Open Hardware Summit 2025 was recently held in Edinburgh, Scotland and brought together a mix of talented engineers, designers, researchers, and artists, with each offering a unique perspective on what open hardware can become. From textile hacking and biomaterials to satellite systems and solar-powered insect traps, the talks covered a wide range of disciplines and innovative techniques, all of which provided a commitment to openness, accessibility, and experimentation.
All Yarns Are Beautiful
(📷: AYAB via EvilMadScientist)
First speaker Carson Holgate (0:27:58) was on hand to highlight her All Yarns Are Beautiful (AYAB) project that retrofits old Brother knitting machines with computer hardware. Her open source AYAB replaces the original electronics in those knitting machines with custom hardware, which provides computer control and pushes their capabilities beyond the original design. The project supports knitting machines from the 1980s and 90s, allowing users to create complex patterns and designs via a computer interface.
Holgate’s AYAB project has turned into a thriving community of electronic knitters, and she has shared her insights into the project’s development and challenges, including supporting non-technical users who may not have knitting experience.
RepMat Materials Library
(📷: Alessia Romani via GitHub))
Alessia Romani, the next speaker (0:43:44), is a design researcher and materials engineer specializing in sustainable digital fabrication and circular economy practices. She is the creator of RepMat (REPlicating MATerials Library), an open source, OSHWA-certified materials library designed to democratize access to sustainable materials and fabrication knowledge, particularly in the realm of 3D printing.
RepMat acts as both a physical and digital repository, with the former acting as tangible samples, including flat materials, cut-offs, and 3D-printed objects, all of which are crafted from recycled plastics and biomass waste. The virtual library provides detailed metadata, technical documentation, and fabrication guidelines, all structured to support replication and adaptation by makers, educators, and researchers.
Mothbox 4.5
(📷: Digital Naturalism Laboratories)
Mothbox 4.5, developed by Andy Quitmeyer (0:59:45) and a team from Digital Naturalism Laboratories (Dinalab), was on hand to highlight its compact, open source, AI-powered insect monitoring platform designed for remote deployment. The platform identifies insects autonomously using a Raspberry Pi 5 (or Pi 4 + PiJuice), Arducam 64MP camera, Talentcell battery, and custom Mothbeam PCBs with UV/visible light attractors. Housed in a Plano waterproof case with laser-cut acrylic arms, it includes a relay board for controlling lights and peripherals.
The Mothbox can be programmed for a set schedule. When that schedule is tripped, the device powers on activates its lights to attract insects, captures images, and processes them using YOLOv8 for cropping and a custom version of BioCLIP for classification. The system supports local or cloud data storage. Users can also take advantage of several interchangeable visual targets to suit different field needs and environments, and can even be powered by solar panels, complete with weatherproof charging ports.
FAIR Battery Project
(📷: Fair Battery Project via YouTube))
Sanli Faez detailed the Building a FAIR Battery project(1:47:06), which stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reproducible, and is designed to democratize energy storage through transparent, locally adaptable battery designs. The open-hardware flow battery platform prioritizes global usability by using low-cost, locally sourced materials, provides complete open source documents (schematics, software, guides), and builds community-inspired educational insight for deployment and maintenance.
The FAIR Battery project acts as a redox-flow battery, where energy is stored in liquid electrolytes, and power scales with the size of the cell area, and the amount of energy stored is based on the reservoir volume. It also takes advantage of cost-effective chemistry like zinc–iodide, which provides dendrite resistance and decent energy density.
Desktop Biofiber Spinning Machine
(📷: The Atlas Institute)
Eldy Lazaro Vasquezhe (2:08:57) from the University of Colorado’s Atlas Institute highlighted her team’s open source Desktop Biofiber Spinning Machine that’s designed to produce bio-based fibers similar in form to those used in 3D printing. It allows users to create yarns from sustainable biomaterials, which are dissolvable and allows users to recover the electrical components and recycle them.
The spinning machine’s design features a 60 mL syringe with heated wrap and nozzles that support bio-ink extrusion, including Luer Lock nozzles and tips, along with Lock-to-M6 3D printer nozzle adapters. It also uses collector assemblies to apply different coatings to the fibers, making it an ideal solution for wearables and other e-textiles.
Kitchen Table Bioreactor
(📷: Gerrit Niezen via YouTube))
Gerrit Niezen (2:28:53) highlighted his work with the Sustainable Protein Production with a Kitchen-Table Bioreactor, which is designed to produce edible protein using just electricity and carbon dioxide. The project’s goal is to make protein production more accessible, reduce reliance on traditional agriculture, and generate alternative food technologies that can be replicated at home.
The bioreactor functions by cultivating hydrogenotrophic bacteria, which can grow by consuming hydrogen and carbon dioxide and converting them into a protein-based biomass. Electricity is used to electrolyze water, producing hydrogen, which feeds the bacteria, and oxygen, which is a byproduct. CO2 is garnered from the air or a simple source like yeast fermentation, which helps the bacteria grow. The bacteria grow in a small, controlled tank (the bioreactor), and their growth is monitored over time. Once mature, the biomass is harvested, dried and ready to eat.
