM etc) for both Pandaboard and Pandaboard ES are available here.

We discussed few things related to open source hardware with Joe.

OpenHW: What was your first open source experience in consumer electronics:

Joe: During 2002, Major semiconductor companies were afraid to do open source stuff, but gradually that scene is changing. In 2006, with Neuros OSD product, we started with open platforms. Compare to 2002 – 06 time frame, current environment is more open. Two major things which changed whole environment are (although not open but) 3rd party ecosystem of apps on iPhone and android. Android bought up to some level open source to masses. Multiple manufactures are collaborating on one Android platform.

OpenHW: Your thoughts on Arduino

Joe: Arduino is great platform for hobbyist as well as for testing new ideas. For our latest Android Speaker product, we were able to produce first set of prototypes in US in small time frame and budget using Arduino as base. Without such open platform, it would have taken many times more development efforts.

OpenHW: Your thoughts on various open hardware platform such as Beagleboard, Pandaboard and Beaglebone etc.

Joe: All these boards are making big impact on consumer electronics industry. Up to some amount, it also brings openness to supply chain. At recently concluded Android Builders Summit, we seen quite a few new innovative solutions build either on top of these open hardware platform or modified version of those platforms. Also, now it is virtually impossible for any semiconductor company to not participate in open source and open hardware space. For semiconductor company having support for high end MPU in Linux kernel or Android is practically prerequisite. Also company like Atmel, having MCU on Arduino open source board has helped a lot.

OpenHW: Effect of kickstarter on Open Source Hardware

Joe: Kickstarter fills one major gap from prototype stage to some sort of first round of mass production. With kickstarter, developer gets assurance during this major step in new product development.

OpenHW: Major Challenge for Open Source Hardware

Joe: Open Hardware platforms needs to be more easy to use. Arduino’s usage is high because of it’s easiness. Once it becomes possible for non technical person to use, open hardware platforms can come to next level. Other challenge is finances, as investors are still afraid to back open source hardware company. Investors will take time to understand viability of open source hardware company. During 1980s, small companies were not able to do hardware products, but now with open source hardware, it should be possible. Higher capital flow can drastically increase open source hardware ventures.

OpenHW: Comments on future opportunities

Joe: With connected devices, cloud platform and open source hardware many new innovative platforms will emerge in future which were difficult to implement in past.

Follow Joe on twitter at JoeBorn

Design material (Schematic, Gerber, BoM etc) for BeagleBone are available here.

- Casper ROACH (Reconfigurable Open Architecture Computing Hardware)

- High Performance SDR

- Products from Ettus Research LLC, such as USRP N200, USRP E100 and USRP1 (Yes they come with schematic.)

But, RHINO looks quite impressive with kind of peripheral it provides. RHINO schematics can be found here, but at current moment gerber (PCB layout) is not available, hope developers do publish them eventually. Borph Linux runs on RHINO platform.

It will be quite interesting open hardware community. The event has prime focus on Bussiness, Production, Law, Design & Education.
We also hope that after this summit better licence for open hardware projects be available. Event schedule looks quite interesting.

Maker Faire will follow on 25 & 26th September at NYC.

Update: A nice post event report is available at here.

Video:  Open source hardware $1m and beyond – foo camp east 2010

One of the design will have WiFi, while other will have Bluetooth as wireless module on openPICUS board. To make things simple to implement, openPICUS team have used 2 layer circuit design.

Board contains Microchip PIC24F 16 bit chip set for processing. Sensors such as temperature, accelerometer, flow detector can be interfaced to PIC. The readings of firmware can be done using wireless link. The firmware should directly download from serial port.
PIC24F has I2C & SPI interface, which can be used to for LCD display. PIC24F has 4 Analog Inputs with 10 bit A/D, 5 Digital Inputs (3 can be used as Interrupt) & 5 Digital Outputs (3 can be used for PWM) which is fair set of IO to interface desired sensors & actuators.

Pros:
- Simple design with good IO capability
- Wireless support

Update:
- openPICUS now provides port for FreeRTOS.

The board has direct serial console connector for debugging.  Board has VGA, USB Host & Gadget, SATA, Audio IO peripheral options, making it useful for various home & industrial application.

Pros:

- Angstrom Linux distribution supports hawkboard. Besides that, users have successfully used Android on hawkboard.

- Both cores, ARM9 & Floating point DSP of Hawkboard can execute upto 456 MHz, which is fairly good processing power.

- VGA video output makes easy to connect to low end display device (e.g. CRT monitor).

- Fairly good price of 110 USD.

Update: Hawkboard’s recent batch has some hardware problem. Although solution is published, some users are still reporting problem. So do take this into account.

