HackRF One
A low-cost software-defined radio platform.
- By
- Great Scott Gadgets
- Licence
- GPL-2.0
- What to look at
- A dense RF board: look at how the RF section is laid out.
Judge the output yourself
Real boards made with each tool
A feature list tells you what a tool can do; a finished board tells you what people actually make with it. These are published open-hardware projects, grouped by the tool their design files are in. Open them, read the files, and decide for yourself.
Last reviewed
Respect each author’s licence. We link to the projects; we do not copy their files or images. Each licence below is the one stated in the project’s own repository when we checked. Read it there before you reuse, modify or sell anything, and credit the author as it asks.
Many of the KiCad projects can also be opened in a browser on BoardRepo, with schematic, PCB, 3D view and BOM, so you can look before you download anything.
KiCad
Glasgow Interface Explorer
A multi-purpose tool for talking to digital electronics.
- By
- Glasgow Embedded
- Licence
- 0BSD
- What to look at
- A carefully documented production board with an FPGA and many I/O channels.
Corne keyboard (crkbd)
A split keyboard with 3×6 column-staggered keys and three thumb keys.
- By
- foostan
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- What to look at
- A clean two-layer board, reversible for both halves: a good model for a first larger project.
SmartKnob
A haptic input knob with software-defined end stops and detents.
- By
- Scott Bezek
- Licence
- Apache 2.0 (electronics, software, documentation) and CC BY 4.0 (mechanical)
- What to look at
- How a compact board is designed around a motor, a display and an enclosure.
b-parasite
An open-source soil moisture and light sensor with Bluetooth, running on a coin cell.
- By
- rbaron
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0 (hardware and design files); MIT (code)
- What to look at
- A small low-power board where the PCB traces themselves form the capacitive sensor.
DeskHop
A device that switches a keyboard and mouse between two computers.
- By
- hrvach
- Licence
- GPL-3.0
- What to look at
- A small, practical USB board with two microcontrollers, easy to read end to end.
OtterCastAudioV2
An open-source audio streaming device running Linux on a Sochip S3 SoC.
- By
- Ottercast
- Licence
- MIT
- What to look at
- A Linux system-on-chip board with Ethernet and audio, including how its ground planes changed between revisions.
Altium Designer
Precursor (Betrusted hardware)
A mobile, open-source secure computing device.
- By
- Betrusted project
- Licence
- CERN OHL v1.2
- What to look at
- A professional, multi-board Altium project: main board, keyboard, flex and test jig.
Cadence OrCAD Capture and Allegro
BeagleBone Black
A widely used single-board Linux computer.
- By
- BeagleBoard.org Foundation
- Licence
- Documentation CC BY-SA; hardware licence listed as “Other” on its OSHWA certification (US000236). Read the repository before reusing it.
- What to look at
- A production single-board computer with DDR memory routing, laid out in Allegro.
EAGLE (opens in Autodesk Fusion)
SparkFun RedBoard Plus
An Arduino Uno-format ATmega328 board with a Qwiic connector.
- By
- SparkFun Electronics
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0 (hardware)
- What to look at
- A classic two-layer EAGLE board from a company that publishes all its designs.
EAGLE and KiCad (different revisions)
The Open Book
An open-source e-book reader.
- By
- Joey Castillo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- What to look at
- The same product designed in two tools across revisions: compare how each one reads.
EasyEDA
OSHWLab public projects
EasyEDA's public library of open-hardware projects.
- By
- Many authors
- Licence
- Set by each author on each project page.
- What to look at
- Open a few projects in the editor to see what EasyEDA output looks like; check each project's licence before reusing it.
Why there are more KiCad boards here
Open hardware is published so that anyone can open it, and anyone can open a KiCad project without buying anything. That is why most open-hardware projects you will find, and most on this page, are KiCad projects. Commercial tools are represented by well-known projects whose authors published their native files.
See how these tools score in the full ranking.