Open-source hardware consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered by the open-design movement. Both free and open-source software (FOSS) and open-source hardware are created by this open-source culture movement and apply a like concept to a variety of components. It is sometimes, thus, referred to as FOSH. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned so that others can make it – coupling it closely to the maker movement. Hardware design, in addition to the software that drives the hardware, are all released under free/libre terms. The original sharer gains feedback and potentially improvements on the design from the FOSH community. There is now significant evidence that such sharing can drive a high return on investment for the scientific community.
Make is an American magazine published since February 2005 which focuses on Do It Yourself (DIY) and/or Do It With Others (DIWO) projects involving computers, electronics, metalworking, robotics, woodworking and other disciplines. The magazine is marketed to people who enjoyed making things and features complex projects which can often be completed with cheap materials, including household items. Make is considered "a central organ of the maker movement".
Body hacking is the application of the hacker ethic in pursuit of enhancement or change to the body's functions through technological means, such as do-it-yourself cybernetic devices or by introducing biochemicals.
A hackerspace is a community-operated, often "not for profit", workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, science, digital art, or electronic art, can meet, socialize, and collaborate. Hackerspaces are comparable to other community-operated spaces with similar aims and mechanisms such as Fab Lab, men's sheds, and commercial "for-profit" companies.
Robot Operating System is an open-source robotics middleware suite. Although ROS is not an operating system (OS) but a set of software frameworks for robot software development, it provides services designed for a heterogeneous computer cluster such as hardware abstraction, low-level device control, implementation of commonly used functionality, message-passing between processes, and package management. Running sets of ROS-based processes are represented in a graph architecture where processing takes place in nodes that may receive, post, and multiplex sensor data, control, state, planning, actuator, and other messages. Despite the importance of reactivity and low latency in robot control, ROS is not a real-time operating system (RTOS). However, it is possible to integrate ROS with real-time computing code. The lack of support for real-time systems has been addressed in the creation of ROS 2, a major revision of the ROS API which will take advantage of modern libraries and technologies for core ROS functions and add support for real-time code and embedded system hardware.
DIYbio is an informal umbrella organization for individuals and local groups active in do-it-yourself biology, encompassing both a website and an email list. It serves as a network of individuals from around the globe that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, biohackers, amateur biologists, and do-it-yourself biological engineers who value openness and safety. It was founded by Jason Bobe and Mackenzie Cowell in 2008.
Do-it-yourself biology is a biotechnological social movement in which individuals, communities, and small organizations study biology and life science using the same methods as traditional research institutions. DIY biology is primarily undertaken by individuals with limited research training from academia or corporations, who then mentor and oversee other DIY biologists with little or no formal training. This may be done as a hobby, as a not-for-profit endeavor for community learning and open-science innovation, or for profit, to start a business.
Willow Garage was a robotics research lab and technology incubator devoted to developing hardware and open source software for personal robotics applications. The company was best known for its open source software suite Robot Operating System (ROS), which rapidly become a common, standard tool among robotics researchers upon its initial release in 2010. It was begun in late 2006 by Scott Hassan, who had worked with Larry Page and Sergey Brin to develop the technology that became the Google Search engine. Steve Cousins was the president and CEO. Willow Garage was located in Menlo Park, California.
Comunes is a nonprofit organization aiming to encourage the commons and facilitating grassroots work through free software web tools. Previously known as Ourproject.org, this collective established itself as a legal entity in 2009, forming Comunes. Nowadays it serves as an umbrella organization for several projects related to the Commons.
The maker culture is a contemporary subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture that intersects with hardware-oriented parts of hacker culture and revels in the creation of new devices as well as tinkering with existing ones. The maker culture in general supports open-source hardware. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of computer numeric control tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and, mainly, its predecessor, traditional arts and crafts.
Tekla Labs (TeklaLabs.org) is a non-profit organization of researchers, educators and hobbyists committed to developing do it yourself (DIY) science infrastructure. Tekla Labs objective is to "enable scientists to construct their own high quality lab equipment using readily available, off the shelf items." Tekla Labs has been featured in numerous publications, including in MAKE, TechHive, Nature.com Blogs, New Scientist, and SciDev.Net.
The Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs by Joshua M. Pearce was published in 2014 by Elsevier.
Genspace is a non-profit organization and a community biology laboratory located in Brooklyn, New York. Stemming from the hacking, biohacking, and DIYbio movements, Genspace has focused on supporting citizen science and public access to biotechnology. Genspace opened the first community biology lab in 2010 and a Biosafety Level One laboratory in December of that year. Since its opening, Genspace has supported projects, events, courses, art, and general community resources concerning biology, biotechnology, synthetic biology, genetic engineering, citizen science, open source software, open source hardware, and more.
BioCurious is a community biology laboratory and nonprofit organization located in Sunnyvale, California, co-founded by Eri Gentry, Kristina Hathaway, Josh Perfetto, Raymond McCauley, Joseph Jackson, and Tito Jankowski. With the help of Kickstarter and 239 backers they raised $35,319. BioCurious is a complete working laboratory and technical library for entrepreneurs to access equipment, materials, and co-working space, and a meeting place for citizen scientists, hobbyists, activists, and students. Scientific American magazine has described BioCurious as "one of country’s premier community biotechnology labs [...]".
The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science is a non-profit organization that facilitates collaborative, open source environmental research in a model known as Community Science. It supports communities facing environmental justice issues in a do it yourself approach to environmental monitoring and advocacy. Public Lab grew out of a grassroots effort to take aerial photographs of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Since then, they have launched a range of projects, including an open source spectrometer, multi-spectral camera, and low-cost microscope.
The Medialab Matadero, formerly known as Medialab Prado, is a cultural space and citizen lab in Madrid (Spain). It was created by the Madrid City Council in 2000, growing since then into a leading center for citizen innovation. It follows a participatory approach, using collective intelligence methods and fast prototyping tools such as fab labs, to use and co-create digital commons.
Opentrons Labworks, Inc. is a biotechnology company that manufactures liquid handling robots that use open-source software, which at one point used open-source hardware but no longer does. Their robots can be used by scientists to manipulate small volumes of liquids for the purpose of undertaking biochemical or chemical reactions. Currently, they offer the OT-2 and Flex robots. These robots are used primarily by researchers and scientists interested in DIY biology, but they are increasingly being used by other biologists.
