N6GN Open Source Hardware Pages

(These pages may change frequently so be sure to refresh your browser on subsequent visits)

What these pages are and aren't
This is a page of links to some designs that can be home-constructed as simple, relatively low-cost kits. For many of these no soldering is required and only simple final assembly of a printed circuit board into an enclosure using a screw driver is necessary. Unless marked otherwise, all of these designs have been built, tested and verified. PCBs and 3D prints have been completely fabricated and assembled, received-ready-to-test-and-use in the US. Everything necessary to build up this hardware is freely available in the Open Source Hardware files provided.

THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT, NOT A STORE I am not in business to earn money ! Neither do I provide warranty or responsibility for the results. Builders are on their own. If the results aren't satisfactory, don't suit particular needs or wants, this is Open Source, change it to be what you want and build it that way.

My primary motivation is to create 'products' which further amateur radio contributions to science including ionospheric studies, improved station performance and general understanding and advancement of the hobby in areas which have as yet not been well appreciated. Doing this across a variety of devices and areas of study is more than a full-time job. While I try to help others make good use of my creations I do not have interest nor resources to also market, sell, support and warranty them. Although volume production can have a major impact on end product cost and becomes a factor in achieving these goals, supporting larger more economical manufacture, testing, customer support, warranty for a number of different "interesting" products is well beyond my resources.

To date this has been, and still is, an experiment to find a way to provide "Open Source Hardware" (OSHW) in a sustainable manner. After a year of trial I have discovered it is not practical for me to try to provide design as well as 'customer support': documentation, packaging, shipping and 'warranty' of these devices. Giving them away and relying on donations removed some of these difficulties, but the expense in terms of time has proved too great. Shipping & VAT for a low cost PCB can easily exceed its value by 5-10X. I now believe that a successful OSHW model needs to be accomplished through local final assembly of physical hardware. Towards this end I have created these "kits of instruction" so that all HW pieces, including ready-to-use printed circuit boards, can be quickly and easily obtained by an end user/constructor. Using descriptions and instructions provided in this documentation, along with the binary and source files, the end user can put together finished HW entirely by him/herself. I receive no payment and I need not be involved in any way.

To create one of these assembled kits, using the information and instructions on these pages the user gathers all the necessary HW and SW components. Typically this involves using the provided:

Manufacturing "binary" files - packages of Gerber, BOM and placement files. These are complete 'machine readable files' that contain the information necessary to specify and fabricate a finished PCB produced by JLCPCB. HowToJLCPCB desthesecribes how to use to obtain an assembled PCB, shipped to one's QTH. This step is probably a new one for many and is a major way this OSHW experiment is different from previous ham construction projects.
FW and SW files - For devices that have a controller, a SW binary is uploaded and final test performed. The associated Source files allow modification of function in traditional Open Source Software manner.
Assembly&Test files & information - If included, notes, hints or detail found to be useful for kit construction. These may be in an associated document.
(optional) Source files - For most designs there are also files to allow design examination, modification and generation of new binary files for HW, FW and 3Dprintable creation. As for open source software case, this provides a way for the user or user community to make modifications and improvements in a design and freely share them back.

Each of these file groups is normally provided from a web page in a single .zip file that can be downloaded by clicking on it in the Material List.

These Open Source designs can be examined and modified by using an appropriate application - KiCad for PCB files, FreeCAD for 3D printed ones, or Android IDE for frmware. For quick and easy direct viewing of a PCB schematic or board design, download the Source file from its Material List, unzip/extract it and drop the .sch or .pcb file inside onto KiCanvas running in a web browser. Bare PCB layers can be examined by downloading the Gerber files from the Production Kit and viewing them with a Gerber viewer.

To create a finished and working kit, PCB or 3D printing files can be placed on JLCPCB's web page and ordered, any additional parts such as enclosures are ordered from a provider as shown in the material list, if applicable. If present in the design, a CPU is programmed and lastly all these are put together into a finished, assembled and working product by the user often not requiring any soldering at all.

In Step 1 above, it is also possible to order only a bare PCB with no components. This is an especially good option for designs having very few parts that can be easily placed and either re-flow or hand soldered at home. Doing this speeds the process and avoids the one-time assembly, setup and shipping costs which can easily be much larger than the assembled board cost. See HowToRawPCB if this method is desired.

Minimum build quantity is 5 for bare PCBs and 2 for assembled/complete PCBs.

A prospective builder may decide which of these methods is preferable by comparing final cost and effort for each of them before ordering. One time setup and engineering charges are often more than the cost of a few PCBs so making larger quantities for more than a single local end user may make sense.

This is Open Source so if desired the user may also modify any of these files to best suit desires and needs. PCB component values/part#'s may be directly changed at order time from JLCPCB without requiring any file modifications.

If you have suggestions for ways to correct or improve these instructions please contact me so that I may change them. If you build up one of these kits let me know how it went. If you have proven design improvements or new Open Source Hardware designs, please share them with everyone. I'd be glad to hear from anyone building any of these as it will give me an idea of interest and future products.

Glenn n6gn

Fort Collins, CO

updated October 2024