

Fernvale: An Open Hardware and Software Platform - zdw
https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/6156.html

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akiselev
_> We took special pains to ensure our method was lawful and the resulting
work is copyright-clean under U.S. law. We did review some non-open-licensed
chip documentation and code examples available for download from open file-
sharing sites. None of these materials were restricted by DRM. American
copyright law contains a fair-use exception that allows limited copying and
examination of such materials for the purpose of understanding the ideas and
functional concepts embodied in them. We believe our download and review of
those materials is fair use. Should potential copyright holders disagree with
our interpretation, we invite any offended parties to engage us in rational
discourse._

I really hope this works out and they figure out how to get past the IP traps
in a repeatable way based off of the work in China. Unfortunately, we won't
know until this is tested in court and while I'm sure there is plenty of
precedent, I don't think many companies will want to take the risk. Until
someone does, I fear that projects like this will fail to bring in corporate
supporters (like Red Hat supports the Linux kernel) that would really move
both the hardware forward by leaps and bounds. If you look at all of the open
hardware today, most of it is stagnant and only exists at the behest of the
chip manufacturers so that they can have easily available but rather trivial
reference designs (e.g. BeagleBone, PandaBoard, OpenRD, etc).

After working for a only a few years, I've developed the opinion that
electrical engineering is one of those few fields where patents and other
closely guarded IP demonstrably hold back innovation. When I work for big
companies on mass manufactured products, 75% of the time I get my
documentation from Chinese forums [1] and parts shipped in from Shenzhen a
week or two before I really get a chance to engage with the manufacturer's
reps. On a few occasions, I've even received better chip errata and more up to
date software from the hardware pirates than from the original manufacturers!
Considering how hostile the electronics industry is to their biggest
customers, let alone amateurs and makers, it's a wonder that startups using
cutting edge chips can launch at all.

[1] [http://bbs.eetop.cn](http://bbs.eetop.cn) is one of my go to's

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minthd
Thanks. The site looks very interesting.

But where do you buy your chips from shenzen ? And how do you manage
reliability and long term availability ?

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akiselev
There are a few major electronics parts markets in Shenzhen, primarily
Huaqiangbei and Luohu Commercial City (I've never been, I just hire someone
with EE experience to do it for me). Most of the big name IC manufacturers'
parts can be found between those two. When you are manufacturing anything in
large quantities, part reliability (a better word would be authenticity) and
availability are major concerns that are usually dealt with by someone
upstream with experience in supply chains. When negotiating contracts I am
always up front about how and where all of the major components will be
sourced depending on a variety of factors.

For example, if there is a tight deadline (e.g. designing part of a
motherboard based on a new chipset where time to market is critical) then the
first few revisions will be made up of parts sourced mostly from Shenzhen. If
it's a niche contract (like defense/aerospace) then it depends on how fast I
get the primary parts (e.g. rad hardened processors take a minimum of 3 months
lead time so all parts are from manufacturers starting from the first
revision). However, unless there is an extreme deadline or a manufacturer I
loath dealing with (cough Marvell cough) the final boards sent to the client
are made with manufacturer sourced parts, for which I have to start the
procurement process the second I get the contract.

~~~
minthd
So if you had to design something with medium volume(say a 1-10K/year), and
you couldn't get parts from the manufacturer - would you source only from
shenzen ? or skip the part ?

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akiselev
I'm sorry I can't really give a straight answer to that question because it
really depends on the context and risk-reward calculations. If the entire
design revolves around that specific part and it's specialized, it's much
riskier than if the part is more commoditized (e.g. power or ethernet) and
there is money in the budget to risk a partial redesign based on part
availability. If there is an experienced supply chain gal on the ground in
China with a Rolodex of contacts, who speaks the language, and knows how to
spot fakes the enterprise is much less risky than if you're doing the shopping
yourself (or remotely which is a crapshoot). If it's a low margin product you
might not have a choice but if it's a high margin product you probably don't
want to risk the reputation. If it's a part that requires software such as a
driver on the microprocessor, then you're in a whole other world of risk
management dependent on manufacturer software quality and support. So on and
on. Unfortunately, I don't know of any great resources that exhaustively
detail this thought process (although I'm sure some are out there), although
you can always look into systems engineering, which is a whole field dedicated
to understanding how to manage complex engineering projects.

Electrical engineering is all about trade offs and constraints which range
from physical board size to manufacturing/assembly cost to R&D deadlines to
software support. I would err on the side of investing more money into proper
part selection and designing from the start with part swapping in mind because
unlike with software, success or failure can be very binary with little room
for error. The Shenzhen markets are great because I usually have to work under
extreme deadlines that don't gel well with the pace of suppliers and my
deliverables are at least several steps away from full production.

~~~
minthd
Thanks , that's a great answer, for a complex question.

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mschuster91
When it comes to radio, though, it's not just copyright that gets into your
way.

Unlike wifi/bluetooth, which happen in the license-free ISM bands (2.4 GHz),
you need your entire product certified by FCC (US) and by whomever in Europe
in order to legally operate in the GSM/UMTS bands; not to mention carriers
won't exactly like you if you mess up their network.

~~~
akiselev
For the really interesting stuff (GSM + CDMA cellular) this is a "cross that
bridge when you get there" kind of problem. Before you can get on the airwaves
you need to break the Qualcomm/Broadcom stranglehold on cellular basebands and
if you do that (by developing the open source hardware + software implementing
RF/protocols) then the licensed spectrum bit becomes tractable.

AFAIK much of the rest of the spectrum, licensing + part procurement is
significantly easier and although there are some more monopolies they are
nowhere near as bad as Qualcomm/Broadcom.

~~~
zw123456
My take on it is to not bother with the older GSM and CDMA but to instead
focus on LTE. Although GSM will probably be around globally for a while, it is
on the wane as is CDMA. There is a lot of interesting open work going on for
LTE including LTE on unlicensed bands.
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/ltemodem.motorola/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/ltemodem.motorola/)
[http://www.eurecom.fr/en/content/virtulization-lte-
softmodem](http://www.eurecom.fr/en/content/virtulization-lte-softmodem)
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/openlte/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/openlte/)

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evanwolf
Is there a low-power variety of LTE to improve battery life on devices?

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mng2
I've heard, perhaps apocryphally, that binary blobs are one roadblock IC
makers set up to keep rivals from going through their implementations and
finding stuff to base patent-infringement lawsuits on. (Just as in software,
there are dumb hardware patents too.) I wonder if this 3rd-party disclosure
might open MT up to lawsuits.

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rasz_pl
Source of this seems to be in west mentality of charging what market can bear.

Texas Instruments idea of IoT chip is $20-30 cc3000 wifi solution. Chinese
company on the other hand is fine repurposing USB WIFI dongle chip and selling
$2 ESP8266. Thats right 10:1 cost difference. Guess who will make and sell
millions of those.

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revelation
Texas Instruments? This seems like a case of "you'd be surprised".

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desdiv
To save people a Google: there aren't any source code or even detailed
specifications yet. The talk takes place tomorrow (Dec 28), so presumably more
information will be available then.

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maguirre
Anyone know what's up with their certificate? Firefox does not like it

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timw6n
They're using a CACert (a kind of community-based CA) certificate, that isn't
trusted by default on most systems.

If the root certificate you're getting is from "CA Cert Signing Authority" and
matches the details given on
[http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3](http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3)
then you're probably not being MITM'd.

