Opening Pokitto HW for DIY building

The HW schematics are to be released according to the TODO list – I don’t know under what terms, but still it’s something. Open HW is a different topic altogether – similar, but not the same – a good cause but not as critical as SW in my view. If you want to discuss open HW or open stuff in general, you can create an offtopic thread I guess.

To be honest I don’t really care. I was just wondering why the open software part is so important while the hardware part seems not. Also I suppose that the components being used are not open source?

Let me explain.

Pokitto has small surface mount components. For example the LCD connector is very, very difficult to solder by hand (not impossible, just very hard).

Pokittos are made by machine and soldered in the reflow oven so its not an issue for me but for DIY Pokitto building it is a problem.

What I am thinking is an idea that I should make a second layout of Pokitto that replaces those hard-to-solder components with easier components AND publish the full files on those.

EDIT: meaning make a second layout using free PCB layout programs

3 Likes

Very glad to hear :slight_smile:

You don’t wanna ask me these questions too much, because I’ll have to try really hard to not talk for hours.

Just generally – I haven’t been interested too much in open HW, but my view is this: it is a good thing in the same way anything open is a good thing – for education, fair competition, the right to repair and so on. But HW is still a physical thing, it’s inflexible, non-changing, very slow to deploy, difficult to update, not cheap to copy and manufacture by ordinary people… there are still ideas and information in HW that are the subject of openness, but still this is a mid-ground between the physical and completely an information.

SW on the other hand has some very specific properties, unseen in history until now – for example your mobile phone can change it’s software under your hands 100s times a day without you noticing – and this is where applying the same treatment as we do to physical things (such as an implicit exlusive ownership of all right) creates many issues, possibilities for abuse, waste of resources, legal problems, security problems, economical problems, ethical problems, … Now I would be just rewriting the free software movement ideas that have been written down many times in a better way – take a look e.g. at the Wikipedia, GNU Manifesto, the FSF website, Richard Stallman’s biography. These all talk about why software freedom is not only good, but necessary (it needs to be stressed this is an opinion, and it’s a one that I hold).

So in short: open HW is good, but open SW is a must, because (a lot of people such as me think) it’s an alarming issue. HW may get there as well, but not in a foreseeable future. So this is why I am so religious when it comes to SW, while I can tolerate some of these sins for HW.

I don’t know if it’s planned too but I’d also be very glad if it was possible to release the 3D CAD model of Pokitto sometime in the future. Would be very cool, I’d try to render some wallpapers in Blender for the community.

Yes planned too

What format?

Awesome :slight_smile: Anything I can open with Blender or FreeCAD really, I guess obj is the most common one for static models if you can export it.

I’ll make it OBJ then

EDIT: oh wait, solidworks probably does not export obj

IGES?

1 Like

Hmmm I don’t know that but it’s supported by FreeCAD, so I guess it will do. Or maybe just export all formats and put that in one zip archive? :smile:

There are tens of formats.

I will make it STL

1 Like

Yes that’s better, more common and can be imported directly in Blender.

I prefer STL as well, since this is a printable 3d format

1 Like