With the evolution of technology by the leading huge companies, tech enthusiasts came up with the idea of open-source projects. This leads to the question of what is such a concept. It means that everyone can do whatever they want with it; use, modify, study and distribute for every purpose possible. It relies on an open-source license. One of the most know ideas based on such a license is the Android. The most common operating system for smartphones is actually completely free to use and edit. However, here I am not going to be talking about software but rather hardware; the idea of Openbike.
A polish engineer decided to build his own e-bike because he considered commercial ones to be too expensive. He designed almost every part from scratch and made all the measurements public so that everyone can print it in the 3D printer and assemble it on their own. On top of that, the author aimed to make it possible for whoever wants to get involved, hence you can build the whole bike using simple tools. The only part that is required to buy is the wheel from the Xiaomi e-scooter. This is how the final product looks like;
As an engineer, the author main focus was to make it functional and affordable (the parts for the bike you can buy for approximately 1000-1200 PLN). However, as he himself admits, it does not look very appealing. Here is the greatest advantage of the open-source project. He hopes for the community to make it look better, improve some parts, come up with something that he could not do on his own.
Concepts like Openbike show how much potential the idea of open source projects have. We have already seen how strong communities can be in building software e.g. Android, Linux. Now it opens for material things as well. Moreover, people from a much wider group of professions can get involved as not only programmers are needed, but also for example engineers, designers etc. At some point, it may lead to plenty of sophisticated devices becoming as easy to assemble as desks from Ikea. Of course, with the appropriate manual.
If anyone is curious enough, here I will link the websites with the parts and manuals to assemble such bike:
https://www.thingiverse.com/openbike/collections
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5006236/files
Bibliography:
- picture 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRQCWMiBReE&t=367s Kuba Klawiter 2021
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgFT8rUb48E&t Open Bike 2021