Maintaining KiCad’s Libraries
Kliment Yanev (2:47:59) joined the 2025 Summit to talk about his endeavor to maintain KiCAD libraries and what it takes to keep those libraries accessible. Kliment is a key member of the KiCad library team, which is overseen by lead librarian Carsten Presser. His job entails maintaining official symbols, footprints, and 3D model libraries within KiCad’s central GitLab repositories.
Yanev also reviews and merges community contributions, maintaining quality, consistency, and adherence to KiCad Library Conventions (KLC). He advocates scripting and continuous integration (CI) improvements to reduce manual work, such as automatically generating merge requests and previews for contributor changes. What’s more, Yanev also guides community contributors, helping them adopt better workflows and integrate tools to validate library entries before being submitted.
Building Effective Factory Test Systems with Open Source Hardware
(📷: Great Scott Gadgets)
Guest speaker Martin Ling (4:24:39) detailed the importance of building factory test systems and how using open source hardware, such as Great Scott Gadgets’ Cynthionall-in-one tool, mitigates some of the challenges. “When manufacturing an electronic product, you really need to develop two products: the device you produce and the factory test system for it,” states Ling. “The test system can often be the harder of the two, but is usually a private project, likely put together in a hurry, and rarely open sourced, even for open source products.”
To help with some of those challenges, Ling and his team from Great Scott Gadgets developed Cynthion, which acts as a device for USB testing, debugging, and development and uses FPGA logic to handle USB protocol analysis. The device’s digital hardware can be customized based on user preferences and can act as a USB protocol analyzer, a USB research multi-tool, or a USB development platform, making it an ideal test platform.
How TU Delft Is Turning Shelved Projects Into Open Source Hardware Stars
Jerry de Vos and Santosh Ilamparuthi (4:44:36) from TU Delft were on hand to talk about how rejected patents are used in academia by focusing on open hardware development for social good. The institution’s patent office receives around 100 applications, with only the top five making the cut. However, there are some great ideas in those rejected patents, and the team at TU Delft is working to tap into those patents by creating open hardware resources that encourage knowledge sharing.
One of those is the Schistoscope, a smart, low-cost microscope designed for detecting Schistosoma haematobium eggs, a parasite that causes urinary schistosomiasis – a waterborne parasitic infection. The Schistoscope design takes advantage of a smart imaging platform built around a low-cost Android device, an imaging lens that’s driven by an image recognition and classification algorithm. The platform is used to screen urine, which it does using a smartphone and camera positioned above a plastic sample holder, which is then analyzed by the algorithm.
Social Robots for Student Care
(📷:Farnaz Baksh, Matevz Zorec, Karl Kruusamae)
Farnaz Baksh and Matevz Zorec (5:06:20) presented their open source Robot Study Companion (RSC), which is designed to help students stay organized, motivated, and ready to learn. Their RSC interacts with students via voice, visuals, gestures, and even touch.
The robot was built using off-the-shelf components and features a 3D-printed body, a Raspberry Pi 4, a Google AIY Voice Bonnet, a touchscreen, a speaker, LEDs, and servos. It also integrates natural language processing using OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs) to provide spoken dialogue and provide academic support.
The RSC takes advantage of participatory design workshops to tailor the robot to students’ needs, providing motivation, mental health, and time management. All hardware designs, code, and documentation are released under open source licenses to allow users to build their own RSC.
Quetzal-1 CubeSat
Dan Alvarez highlighted (5:24:09) the Quetzal-1 CubeSat, which is Guatemala’s first satellite and was designed by Alvarez, along with over 100 students, volunteers and engineers from the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala (UVG). The satellite operated for 211 days in orbit, capturing the first visible image of Earth from a Central American satellite and transmitted nearly 85,000 telemetry packets via SatNOGS ground stations before ceasing operations due to a combination of a hung I²C bus and battery-cell failure.
Quetzal-1 was outfitted with an onboard computer, transceiver and antenna, an electrical power system (EPS), attitude determination and control system (ADCS), payload, antenna deployment mechanism (ADM) and more. All of this was made available on the team’s GitHub page for those who would like to build their own CubeSat.
Adventures in Selling Open Hardware
Helen Leigh (6:04:39) joined the OHS talks to provide insight into her Adventures in Selling Open Hardware. Her initiative offers a hands-on, conversational dive into the world of open source hardware.
Leigh explains the importance of interviewing creators, everyone from satellite engineers and FPGA developers to badge-makers and IoT platform teams, and provides insight into the challenges, strategies, and best practices involved in launching, sustaining, and scaling open hardware products.
