OSHWA recently announced a call for Open Hardware Trailblazer Fellows. Thanks to the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, OSHWA is taking a giant step towards expanding open source hardware in academia through the Open Hardware Trailblazer Fellows initiative. The one-year fellowship provides grants to individuals who are leading the way as open source hardware expands into academia. The fellows will document their experience of making open source hardware in academia to create a library of resources for others to follow.
The call was incredibly competitive. We received truly amazing submissions. The fellows were chosen by the program’s mentors and an OSHWA board selection committee.
Congratulations to the Open Hardware Trailblazer Fellows!
The Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) has just announced our Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship. The one year fellowship provides $50,000 or $100,000 grants to individuals who are leading the way as open source hardware expands into academia. The fellows will document their experience of making open source hardware in academia to create a library of resources for others to follow. The RFP is here, and the application form for fellows is here. It is due April 7th.
To support the Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship, OSHWA is recruiting open source hardware professionals and practitioners from both inside and outside of academia with diverse backgrounds to serve on the mentor committee. The committee will review applications, make recommendations on fellowship awards, and advise fellows through their year-long Open Hardware Trailblazers Fellowship. For more details you can see this post. The mentor application is due March 30th.
Tomorrow, Friday, October 15th, Alicia Gibb and Javier Serrano from OSHWA will join Helen Leigh on the CrowdSupply Teardown live stream:
Crowd Supply’s Helen Leigh chats with Alicia Gibb, hardware hacker and open source hardware advocate, and Javier Serrano, who leads a team of electronics designers and Linux kernel developers at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
Join them as they discuss open hardware best practices, open source hardware movements around the world and the importance of open hardware for open science.
Tomorrow at noon Pacific/9pm CEST we are hosting a Teardown session livestream with Alicia Gibb & Javier Serrano.
We will talk about open hardware best practices, what open hardware looks like @CERN + why open hardware is vital for open science. Join us!https://t.co/g73Hf1Cxv0
OSHWA recently sent a response to the 5G Challenge Notice of Inquiry published by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the US. The Notice of Inquiry focuses on the development of an open-source software stack for 5G wireless communication. In our response we highlighted the role that Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) can play in the path from the radio receiver to the 5G software stack and conversely from the software stack to the radio transmitter. FPGAs can cope with very high data rates, for which pure software solutions can be suboptimal.
It is therefore important that FPGA designs are made part of the challenge, and also that these designs be open-source for the same reasons that it makes sense to open-source the software stack. FPGA design is typically done using Hardware Description Languages (HDLs). HDL code is fed to synthesis, place & route and bitstream generation tools. The bitstream file then configures the FPGA, so its logic gates and flip-flops implement the circuit specified in the design. HDL code is sometimes called “gateware” (a reference to the logic gates it targets) to distinguish it from software.
If researchers and developers are going to collaborate on common open-source gateware and software, they would ideally do so using an open hardware platform. This would democratize access, enlarging the talent pool which can contribute to the effort. It would also protect the development against vendor lock-in and save time and effort on porting to different imperfectly-compatible platforms.
Finally, this could be an opportunity to improve the Free and Open Source Software tools for gateware design. There are thriving communities of open-source software-defined radio and FPGA tool developers, and we believe including them in this challenge and having hardware and gateware in the picture will result in a better 5G for everyone.
While supplies last, sign up as a new OSHWA member at the General Membership level or higher and get a 2021 goodie bag! We have 15 partial bags left over from the summit that contain about 90% of the items. You must have an address in the U.S. for shipping and customs. See our membership level options and enter your shipping address at checkout.
OSH Park 