In this episode of Open Hardware Talks, the founder of the RepRap Project, Dr Adrian Bowyer MBE, sits down to explain how it all came to be. Beginning with a childhood dream and ending with an uplifting perspective on human progress, Dr Bowyer takes us from the past to the present, and onwards to the future, handing out golden nuggets on Darwinism, AI and open source along the way.

Few things have been as groundbreaking for hardware manufacturing as the introduction of open source 3D printing. Nearly two decades after the RepRap project released 3D printing to the world, biologists are experimenting with printed human tissue as a way to solve the global transplant shortage; architects are envisioning what 3D-printed houses on the Moon might look like; and countless authors on HardwareX are using the technology to develop new designs for crisis response, research, healthcare and beyond.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Increased evaporation leads to increased precipitation. Warming at nearly twice the rate of the global average, Asia is increasingly prone to heavy rainfall and flooding. While monitoring river levels can help warn local governments and communities of risks, a majority of the world's rivers remain ungauged.

To scale river level monitoring, researchers in Laos set about developing an affordable, frugal design for an open-source laser gauge capable of withstanding the harsh conditions of the country's inter-tropical rivers.

In this episode, Alain Pierret and Norbert Silvera from IRD, the French Research Institute for Development, explain the challenges that led to the design, the benefits of river monitoring, and why open-source is key to enabling technology transfer. 

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

As tools at the forefront of innovation in medicine and biotechnology, bioreactors are increasingly taking centre stage in research facilities and industrial labs alike. From acting as the fermentation vessels that give us beer to enabling a greener, more sustainable way of treating wastewater, bioreactors have played a key role in ensuring the quality of modern life. Yet, the high cost and low flexibility of bioreactor designs can leave researchers struggling to conduct their desired experiments, ultimately putting the brakes on key research and innovation.

This was the case for Laurens Parret, a PhD student with the Chemical and Biochemical Reactor Engineering and Safety (CREaS) unit at KU Leuven, Belgium. Seeing as the lab's high-cost bioreactors didn't meet the requirements for his work on biological wastewater treatment, Laurens set out to devise his own, the BIO-SPEC system. In this episode, Laurens, together with Kenneth Simoens, Lab Manager at CREaS KU Leuven, gets technical about bioreactors and helps us understand why more and more researchers are embracing DIY solutions to accelerate innovation.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Space is busier than ever before.

In the latest edition of the global space race, private actors have joined the game. But space as the next frontier for businesses comes at a price. As debris in orbit continues to increase and more fossil-fuel-powered rockets are sending celebrities into space, what will happen to our ecosystems on Earth? Should the galaxy really only be in the hands of a few, and if not, what happens if everyone can join in?

In this deep-diving episode of Open Hardware Talks, we go beyond Earth's atmosphere to explore how open source technologies are shaping the space of tomorrow. We're joined by Eleftherios Kosmas from Libre Space Foundation, an Athens-based organisation developing and sharing open source space technology, alongside Pen-Yuan Hsing, who researches and advises on Open Science and Citizen Science, and Dr. Elena Cirkovic, a researcher at the Department of Law at Aarhus University, Denmark, who's exploring the legal side of space usage, maintenance and sustainability. 

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

As the right to repair gained political momentum, it obliged companies to share design files and repair guides with every new device. But what about the right to upcycle older technologies?

With the power of machine learning, computerised microscopes are increasing efficiency and accuracy in scientific research. However, commercially available microscopes often come with a large price tag, rendering them inaccessible to labs or institutes on a budget. Instead, an interdisciplinary team at UC Santa Cruz in California decided to explore what it would take to turn legacy microscopes into modern devices fit for the needs of the 21st-century research lab.

In this episode of HardwareX, Samira Vera and Drew Ehrlich from UC Santa Cruz in California join us to talk about the challenges of microscopy, the promise of machine learning, and how open-source-driven upcycling can benefit research.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

MedTech has an accessibility problem. 

Life-saving medicine, groundbreaking diagnostics technologies and much-needed lab equipment at the hands of profit-driven companies and oligopolies. What are the consequences of betting human health on proprietary markets, and what alternatives can open-source offer?

