An unusual open source question

Offy

I designed a bit of computer hardware that’s called a Refreshable Braille Display, its used by blind people to read the contents of a computer monitor and I would love to make it open source but Im unsure if hardware can be made open source. My design can reduce the price of these displays from anywhere up to €16k down to a few hundred Euros. This would make computers more available to blind users but Im not interested in the commercial side of things at all. I did it following a thesis simply because IBM tried and couldn’t build one, that’s all the interest I ever had in it to be honest. Can hardware be made open source?
Regards,
Offy

oscarBravo

One place to start is this Wikipedia page.

The physical nature of hardware means that it's less straightforward to copy and fork a design than it is with software. It's obviously a much more expensive field for hobbyists to get into, which means that niches are less likely to attract interested parties.

It sounds like an interesting project. Do you have a prototype, or just a design?

Offy

Just the design, the prototype was never build. But to look at the designs you would know it cant but work, simple mechanical engineering thats added to the standard Braille cell. The Braille cells are on the market for over thirty years and are used by all manufactures of traditional displays. IBM though that using one cell and moving it would replace the need for a line of cells and reduce the price accordingly. They dropped it because they couldnt get it working but its really simple to do if you change the technology a bit. Its small enough to fit in a mouse or keyboard and cost of components is less than €50. The cheapest display on the market at the moment is about €2.5k so it could give blind computer users a really cheap display which might allow more blind people access to computers.
Theres a lot of computer hardware thats used by disabled people but the price can be extremely high. If the designs were available to manufactures free of charge provided any additional changes were made also free of charge would manufactures use them?

velocirafter

if you developed it as a thesis would the institution you were studying with not own the rights to it??

Offy

No, the thesis was to design a single Braille cell. When I was doing this I read about IBM's attempt but was not allowed alter the thesis so after college I designed the device and built it around the Braille cells presently on the market. So the college own the rights to the Braille cell I designed but I own the rights to the attachment I designed after college.

adrian.s

MIT have done something like what you are looking for. Details are at [1].


HTH,
A.

[1] MIT Open Source Hardware

Offy

Thanks adrian.s, Ive just sent them an e-mail.

niallb

You might find this interesting reading.
They will have answered many of the same questions as you have.

The Open Prosthetics Project

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.opensparc.net/ - open source multi-core, multithreaded CPU

I'm not at all sure of the legal stuff but I imagine if it could be patented then publish early because it's the first to patent who wins , not the first to invent, and you can't patent something in open literature ??