The rise of Open Source Hardware

Last week, I attended a speech by Chris Anderson, author of the the Long Tail, and more recently, of Free. In his spare time, he’s also the Editor of Wired.

The speech was not about, however, Wired, or Free, or Long Tails – he was talking all about Open Source Hardware, which is this astoundingly interesting trend which is doing the same for atoms as the previous digital version did for software.

His point was just as the economic barriers to creating digital products have dropped to practically nothing, the barriers – economic mainly – to doing real atoms are dropping to nothing as well.

He started out by explaining how, over the course of the last few years, he’d created a group of enthusiasts who build unmanned aerial vehicles, complete with sensors, GPS, and every other thing that a typical military version has. This group now produces components for others to make UAVs, and they’re in constant evolution. The current generation, apparently, is very sophisticated.

Everyone contributed their time and expertise for nothing, including the world’s pre-eminent expert on model plane GPS, who apparently (according to Chris) dropped out of high school and then proceeded to get a pH.d level education using little more than Google.

All the tools they use are open source, including the printed circuit board layout software, the CAD, and simulators they use before starting to make real hardware.

Then, came the interesting part, and it was about turning all these designs into real atoms.

As it happens, its simple these days, apparently, to manufacture practically anything. For example, there’s the MakerBot (pictured) which is a kit you can build (also open source!) that can extrude anything in plastic, supposing you give it a design.

Chris talked about how he and his kids dreamed up some new device over the holidays to do something-or-other, and how they just modelled the whole thing in three-d, and then hit print. Then he explained how his kinds just assumed that being able to print out any object was quite a normal thing, and they were already being frustrated with the limitations of plastic extrusion.

I checked MakerBot Industries, the group who’ve been working in this machine, and the kit is only $900 USD. That’s a pretty amazing price for a device that can make, well, almost anything.

The discussion then moved on to more active components, and how simple it is just to upload electronics designs to firms that could do small, one off runs of boards and components. For practically no money. We’re talking dollars per unit here.

Even at the manufacturing stage, things are changing. Apparently, there are now sites in China where you can upload your designs (which you’ve prototyped and made work, obviously, using things like MakerBot and the other tools) and they’ll give you, 24 hours a day, an immediate price to manufacture a set quantity of product in a certain time frame. In fact, the sites he showed me enabled Chinese manufacturers to bid against each other for the work.

If anyone is interested, I’ve got the list of the sites, but as am on a plane right now, can’t list them off the top of my head.

You can see where this is going.

With the barriers to entry for companies making new physical products falling, everything becomes about talent and innovation, rather than control of industrial age assets such as finance and manufacturing capacity. This is a world shift we’ve already seen in digital products, obviously. Now we have it for physical ones as well.