Like Arduino? Miniaturize your project with TinyCircuits

When you walk into the cavernous, old tire plant of Canal Place in Akron, Ohio, the last thing that you'd expect to find in this big building is such a "tiny" treasure. Unexpected though it may be, this is where Ken Burns and the TinyCircuits team has set up shop, and it's where they make tiny open source hardware treasures: miniaturized Arduino compatible circuits.
Ken Burns is the founder of TinyCircuits and has always been fascinated with computers. He first got access to a computer, an Apple 2, when he was six years old at a local library, for only 15 minutes a week. He continued working with computers, earned a degree in electrical engineering at the University of Akron, and eventually began working at AVID Technologies, Inc., a company that does product design in Twinsburg.
At AVID, he says, "I noticed a common thread—smart sensor modules people would want put into their products." Eventually, he had the inspiration for TinyCircuits and started a business around open source hardware and electronics.
The TinyDunio won them the Internet of Things Award for Open Source Project of the Year in 2012.
TinyCircuits makes products exactly like what their name implies. The TinyDuino is the size of a quarter but is as powerful as the Arduino Uno. There are many different types of low cost, open source boards that are made at TinyCircuits. The most popular product is the TinyDuino starter kit (includes the processor board, USB board, and proto boards). TinyCircuits' electronics also have the expandability of an Arduino board. Using TinyShields, you can snap on capabilities like an accelerometer, WiFi, and GPS.

"The difference is the miniaturization of it while maintaining the expandability of the core Arduino platform. We have a miniature platform that you can still expand on. It is fairly easy to add WiFi, GPS, motor control. It keeps the simplicity of the Arduino and keeps it useful for projects that need to be small."
TinyCircuits got its start in 2011 with a lot of help from the open source community. The team was able to raise over $100,000 in donations from their Kickstarter campaign to start manufacturing and distributing TinyCircuits. This also kickstarted a community of followers, users, and supporters, particularly those who were already users of Arduino boards. Because TinyCircuit products are compatible with the Arduino products, the company fulfills the need of a niche market and leverages the Arduino community. 
"The traditional view of open source is about software. Open source hardware has been around for about 7 to 10 years. Making hardware open and building a community around it is a huge advantage in hardware like in software," Burns said. "The community behind it keeps it alive, keeps it useful."
Many users have come up with exceptional uses for TinyCircuits due to their low power usage, customability, and size. For example, a PhD student from England was better able to observe climate data over large expanses of land. He used his TinyCircuits to measure the basic environmental factors of an African game preserve for a year, and thus he had more data points and all for a much lower cost than the typical, expensive equipment.
TinyCircuits can also "stir a kid's imagination and make them use their engineering mind even though they might not think they have one yet," said Burns. Users tend to primarily be hobbyists and students who are already somewhat familiar with the Arduino board and other open source electronics, but who have a need to 'miniaturize' their projects.
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Original source posted 29 Jan 2014 by Lauren Egt; license: CC by-sa

Thoughts on Open Innovation: a book edited by Shane Coughlan

The book “Thoughts on Open Innovation” was launched at the Digital Agenda Summit in Dublin in June 2013. The book aims to address the challenges surrounding Open Innovation; its precise scope, its impact on daily life and the policy measures needed to sustain it continue to be heavily discussed and debated. Its predecessor was “The First Openforum Academy Conference Proceedings” from September 2012 which also was a collection of essays mainly considering Open Innovation in the context of economics, society and global affairs, and this new book, on the other hand, covers openness more as it relates to software, data and access.

The introduction to the book is by Karel De Vriendt, a retired IT expert who worked for the European Commission for twenty years being actively involved in initiatives such as the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR). He attempts to explain the basic concept of Open Innovation by first referring to the definition introduced by Professor Henry Chesbrough of University of California Berkeley but, however, today, the book claims, Open Innovation has a broader meaning and is part of the other “open” concepts, including Open Knowledge, Open Data and Open Source Software. The basic idea, the introduction continues, is that “by collaborating with others, by re-using (and by being allowed to re-use) the results of the efforts of others and by allowing others to use and improve the results of our efforts, we all get better.”

