Keynote Speaker- Sophi Kravitz
Topic: From Basement to Graduation: How Open Hardware Grew Up
This will be a retrospective discussing making hardware in the print
magazine days to the cyberpunk future.
About the Keynote Speaker-
Sophi Kravitz is equal parts electronics engineer, playground ride designer, and artist. She works as the Director of Product at Supplyframe where she builds partnerships that bring the hardware community closer together. Recently, she put together short videos about the Badgelife phenomenon and Hardware Security. Her next project is a video on chip counterfeiting. As a main instigator of the Hackaday Superconference, she also champions many initiatives around gender equality and works behind the scenes on Hackaday.io. Her first conference talk was at OHS 2013, and she has attended all but one of the summits since.
Speaker: Javier Serrano
Topic :Open Source Hardware at CERN: the first ten years
In 2009, the first version of the Open Hardware Repository (ohwr.org) went live. It was our first step to foster collaboration among scientific laboratories in the domain of hardware development. We then worked on various other fronts, including the drafting of the CERN Open Hardware Licence, working with companies on new business models and joining the KiCad community to develop with them a Free and Open Source PCB design tool which could compete with proprietary alternatives in terms of features and quality. In this talk, I would like to tell you a bit more about this story and focus on two main subjects for the near future: the latest developments on the licensing front, with the imminent publication of CERN OHL v2, and the importance of FOSS tools for PCB design if we are to efficiently share hardware designs.
About the Speaker- Javier is an electronics engineer and a physicist leading the Hardware and Timing section in CERN’s Accelerator Controls Group. He is the initiator of the Open Hardware Repository (ohwr.org) and co-author of the CERN Open Hardware Licence. At CERN, he specialises in timing
systems, and he leads the White Rabbit project, an extension of
IEEE-1588 which allows sub-nanosecond synchronisation in highly-distributed controls and data acquisition systems. He also enjoys outreach activities such as guiding visitors at CERN, teaching groups of students or telling others about Open (Science | Data | Access | Software | Hardware).
Speaker: Jeric Bautista
Topic: 3D Printing with Reclaimed Plastic: Collaboration and Development in Accessible and Sustainable Large Scale Additive Manufacturing
This talk will share progress on our open hardware project, which is our first entry in a novel product ecosystem in the industrial 3D printing space – specifically, one that utilizes reclaimed plastics to 3D print the feedstock in pellet or granulate form. A large part of the presentation will include our experiences of open collaboration with the Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology (MOST) Lab, our own Kickstarter beta testers, Puerto Rican government, and Habitat for Humanity, among others, and how it has been a key factor of our progress to date. Next will be updates on internal research findings, including findings on plastic granulation and the extrusion process for our product. Finally, next steps will be shared as well as a call to action for attendees to consider open hardware initiatives that benefit both people and planet.
About the Speaker: Jeric Bautista is an engineer and interdisciplinary designer, holding a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering & Design, Innovation, and Society from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His interest in product development led to a passion for additive manufacturing, and Jeric now develops large-format 3D printing solutions as an Additive Manufacturing and Product Engineer for re:3D. Apart from 3D printing and product development, Jeric is also interested in how design tools and methodologies can apply to everyday life. When out of the office, Jeric spends time enjoying the outdoors and staying active within Houston’s creative community.
Speaker: Junichi Akita
Topic: Impact of NDA-Free & Open Source on LSI Design & Fabrication
Designing LSI chips is one of the most powerful tools to realize idea on hardware. When we start designing LSIs, we need to engage NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with semiconductor manufacturers, since the design rules are their top-secret information. NDA prevents us to make the designed circuits open, thus we can’t share them with other designers. The advances in LSI technologies based on Moore’s Law have achieved not only the advances of LSI functionalities, but also level up of LSIs fabricated by the matured, old-fashioned fabrication technologies. Now, we can use the old-fashioned technologies to meet the certain, advanced area in the hardware requirements. We often don’t need NDA for the old-fashioned technologies, since they are based on well-known technologies. In this talk, the open-source, NDA-free LSI design rule is discussed, as well as our trials on LSI design with open source tools by wide variety of contributors and interests.
About the Speaker: Junichi is currently a professor at Kanazawa University, Japan. He has received Ph.D from University of Tokyo in 1998 and worked for Kanazawa University from 1998 to 2000 and 2004 to present. His research topics are in the integrated circuits, especially on functional CMOS image sensor, and their applications on human-computer-interaction. He is also researching the integrated circuits as a tools for Makers in
terms of Open Source Hardware.
