Nils Faerber <nils.faer...@kernelconcepts.de> writes: > Wolfgang Spraul schrieb: >> Today Openmoko released additional pieces of documentation about >> Freerunner hardware: board outline, footprints and netlist. >> Same as all other releases before - under Creative Commons Share-Alike >> license. >> Available at: >> http://downloads.openmoko.org/developer/schematics/GTA02/gta02_outline_footprints_netlist.tar.bz2 > > This is in general great! > > But sorry to be a little sceptical here - but hardware != software. What > I mean is that collaboratively developing software is pretty easy since > we have the internet to share and most of us have a PC to develop upon. > > But with hardware development the situation is a little bit different. > Even if the collaborate development effort succeeds, i.e. KiCAD is > sufficient and a hardware design becomes ready, it still needs to be > produced - and here troubles start, from buying the parts, making PCBs > etc. running up the whole stack to asembling the whole device and > testing it. This cannot be done as open source effort with volunteers. > Here real money is involved - a lot of real money. And this needs to be > done several times, for prototypes, small A-series, probably a B-series > and then final devices. > But you should know better than me about this process (at least by now). > > What are the plans or ideas to enable later on production? > Pleas eget me right, I would love to see such a project succeed and > maybe even contribute to it but I really cannot imagine any possibility > how such a hardware production should work in the end without a big > sponsor in the background.
It was many years since I did any serious electronics work, but from my uninformed viewpoint this seems to be workable because: - The case is not changed and can be reused - no parts are changed so existing inventory at OM can be used for prototyping I dont know what making a PCB and populating it costs these days, but if it costs a couple of hundred euros per populated board, I would sponsor at least one out of my personal curiosity. I used to be good at electronics assembly, maybe I could even put it together myself if I find a SMD oven etc. > Cheers > nils faerber -- Joakim Verona _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community