This document discusses open source hardware made in Bulgaria by OLIMEX Ltd, a company with over 22 years of experience in hardware and electronic design. It provides an overview of OLIMEX's open source hardware products, including Linux computers, Arduino-compatible platforms, and sensor extension boards. Motivations for creating open source hardware include getting more feedback to build better products, finding experts to help solve problems, benefiting from user contributions, educating the community, and allowing for customization and innovation. Key differences between open source hardware and software are the costs of prototyping, manufacturing minimums, and risks of others copying designs without contributing. OLIMEX has found success releasing exclusively open source hardware designs.

1. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
OpenFest 2013

2. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
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OLIMEX Ltd – 22+ years of experience with
Hardware and Electronic Design
600+ products, half of them with OSHW license

3. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
WHAT IS OSHW?
Open source hardware is hardware whose design
is made publicly available so that anyone can study,
modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or
hardware based on that design.

4. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- to build better products;
Presenting your design to others lets you get
more feedback about your work. Many people
can look, discuss, and suggest improvements

5. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
“By going public, we can find experts to solve
problems we cannot,” said Javier Serrano, an
accelerator engineer at CERN.

6. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- open-source products allow original designers
and manufacturers to benefit from their
customers’ enthusiasm and effectively get cheap
design work, testing and consultation for free.

7. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- share knowledge, educate community. There is
educational value in seeing how a design really
works. Open-source design makes people more
aware and appreciative of how things work,
which is good for society.

8. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- acceleration of the knowledge
„Standing on the shoulders of giants“

9. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- you have not only customers, but also
collaborators

10. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- allow casual People to innovate - not to wait
tech companies to create something new

11. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- all else being equal, having access to the
source documents only gives the user more
options. Your product will have better value in the
customer's eye. People like knowing how things
work and how some designer chose to do
something

12. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- making a product open-source puts pressure
on the price to be low: if someone starts
charging too much for it, others can step in and
make it available cheaper.

13. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- open-source products give users confidence
that a design will be available even if the original
manufacturer stopped production. Customers
counting on continued availability aren’t as
hindered as if the product is closed-source.

14. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Motivation to do OSHW:
- open-source products enable more
customization and therefore use of a design. If
the design were public, you might find someone
that can do the modification for you for less.

15. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Differences between OSHW / FOSS:
- Software can be made with time. Hardware
needs time and money ;)

16. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Differences between OSHW / FOSS:
- compatibility of design tools, unlike editing
source code in the software world. Different CAD
products, some cost $$$ money, expect fewer
contributions to the development of hardware
designs, compared to those using them.

17. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Differences between OSHW / FOSS:
- OSHW route: build something; put up a lot of
money to build a few; if people like it, scale it up;
raise money, know that you might lose all that
money; think about covering your potential
losses; start a company, maybe get lucky or
maybe not. Setting up a company takes an
infrastructure investment, and Paypal transaction
costs.So the initial cost of the project may be
prohibitive for the little guys.

18. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Differences between OSHW / FOSS:
- Prototype Costs - building hardware takes
revisions. Early revisions usually have things
wrong. In the FOSS software world, you just fix
the code, hit compile again, and the only thing it
really "costs" is your time finding and fixing the
error. In the OSHW hardware world, errors mean
broken, junk PCB's that cost money to make.
And that means wasted money, so be ready for
2, 4, or 6 revisions of hardware before it works!

19. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Differences between OSHW / FOSS:
- The Quantity Doom - PCB production and
components costs depend on volumes. In the
DIY OSHW world, if you are building 1's to 10's
to 25's at a time, you can't build them at a
competitive cost. This also has the side effect
that once you build your product, people who
use a small quantity of it will prefer to buy from
you instead building it themself.

20. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Differences between OSHW / FOSS:
- If the product is popular enough, others will
want to produce it without contributing to the
design, and they might be better at
manufacturing than the original designer.

21. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
OK! Is OSHW after all business friendly?
OLIMEX is releasing exclusively OSHW designs
for the last 5 years and suprisingly in times of
financial crisis and world-wide economy slow
down our company sales rise every year. Why?
Because of OSHW we release better, better
documented, more useful for the end customer
products!

22. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
OLinuXino OSHW Linux Computer evolution:
- iMX233 454Mhz, 64MB 05' 2012
- A13 1GHz, 512MB, VGA, 07' 2012
- A10S 1GHz, 512MB HDMI, ETH, 11' 2012
- AM3352 1GHz, 512MB, 11' 2013
- A20 2x1GHz, 1GB, HDMI, ETH,SATA, 05' 2013
- RK3188 4x1.6Ghz, 1GB RAM, 11' 2013
- A80 8x2Ghz, LittleBig,Octa Core, 05' 2014

23. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
...duino OSHW physical computing platforms:
- OLIMEXINO-328, 32U4, T32U4, 85, NANO
- STM32-MAPLE
- PIC32-PINGUINO
- MSP430-ENERGIA

24. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
UEXT universal extension connector:
- sensors for magnetometery, temperature,
acceleration
- IR, RS232, RS485
- RELAYS, LCD displays
- Zigbee, WIFI, Bluetooth, BLE, 2.4GHz,
868Mhz, 915Mhz

25. Open Source Hardware Made in Bulgaria
Open Fest 2013
© 2013, OLIMEX Ltd
released under CC BY-SA 3.0