Speaker: Michael Bretti
Topic: A New and Radical Open Source Initiative Towards the Development of Advanced Electric Propulsion for Space
The author proposes and is currently leading a unique and radically different approach towards electric space propulsion focusing on low-cost, simplified, fully open-source systems. These efforts represent the first and currently only fully open-source, independent, maker-based initiative towards the development and advancement of electric propulsion for small satellites. The goals of these efforts are to open source all types of electric propulsion technologies, as well as testing infrastructure for their development, and provide unprecedented access and resources by showing other enthusiasts how advanced electric propulsion can be designed, developed, and tested using an open source approach on a limited budget with restricted resources and technology at home. With such an open source take on a historically closed field, normally prohibitively costly and advanced technologies can be approached and further developed at the hobbyist level, and provide unique collaborative opportunities to advance the field in a way that cannot be done through normal academic or industry means.
Speaker: Sean Montgomery
Topic: Internal Context, Open Source Hardware and Democratizing the Future of Augmented Cognition
Electrical and chemical signals are constantly traveling throughout our brains and bodies, carrying sensations, thoughts, emotions and our reactions to the world around us. Studying these signals and how they are altered by external stimuli and internal contexts gives us a window into ourselves and how we can enhance our health, well-being and capabilities in the 21st century. My lab has been working for the past 2 years on a wearable open-source sensor for capturing emotional, physiological, and movement data. I’ll discuss how a low-cost sensor can help democratize Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) research, create more dialog between artistic and scientific inquiry, bring BCI research into classrooms at a younger age and create a multiplier toward understanding human cognition. I’ll also discuss the value of having open source tools for scientific research and creating a future in which our internal context combined with artificial intelligence play a central role in augmenting human cognition.
Speaker: Amanda Wozniak
Topic: All Good Things Scale
This talk is about how All Good Things Scale (TM). There are a very specific set of things needed in the recipe to engineer at scale which are required to build unstoppable momentum. This talk will cover the (sometimes small) things I see happening in Open Source Hardware that will only help the movement and its contributors do more, bigger, and greater things. I will list what I’d love to see more of! This talk is based on my career experience growing engineering teams and doing product development in my previous roles, my stint as a works-for-beer hacker project consultant in the Open Hardware space, and my love of all things NASA, IBM, and Bell Laboratories.
About the speaker: Amanda (w0z) Wozniak is a Boston-based electrical engineer who’s notable achievements include: hardware designer for the DEFCON 17 and 18 Ninja Badges (#BadgeLife), three time speaker at the OHS, and most-featured guest on Adafruit’s “Ask An Engineer.” She is currently a Principal Systems Engineer at Amazon Robotics, and this talk is completely unrelated to robotics, logistics, the cloud, or anything else in the domain of her current employer.
Speaker: Patrícia Alves Oliveira
Topic: YOLO, a social robot for creativity
YOLO is a robot that was designed, developed, and fabricated to develop creativity during play. It is meant to be used by children as a character during storytelling, provoking new storylines that would not emerge otherwise. During this talk, we will detail the design process and fabrication of YOLO. Experimental studies with this robot showed YOLO is a tool that serves to increase original ideas during the creative process of storytelling. YOLO is an open-source robot, enabling researchers and communities to enjoy the fabrication of a robot that can increase creative thinking.
Speaker: Robert Ryan- Silva
Topic: How Hardware Learns: Five Years in the Life of an Open Source Flood Warning Design
The DAI Maker Lab builds hardware and capacities to build hardware in support of foreign aid projects in the developing world. Their most widely adopted design is an open source flood early warning device best known by the Cambodian name Tepmachcha. Like many hardware designs that are not locked in by mass manufacturing, Tepmachcha has changed over time as deployment reveals flaws and contributors make improvements. Unlike many designs, it has had to adapt to idiosyncratic operating environments in Honduras, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal. These adjustments will be both familiar and strange to the OSH community, and reflect learnings about the process and need for hyperlocal design in all manner of contexts.
About the Speaker: Rob Ryan-Silva is an aid worker with more than 25 years of experience implementing capacity building projects in developing countries. He is currently the Director of the DAI Maker Lab, which uses emerging tools and approaches to build hardware and capacities to build hardware in support of international development projects.
Speaker: Lorena Ramírez-López
Topic: I’m giving it all she’s got: Troubleshooting with obsolete hardware in archives and museums
As archivists and conservators, we are always trying to make do with what we have available; we adhere to and aim for the highest attainable levels of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance and best digital preservation standards in the face of limited financial, staff, and equipment resources. The workflows and digitization stations we develop are curated to media formats, including analog media such as u-matic, VHS, and DAT. We have been able to develop open source software to help with the digitization and migration process of these formats, but we are facing the problem that these playback decks have become obsolete. Even the contemporary hardware of our workflows have been discontinued. This talk presents a general list of the types of equipment we require in our work and how we troubleshoot issues of obsolescence.
