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Popsci_2014 00149.txt

#The Rise Of Open source Hardware So in the summer of 2012 Petrone (then an engineer at a Portland startup) launched a site where flexible matrix boards and laser motion sensors could be sold alongside build-it-yourself weather monitoring kits and robot birds. Almost immediately Tindie began attracting favorable attention from the indie hardware community #and then expanded from there. Today around 600 inventors sell more than 3000 different hardware products which have shipped out to more than 80 countries around the world. Some customers are hobbyists like Petrone but others are large entities like the Australian government Google and NASA. These days Petrone says NASA s purchasing department just calls my cell phone.##The site has gained also a strong following from hard-core DIY types. Just as Etsy became the go-to marketplace for craft creators Tindie has become the primary hub for hardware aficionados. We are definitely part of and supportive of the maker movement Petrone says. We fill the hardware side.##While Petrone achieved his goal of creating a marketplace for hardware projects Tindie also inadvertently made a second contribution to the hardware world: it now stands as the largest collection of open-source hardware on the planet. Nothing on the site is patented and the vast majority of sellers have their source code and documentation links available right there on the page Petrone says. Open source has become very much a part of the brand and what people within the hardware world associate with us.##Part of the reason software has led the open source charge is that it has the advantage of being lightweight Petrone explains. It s a case of atoms versus bits.##Historically big companies have dominated hardware production for two simple reasons: manufacturing is both expensive and difficult. Hardware requires physical objects which entail manufacturing costs and usually shipping. But a precipitous drop in prices#which some attribute to the rise of cell phones which made components cheap#is helping to lower the barrier to open source entry for hardware as are crowdsourcing platforms such as Kickstarter.##For companies and makers the revenue model for open source hardware is still being worked out since a person could potentially exploit an open source platform and sell it for profit. But as Arduino#a microcontroller for DIYERS and the most successful open source hardware project to date#shows people tend to buy the $30 original version rather than the $10 copycats. Most people want to support those who are actually contributing and putting the sweat and time into the project Petrone says. You don t get the same warm fuzzy feeling when buying a closed product as you do when you support someone who is creating an open one.##As for Tindie sellers monetary support has so far not been a problem. There is so much demand for the open source products sold on the site that the waiting list alone contains nearly half a million dollars worth of orders. For Petrone This has been something incredibly interesting to see because ultimately it s a totally new market that doesn t exist anywhere else.##Tindie however is likely only an early example of what is to come.##I think open hardware will start coming into its own in the next ten years Petrone says. Apple s not going to open source their products anytime soon but Tesla could.##This article was published originally in the October 2014 issue of Popular Science#with#the title The Etsy Of Hardware. It has been expanded in this web version.#

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