Skip to Main Content
Talk Intermediate

Build a hardware product with FOSS tools

Rejected
Session Description

Learning by building something is the best way to learn. One of the main reasons for hardware being hard is that the tools that are most commonly used are out of reach for someone who is just starting out. It could be SolidWorks, Altium, Ansys, Keil/IAR, and many more.


So how do you learn by building?! FOSS of course!


In this talk, we are going to go through the process of building a hardware product by using only FOSS tools.


  1. KiCad for PCB vs Altium/Eagle
  2. FreeCAD/OpenSCAD for 3D vs Solidworks
  3. GCC vs Keil/IAR
  4. OpenFOAM vs Ansys
  5. Zephyr/ESP IDF vs Closed source SDKs
  6. Blender/Penpot vs Adobe suite

and more!


We will look at the pitfalls, caveats, and mishaps that can happen when you use FOSS tools - but also talk about the community, openness and the freedom of this approach.

Session Categories

FOSS

Speakers

Anuj Deshpande Engineer

I am Anuj and I have been working in the field of embedded development for a little more than a decade. I have been fortunate enough to work on some amazing hardware projects - including ones that were crowdfunded, or featured on Hackaday, or were even sold as consumer products by big brands.


FOSS has played a big role in my career, as one of my early work experiences was a GSoC internship at Beagleboard.org. I have luckily gotten a chance to make open-source contributions as part of all my jobs since then, and it's been a very fulfilling career so far :)


  1. You can find my social links at https://anujdeshpande.com/
  2. Links to my previous talks and sessions can be found in my CV [PDF] https://anujdeshpande.com/Resume_Anuj_Deshpande.pdf
Anuj Deshpande

Reviews

This proposal is giving a serious competition to another talk which explained building hardware with FOSS tools. Going to evaluate both of them in 2nd round.
Reviewer #1 Approved
Reviewer #2 Approved