She also explores practical questions such as licensing, community building, hybrid business models (selling hardware vs. selling services), and design accessibility, making the content invaluable for engineers, academics, and those looking to start businesses, which provides invaluable insight for commercializing open source hardware.
BrailleRap
Saad Chinoy (6:24:36) showcased his BrailleRap embossing printer, which is designed to print braille on paper and other materials easily and as a platform to engage communities and address sustainability challenges. The machine exemplifies those notions as it makes use of a repurposed 3D printer, along with 3D-printed parts, solenoids and stepper motors to emboss different materials.
The BrailleRap project is supported by European open source grants (NGI0) and provides extensive open source documentation, including CAD files, firmware, software bridges, and user guides. This allows makers, engineers, labs, and universities worldwide to build, operate, maintain, and modify BrailleRAP devices to suit their needs.
Developing Low-Cost, Open Source Hardware for Ecosystems Monitoring
Gabriel Kiarie (6:47:38) detailed how he and other DSAIL researchers are developing low-cost, open source hardware for ecosystem monitoring in Africa. According to Kiarie, data collection is essential for providing detailed insight into the health of ecosystems, but traditional methods are no longer up to the task. To that end, Kiarie and fellow researchers are looking at ways to develop open source boards equipped with sensors for efficient data collection.
Kiarie’s flagship project, the DSAIL Bioacoustics System, uses a Raspberry Pi-based acoustic sensor powered by a custom solar battery power board. The system is designed for remote deployment, where it autonomously wakes and records sound using a USB microphone. It saves only segments with bird or ecosystem audio activity, which optimizes storage and energy use. This platform has already accumulated over 100 hours of audio data and forms the basis for machine‑learning-enabled bird call detection and classification.
Printegrated Circuits
Oliver Child (7:08:48) took the opportunity to talk about his Printegrated Circuits, which embeds PCBs and electronics into FFF 3D printed designs. This innovative approach allows him to embed interactive PCB-based electronics directly into FDM 3D prints, which allows capacitive and resistive sensory functions within the printed form.
His technique combines conductive and non-conductive filaments, pauses the printer mid-print for board and electronics placement, and uses custom G-code to inject conductive filament into PCB through-holes, creating mechanically solid and electrically connected hybrid components that look cute to boot.
Turning Your Favorite Sensor Into a Scientific Instrument
(📷:Eli Silver via YouTube)
Eli Silver (7:25:31) talked about how to turn your favorite sensor into a scientific instrument, which focuses on transforming readily available consumer sensors into tools for scientific measurement. He emphasizes that while consumer sensors are often precise and inexpensive, they require additional steps to become reliable scientific instruments.
During his talk, Silver shares how hobbyist sensors, such as those from gaming mice or weather stations, can be transformed into reliable scientific tools via practices like careful calibration, characterization, and attention to user experience. He goes on to highlight real-world open science hardware examples from Harris Lab, including a velocimeter built from an optical mouse sensor and a DIY droplet generator, explaining that with minimal cost and a bit of creativity, readily available sensors can be transformed into reproducible measurement systems.
Using VanSpoof and F**dG3ar to Reduce E-Waste
(📷: Mike Coats via YouTube)
Mike Coats (7:47:53) detailed how his open hardware projects, VanSpoof and FdG3ar**, help prevent VanMoof X3 and S3 e-bikes from becoming e-waste. His project’s goals are to reverse engineer proprietary bike components that are known to fail and make replacement parts readily available.
For example, the VanMoof X3 e-shifter component has been known to fail, leaving riders unable to shift gears, and Coats’ managed to decode the communication between the bike and the e-shifter and designed a successful working prototype that spoofs the original e-shifter. By making these components open source and repairable, Coats is contributing to the “right to repair” movement for VanMoof e-bikes, which would allow owners to extend the life of their bikes and reduce electronic waste.
Commitment to the Bit
(📷: Josh Sucher via YouTube)
The final speaker, Josh Sucher (YouTube Link), was on hand to talk about the importance of preserving and celebrating the enthusiasts, makers, and engineers who revive and maintain vintage computing hardware. In his talk, Sucher highlighted individuals who meticulously restore retro computers, retrofitting them with new components, crafting custom interface add-ons, and keeping obscure platforms alive, whether out of love, curiosity, or cultural preservation over making profits.
Sucher explains that this dedication to old technology gives him an invaluable connection to computing history, educational insight, and design evolution. He argues that these grassroots efforts are essential to a healthy hardware culture, reminding us that “committing to the bit” is not just nostalgia but a meaningful endeavor that preserves technical innovation.
Conclusion
This year’s Summit served as a reminder that open hardware isn’t just about sharing code or schematics; it’s about bringing together a culture of collaboration with innovators, makers, designers and engineers around the world. Whether it’s reimagining medical devices, preserving vintage tech, or spinning protein at the kitchen table, the projects on display pushed boundaries in thoughtful, practical ways. If there’s one thread tying them all together, it’s that innovation doesn’t need permission, just a place to grow.