Ben Nanonote comes with 59 key keypad, 3 inch screen, mini SDHC slot, 32 SDRAM & USB mini B host. All this suggests the miniature nature of device.

Pros:
- Ben Nanonote has full linux support & OpenWrt distribution. QT & GTK2 are avaiable to generate better user interface based applications.
- At 99 USD, Nanonote certainly worth it is money.

Txtr aims to integrate digital reading tools & services, while service can be used on various platform, having own open platform attracts community to also launch services on txtr platform. It can also encorages existing device vendor to integrate txtr service on there platform.

Reader hardware consist of Bluetooth, Wifi, Near field communication & EDGE modem to communicate with device. Interface such as, 3D Acceleratormeter, Touch screen based Eleectronic ink display, vibrator motor makes it more attractive platform for developing entertainment applications.

Note: Device is not available as of date.

Neuros OSD2 is based on Texas Instruments Davinci Series of SoC TMS320DM6446 having ARM 9 processor core. It has capability to be used as capture AV content as well as playback content from USB storage device or network. OSD2 developer guide contains good list of available resources.

Pro:

- One can efficiently use Neuros OSD2 for Personal Video Recorder or Network Media Player.

Neo FreeRunner uses ARM9 processor based SC32442 from Samsung. FreeRunner is complete smartphone with LCD, Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, Accelerometer besides GSM Baseband support for call & GPRS.

Neo FreeRunner is support by multiple Linux distribution & holds capabilities to support multi boot, This is clearly big feature on smartphone. Neo FreeRunner provides good platform for developing any hardware or software for Smartphone. Schematics, hardware reference manual etc are available to community for use.

Odroid contains Samsung S5PC100 SoC, which contains ARM Cortex-A8 833MHz processor. This gives healthy competition to Beagleboard, which contains ARM Cortex-A8 of 600 MHz.

Quick Pros:

- ARM Cortex-A8 833MHz processor. 512 MB RAM, Touch screen & HDMI output, WiFi, Bluetooth gives big advantage over Beagleboard in terms of hardware capability.

- Odroid is more useful as complete device rather than as reference platform. Thus, It is easy to developer software over it & use it.

Quick  Cons:

- Odroid is released much latter than Beagleboard, thus odroid community is less active compare to Beagleboard.

- Odroid has little option to interface external piece of hardware such as any sensor.

- Priced at 349 USD, Quite premier & out of reach for many.

GSM handset contains insecure firmware.

Original GSM specifications were published around 20 years before. Interestingly, GSM specifications are open, but has only few open source implementation. GSM uses A5/1 encryption algorithm which has became open over a period of time.

Now, Project such as OpenBTS provides open source implementation of Base Transceiver Stations ś software, while OpenBSC provide open source implementation Base Station Controller.

Issue at hand : Around 4 Billion GSM handsets are already deployed & containing insecure firmware. Now what ? Any Fix is available ? What is way-out of this problem ?

Above are still open questions.

But lets understand root cause of this problem,

- All the implementation of GSM stack where closed source.

- Access to firmware (source code as well as binary) were not available to general hacker, making it nearly impossible to understand it.

- GSM stack remained in hands of (very few) close source commercial developer for years.

- If a open implementation of GSM stack was available (at-least for scientific study), it could have reviewed by world-wide hackers.

- Similar to TCP/IP protocol, over a period of time, it could have become more secure.

Lesson to learn: We should learn from this mistake & should not repeat same for upcoming 3G, LTE, 4G & related standards. These standard should have open source implementation (including hardware as well as software).

Besides having strong hardware, Beagleboard project also comes with all required data-sheets, schematics, layout & it is supported well by various Linux distribution, making it ideal plateform for embedded researchers & hackers.  Lot of other hardware boards are available which are modified version of beagleboard.

Although, first impression of  Beagle board hardware suggest that it is targeted to Mobile / Multimedia or entertainment device, It is practically very useful for many kind of application.

Quick Pros:

- ARM Cortex – A8 Core

- Standard interfaces such as USB, DVI-D, Serial console for debug, SD card slot

- USB Host & Gadget mode support, making it ideal for usb device driver development / testing and validation

- Supported by various linux distribution, in particular Angstrom includes various debugging tools, making beagleboard as strong reference platform of ARM Cortex-A8 for Application testing & debugging.

- Although (as of now) Open GLES driver is available in binary only format, it is fairly usable.

I would also suggest beagleboard to any one who is beginner in embedded Linux or college student for their academic project as platform.

Furthermore, This site is more focused on projects which are aiming for electronics device or equipment, compare to other related projects.

As in last decade, In software world, everyone has seen power of open source software projects, We strongly believe, in coming decade various open hardware projects will shine & out perform close source hardware.

Wish you Happy (hardware) hacking ! ! !