Open Source Hardware

The Internet is such a wonderful place, it’s really allowed disjointed groups of people to come together in once place to do some creative good. (Don’t know how flowery that sounds but never mind!).

One of my Internet travels… don’t you just love how you start somewhere looking for something, which leads onto something else, which keeps on going then you end up at something completely different. Today’s travel starts with my iPhone 3G (yes I took the plunge but only because my contract was up for renewal, and it was time to re-sign, so I thought I might as well make someone else happy with an iPhone 2.5G and also stop paying through the nose (www.vodafone.co.nz) for mobile data!

So what does the iPhone 3G have to do with Open Source Hardware?

Well a little and a lot. I often use the Internet to scratch and itch… and today’s itch was my iPhone 3G has been sucking through it’s battery a LOT faster than my original iPhone, about half wouldn’t be far off the mark. I consider my phone an important part of doing business, and I hate charging the damned things up. My original iPhone served me well, in fact 7-8 hrs of calls + 5-7 days standby were common. (I hammer my phone).

So… back to my point. I was looking for ways to make by iPhone 3G battery last a fraction longer between charges. I’ve not turned off a few settings (namely GPS, push data) because I don’t really use them. 3G is a must I think… and I use Wi-fi at offices and home. I check my email every 15 minutes, and that’s about all (except the obvious phone call usage :P). So in my search for some good ways to save battery time… I stumbed across a website which sells kit’s to power your iPhone by 2xAA batteries with an Altoids tin! (www.adafruit.com) Now I don’t believe these are common in New Zealand, but I did poke around the website and discovered some other cool/interesting and possibly useless but fun kits these guys have to offer. These kits are based on open source hardware, like open source software, open source hardware is available to the community to adjust, merge and tinker with, it’s like physical open source if you will.

Open Source Hardware Projects

So along with these guys open source hardware projects, there are many other ones. One I know of because of my interest in open source telephony (namely Asterisk) is the Open Telephony Project over in Australia (http://www.rowetel.com/ucasterisk/) which is an imbedded PBX which is power enough to handle an small office worth of calls either via physical POTS connections, IAX or SIP. (Much more than my old 486 could do ). Another great open source hardward platform is the Arduino which is designed for prototyping hardware solutions. It’s really great, and there are tonnes of modules available from USB connections, to Ethernet and Bluetooth!

You may also be interested in the weird and wonderful projects over at Sparkfun where you can either buy or build anything from a Mobile Phone to a GPS Package Tracker. While they aren’t necessarily open source they are generally well documented.

Just the Beginning…

Open source is really starting to come into it’s own with more people beginning to understand how it works, and what it does for people all over the world, in developing nations and even developed nations! My guess in my lifetime I’ll be witness to many wonderful things because of the Internet and the open source community.

One more thing

I think I’ll stick to my wall charger for my iPhone for now, it’s just easier. If you would like an iPhone WebApp developed for your in house use, head on over to Totali where we can do all kinds of great things with open source technologies… even get them to play nice with proprietary applications, funny that.