In this Open Hardware Talks, Lukas Winter (Open Source Imaging Initiative), Joe Knapper (OpenFlexure) and Anthony Di Franco (OpenInsulin) discuss challenges in healthcare accessibility, the benefits of open source approaches, and the potential future impact on medical technology, with examples from their succesful open-source projects - an OS low-field MRI system, an OS microscope and an OS protocol for insulin.

Open Source Imaging Initiative: Access to MRI systems remains highly unequal between regions, countries and the global north-south divide. Millions of people are denied diagnostic healthcare, and crucial research faces constant roadblocks, as scientists struggle to compare results between closed 'black box' systems.

OpenFlexure: Optical microscopes are an essential tool for scientific analysis and the detection of diseases in clinics, yet access to high-performance microscopy is limited in much of the world due to high up-front and maintenance costs and brittle supply chains. 

OpenInsulin: Most of the world's insulin supply currently relies on the profit-driven business model of three companies. As a result, struggling economies remain undersupplied, and, when a drug is pulled from the market, patients are left shuffling to find alternatives, as seen with the removal of Levemir by Novo Nordisk from the US in 2023. 

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

How can we elevate life quality for patients in some of the world's most underserved regions?

Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) is a proven and efficient method for treating chronic wounds. This is particularly useful in low- and middle-income countries, where diseases like leprosy, limited healthcare, low infrastructure and poverty combine to make chronic wounds and commonality. 

Devices for treatment are costly, overly complicated and not built to serve the regions that need them the most. 

Amid frequent power cuts, Dr Suraj Mahajan and Lead Biomedical Engineer Arjan Knulst of the Green Pastures Hospital and Rehabilitation Center (part of International Nepal Fellowship), join HardwareX via connection from Nepal to share the motivation, process and intended impact of WOCA - a fully open-source NPWT device designed in close collaboration with the Delft University of Technology, and with Nepal's citizens in mind.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Open Hardware Talks is back. This series invites interdisciplinary experts and advocates to a roundtable discussion on the most relevant topics in open-source hardware.

Discoverability: How To NOT Reinvent the Wheel.

Open and collaborative development promises to accelerate innovation by allowing individuals and teams to share new ideas, build on top of existing ones and improve designs according to multiple use cases. So, how do you find out what is already out there? And what can make your design easier to discover for the right collaborators?

In this roundtable talk, Victoria Jaqua (Open Source Medical Supplies, Global Distributed Tracking), Robin Vobruba (Open Know-How, Open Source Ecology Germany), and Nathan Parker (Open Know-How, Internet of Production Alliance) sit down to discuss the challenges, potential and possible consequences of making an open-source hardware design more discoverable.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Much like plants can turn carbon into energy, researchers have been striving to scale the potential of photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Promising as the technology may be, little progress has been made to scale its potential. If the net human-caused CO2 reduction target of 45 % from 2010 levels is to be reached by 2030, the science must be shared.

That is the notion that propelled Prof. Dr. Jennifer Strunk and Dr. Nikolaos Moustakas PhD, former research colleagues at the Leibniz Institute for Catalysis (LIKAT), to open-source their High-Purity Gas-solid Photoreactor design. In this episode, we journey to Rostock in the north of Germany to see the reactor in action and to unfold the possibilities and limitations of reducing carbon using the power of nature.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Did you know that honey bees dance?

When honey bees return to the colony from foraging, they share info about their journey with their fellow honey bees by dancing. Besides getting the boogie on, however, little is known about how far honey bees go foraging and what ecological factors impact their journey, e.g. pesticide exposure.

In this episode of HardwareX, Entomologist Margarita López-Uribe, Ph.D., specialised in bee species, together with Doctoral Student of Electrical Engineering, Diego Penaloza Aponte, of Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences, explain how open-source technologies and collaboration across scientific fields helped pave the way for an automated low-cost monitoring system - and what it takes to tag 6000 bees without getting stung.

To explore the specifics, check out the hardware on HardwareX.

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt via Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.