The book is introduced as attempting to address the following questions: “[H]ow can we balance openness with the need of companies to stay competitive and to make a profit ... and to provide enough incentives to bright spirits to continue to innovate? Is openness an absolute good: should all knowledge, all data, all software, all standards etc. be open or are there situations where openness should be avoided...? How do we organise the involvement of as many individuals or organisations as possible in efforts to solve societal issues using Open Innovation? How do we organise Open Innovation projects and ensure that such projects are, and remain, 'Open'?”

The author also explains the structure of the book, which is the following: It consists of an introduction and nine essays. The first two essays give the big picture. The two following essays describe examples on how Open Innovation works in practice. Then the next three essays deal with some of the most widely debated topics in the world of Openness: Openness and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) standardisation, Open Source Software in public procurement, and Open Source Software in the commercial world. The book then concludes with two more essays which are of a more philosophical and visionary nature. The review of the essays below is organised based on these groupings. [continue...]

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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Licence and Attribution
This paper was published in the International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, Volume 5, Issue 2 (December 2013). It originally appeared online at http://www.ifosslr.org.
This article should be cited as follows:
Kärkkäinen, Kari (2013) 'Book Review: Thoughts on Open Innovation', International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, 5(2), pp 137 – 144
DOI: 10.5033/ifosslr.v5i2.92
Copyright © 2013 Kari Kärkkäinen.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons UK (England and Wales) 2.0 licence, no derivative works, attribution, CC-BY-ND available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/uk/
As a special exception, the author expressly permits faithful translations of the entire document into any language, provided that the resulting translation (which may include an attribution to the translator) is shared alike. This paragraph is part of the paper, and must be included when copying or translating the paper.

Honda releases 3D models under CC

This morning, auto manufacturer Honda released 3D data for the exterior designs of several of its concept models under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial (BY-NC) license. From the press release:

With the data downloaded from the website “Honda 3D Design Archives,” Honda’s concept models can easily be replicated by a household 3D printer, which is becoming more popular in recent years. By offering data of its concept models, which embody the spirit of “Honda Design,” Honda offers opportunity to enjoy a simulated experience of Honda’s “art of manufacturing.”

You can view the designs on the new Honda 3D site or download them in STL. Since the designs are licensed under BY-NC, anyone can share, modify, and remix them noncommercially. Now that these designs are in the wild, it will be cool to see who mods them in unexpected and creative ways.

Post by Elliot Harmon, originally published on January 28th, 2014; under a CC by license. See original post.

Lessig lecturing about Law and Justice in a Digital Age

Aaron's Laws - Law and Justice in a Digital Age
A lecture by Lawrence Lessig at Harvard Law School (January 2013); released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Lawrence Lessig marked his appointment as Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School with a lecture titled "Aaron's Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age." The lecture honored the memory and work of Aaron Swartz, the programmer and activist who took his own life on Jan. 11, 2013 at the age of 26.

0:00:00 Introduction
0:08:50 Remarks
1:26:05 Q&A
1:42:00 Closing

The Open Source Definition

Introduction

Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria:

 

1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

 

2. Source Code

The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form. Where some form of a product is not distributed with source code, there must be a well-publicized means of obtaining the source code for no more than a reasonable reproduction cost preferably, downloading via the Internet without charge. The source code must be the preferred form in which a programmer would modify the program. Deliberately obfuscated source code is not allowed. Intermediate forms such as the output of a preprocessor or translator are not allowed.

 

3. Derived Works

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

 

4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code

The license may restrict source-code from being distributed in modified form only if the license allows the distribution of "patch files" with the source code for the purpose of modifying the program at build time. The license must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code. The license may require derived works to carry a different name or version number from the original software.

 

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

 

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

 

7. Distribution of License

The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.

 

8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product

The rights attached to the program must not depend on the program's being part of a particular software distribution. If the program is extracted from that distribution and used or distributed within the terms of the program's license, all parties to whom the program is redistributed should have the same rights as those that are granted in conjunction with the original software distribution.

 

9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software

The license must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with the licensed software. For example, the license must not insist that all other programs distributed on the same medium must be open-source software.

 

10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral

No provision of the license may be predicated on any individual technology or style of interface.

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original source: http://opensource.org/osd; license: CC by