Speakers: Christopher Neidi, Kristin Ellis, Matt Parker
Topic: Violet: Introducing the world’s first open source hardware Direct Air Carbon Capture (DACC) machine
The the most recent integrated assessment models (IAMs) informing the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) current forecasts and policy recommendations make clear that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of hundreds of billions of tons by the end of the century will be necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 C in that time frame. As recognition of this fact has become more pervasive Direct Air Capture (DAC), a sorbent-based technology that chemically absorbs CO2 from the ambient air, has gained greater attention as a promising CDR application.
However, significant cost, energy conversion and performance barriers must be overcome if DAC is to play an important role in achieving necessary rates of carbon removal. This discussion will focus on a new effort underway to accelerate technical innovation and breakthroughs in the DAC domain through an open source hardware approach. The presenters will describe the motivations behind and status of an ongoing collaboration between NYU faculty, grassroots DAC advocates and an engineering team at the University of Zhejiang in China to open license and certify a miniaturized DAC machine with the goal of facilitating voluntary global collaborative R&D projects focused on solving leading problems limiting DAC’s advancement and deployment. A prototype of the miniatured unit to be licensed will be presented.
About the Speakers:
Christopher Neidl is an OpenAir co-founder, and a career renewable energy professional with extensive local and international experience in policy advocacy and organizing, business development, research and writing, and teaching. A native Upstater and long-time Brooklynite, Chris now lives in a forest in Costa Rica.
Kristin Ellis is a biologist, community builder, open science enthusiast, concerned citizen of Earth (currently based in NYC), and core member of the OpenAir community. As a current Entrepreneur In Residence at Carbon 180 she is leveraging her wide- ranging expertise to investigate solutions for carbon removal at the intersection of synthetic biology, carbontech, and more.
Matt Parker is a game designer, new media artist and professor at the NYU Game Center. He is one of the co-founders of OpenAir. His work has been displayed at the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Academy of Music, SIGGRAPH Asia, Princeton University, the NY Hall of Science, Museum of the Moving Image, and many other venues. As an artist, his work focuses on combining the physical and digital
worlds.
Speaker: Libi Rose Striegl
Topic: Why We Share: Open Source, Nostalgia, and Play
Using open source projects to enable modern use of retro-tech is a foundational part of my art practice. Open source practices are a central part of my teaching. This forms a base for art and teaching around technology that is empowering and joyful while still coming from a place of critical learning.
Panel Discussion
Topic: A decade backward and a decade forward
Moderator
Ayah Bdeir
Ayah Bdeir invented littleBits, the electronic building block that has transformed education through invention and play. Bdeir is an engineer, interactive artist and one of the early leaders of the open hardware movement. Her career has centered on making education and innovation more accessible to people around the world. In 2011, Bdeir founded littleBits Electronics Inc, and ran it as CEO for 8 years until it was acquired by Edtech company Sphero in 2019. During her tenure, littleBits was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art into the permanent collection, sold millions of units, won over 150 awards in education, tech and play, and led partnerships with Disney, Pearson and the New York Department of Education. Bdeir is an alumna of the MIT Media Lab, a TED Senior fellow, and her TED talk has over 1 million views. Bdeir’s work to get more girls into STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Math) has been featured on 60 Minutes, the World Bank, and the White House. Bdeir has been named one of 100 Most Influential women by the BBC, Popular Mechanics 25 Makers Who Are Reinventing the American Dream, Inc. Magazine Top 100 Female Founders, and MIT Technology Review’s list of 35 Innovators Under 35.
Panelists
Lenore M. Edman
Lenore Edman is a co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and likes to play at the intersections of food, electronics, papercraft, engineering and art. She enjoys retrotechnology projects with an educational spin and works to enable inclusivity and learning wherever she goes. Evil Mad Scientist has been creating Open Source Hardware projects since 2007.
Christina Cyr
Christina Cyr is the Founder and CEO of dTOOR & The Cyrcle Phone. She has degrees in biochemistry and physics, a master’s in engineering, and a life-long passion for electronics. Her work history includes being a test engineer for nuclear submarines, a research associate for clinical trials for AIDS medicines in Los Angeles, a Japanese software engineer for Microsoft and NEC, and a biochemist filing patents while in Tokyo for Fuji Electric. She is likely the only woman in the world to own a mobile phone company and is an active advocate for inclusive innovation and diversity in the hardware community.