Used open hardware

In this post, I decided to write about open devices and gadgets I am using or tracking. This is not a completely open hardware, since there are still proprietary parts. But it is much more configurable and customizable than devices in general. The list might be helpful to find utilities for experiments or complex systems construction.

  1. Fairphone - a modular smartphone with an Android system. It is possible to replace the parts of smartphone or add the ones that are self-manufactured according to the particular protocols.

  2. Steam Deck - a game console with Steam OS (Linux-based), keyboard and mouse emulators, and Proton library to play Windows-based video games. The software is not completely open because of system drivers and certain proprietary parts. Can be transformed to desktop PC using Deck station or USB-C hub together with a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse.

  3. Pine devices - (never used, keep in list to track open hardware) a list of devices, including smartphone PinePhone and notebook PineBook, that use open source firmware or certain Linux systems. The systems allow accessing to the most of the hardware features. However, there is only unofficial Android support for PinePhone, and PineBook GPU does not have Nvidia and AMD graphics power and possibilities.

  4. Flipper Zero - a gadget with an open source firmware to hack get access to radio spectrum waves, wireless control access systems, infrared ports and some other functionality.

Back