Category:Open source optics

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Open source optics refers to optics, optical equipment, opto-electronics and fiber optic designs that are designed in the same fashion as free and open source software (FOSS). Open source optics is part of the open source culture that takes the open source ideas to fields other than software. See the Open-source Lab for full details.

This is starting primarily as a project of the Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Lab with the goal of eviscerating the costs of optical and opto-electronic characterization of solar photovoltaic cells. It is our hope that making these radically low-cost tools and free software/designs available to everyone will:

drive down the cost of experimental science so we can all enjoy more cool stuff faster especially solar power
assist in outfitting laboratories in the developing world at low costs
open state-of-the-art science up to more people - e.g. grade school students who have great ideas but not the funds or tools to try them out.

We will document all of the designs of our equipment as thoroughly as possible. We will also be uploading all 3-D printable component stls and OpenSCAD files to Thingiverse.

For more information see:

Pearce, Joshua M. 2012. "Building Research Equipment with Free, Open-Source Hardware." Science 337 (6100): 1303–1304. Podcast open access - click through to sciencemag.org
Zhang C, Anzalone NC, Faria RP, Pearce JM (2013) Open-Source 3D-Printable Optics Equipment. PLoS ONE 8(3): e59840. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0059840 open access

All of the information about the optical design, such as construction or integration of the active and passive optical components in order to make a complete optical system will be provided for free following open source hardware protocols and all of the open source software code will be housed at GitHub.

To calculate the value of such FOSH development see: Quantifying the Value of Open Source Hardware Development