More than 135 open hardware devices flashable with your own firmware

Wow, the UX kind of sucks. I just wanted to browse the devices - no way to do that, only option is an 'ai' search. Ok, I type in "Show All Devices" and it canoodles for about 30 seconds (great use of compute resources) only to apparently come up with the phrase "Browse all devices available in the directory without specific project-based filters." that it then seems to feed into the actual search tool... which then shows no results.

Two thoughts - (1) is your device list some state secret that you have to hide behind a search functionality? Because it would be nice to be able to browse through it without needing to engage in some sort of 'search'. (2) can you provide another option besides an ai search that is so intelligent that it has superseded the ability to do wildcard searches?

Edit: same feedback, but for the projects section as well.

Sorry not sorry - ai;dr;

Based on the title, I like the idea. It would be cool if manufacturers are more deliverable with their releases of firmware and developer tools. Like... if you're selling refurbished versions of a product, it makes sense that it's internals and firmware are open source.

Looks good, but it'll probably take a while until it's anywhere close to the coverage of existing repositories:

https://templates.blakadder.com/ has almost 3,000 devices flashable onto Tasmota firmware.

For older Tuya devices there's https://github.com/tuya-cloudcutter/tuya-cloudcutter

OpenBeken https://github.com/openshwprojects/OpenBK7231T_App covers 800 of the newer generation Tuya devices.

And there's a large community adapting ESP32 devices onto https://esphome.io/

Not commenting on the content itself (others have done it better) but anybody getting tired of seeing the same vibe coded websites over and over again?

Feels weird to advertise a microcontroller dev board this way. But the other stuff is cool

The link was posted by project's author so probably should have been Show HN.

Feels more like AI slop list of "a bunch of hardware that you can buy from hobbyist electronic stores" which has no idea what it wants to be, shiny on surface but deeper you look less sense it makes. Not surprised, the company who made it (likely single person) describes itself as "We're crafting interesting tools to speed up software development using Artificial Intelligence."

Good chunk of that stuff is not open hardware by any definition -> neither the hardware design being open nor the firmware not even community written firmware for proprietary hardware.

If you ignore the poor description of the site is the parametric search at least good? The values in parameter dropdowns seem to be filled based on currently displayed items, that might be fine for narrowing down once you already made a search but for initial search it means you get random subset of available values. The fact that whole thing is non-categorized, random mix of mismatched type of hardware doesn't make the parametric search better. Good parametric search needs well curated and structured database of descriptions made by people who understand corresponding product category, otherwise it's garbage in garbage out.

Having to wait half a minute while AI is reticulating splines even when you used quite specific keywords isn't a good search experience either.

So if it's not a good list of open hardware, not a good list of hardware you can flash open firmware, not a good search for electronic components what is it good for? Only value I see is as a fuzzy set of links and ~~tags~~ for exploring a subset of related hardware topics.

Edit: not tags those are broken. #tags return error, other tags(uses cases) and other other tags(compatible firmware) in many cases returns only 1-2 results which doesn't even include the item where you clicked on tag even though there are a lot more items using it.

What a horrible implementation of AI.

AI slop. Most of the things on this list are not open hardware, and some of the items are completely proprietary. For example, the SLAMTEC RPLiDAR A1 [1]. This part doesn't even have user-upgradeable firmware.

[1] https://openhardware.directory/devices/slamtec-rplidar-a1

Please add the Sensor Watch to the list. It's an amazing project which created an open source replacement PCB and and even a custom LCD for the legendary Casio F-91W. Fully customizable open source firmware. It's got a temperature sensor which makes it a world class temperature compensated quartz watch.

I've contributed some work to it. Improved the pulsometer so it could also be used as an asthmometer which I really needed. Also improved the TOTP auth apps a bit. I was even one of the maintainers for a while.

It's an awesome project to hack on. Lots of nice people in the community. Highly recommended.

How many of these are something that a normal consumer would buy, e.g. not a dev board that you can obviously flash your own code onto? I was sort of hoping for a list of things like "spotify car thing", "facebook portal" (I know neither of those are flashable yet, they've just been on my mind) and them maybe a list of projects for them or a link to a wiki page or something

Well I fell down an RGB keyboard rabbit hole there. At first I thought I wouldn't find something compelling in this list but it only took me to the second scroll to get drawn in. The end result was a customizable keyboard from Canada.

Can I give it a link to my weird (but open) hardware?

The name is closely deceptive to sound like open-source hardware

There are another ~3k devices on the OpenWRT table of hardware that would fall into this category: https://toh.openwrt.org/

All of your sensors are lies

I wonder how this compares to the alternatives mentioned in the thread.

Also, prices for everything is 1.5 - 2.5X.

Having used only various ESP and RPi types, I found the article informative and the comments moreso. AI slop or not, a list is a good place to start.

> more than 135

136?

more often than not, you could just buy the same new CPU on the open market and swap it in. It bypasses secure boot, etc.

What about penalty points for AI slop ?

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