Open Electronics

Though it probably won't comply with your licensing demands, you might want to look at: http://www.open-electronics.org/ Arduino is always fun, and there are lots of people hacking on it in different ways, but again, it often won't comply with your licensing demands. If you want your brother to learn something really useful, get him a FPGA development board from Xilinx or Altera. After he learns the default (proprietary) tool chains, point him at the OpenCores project which typically enforces licensing demands similar to your own (LGPL). http://opencores.org/ Though USB connectivity is fun, learning I2C, SPI, JTAG and similar is even more fun. A gift like an Aardvark or Beagle kit might be too expensive for a present, but the pay-off in what can be learned is well worth it. http://www.totalphase.com/protocols/i2c/ To me, freedomdefined.org/OSHW is very offensive. I see little point or benefit in arguing about licenses publicly, so if you want to know why it is offensive, contact me privately via email.

I had a Pi-Top for a while: https://www.open-electronics.org/pi-top-the-all-new-modular-raspberry-… I gave it to a junior dev who worked for me, figuring I'd buy myself another one to replace it. I never did, presumably because it wasn't actually as useful as I'd imagined it'd be when I first impulse-bought it. (It was also really quite crazily built. It worked fine, but it felt like a really cheap toy, instead of a tool. A MacBook and a Pi in a decent case is what I use instead these days.)

I think you could! Raspian used to come with Mathematica. There are plenty of pocket raspi machines you could run it on and boot directly to a window. https://www.open-electronics.org/pocketpi-raspberry-pi-pocket-sized-co…

Perhaps check out https://www.open-electronics.org/an-open-source-3d-scanner-made-with-r…

I wonder what was the amount on the check, given that he claimed the business could grow from 15 to 50M https://www.open-electronics.org/from-arduino-to-genuino-the-reasons-f… Even if 50M was a bold one, I wouldn't have sold 50% of the company for less than 20M. I fear Arduino is gonna pay a mortgage for a long time, mining its ability to innovate.

It's kind of detailed and murky, but I dug up a couple of links to look at: http://www.open-electronics.org/from-arduino-to-genuino-the-reasons-fo… http://hackaday.com/2015/03/12/arduino-v-arduino-part-ii/ For a long while, most people didn't understand the turmoil in the arduino market. The competing arduino.srl tried to fork the ide and even the history of the project. Here's a direct statement from Banzi Massimo: http://makezine.com/2015/03/19/massimo-banzi-fighting-for-arduino/

I can't wait either! I've seen a few DIY projects here and there involving GSM, but his name is what really caught my eye in the first place. You may also find these interesting: http://www.open-electronics.org/gsm-gps-shield-for-arduino/ http://www.instructables.com/id/ArduinoPhone/ I'm sure there's room to mix and match improvements.

If there's a terrible smell, it should be detected by a $100 off-the-shelf TVOC air quality meter, the type that can detect perfumes. Have you tried one? If you know which specific gases may be present in the plant exhaust, there may be an existing low-cost (~$50) sensor [1] which can be assembled in a custom DIY air quality monitoring circuit like AirGradient (who post on HN). There are consumer particle counters (0.5 micron) for about $300, which have a serial port for continuous data logging. > setup monitoring in their property, which they'd never allow Once there's a low-cost (sub $500) continuous air quality data recording device, then 4 of those devices in different directions from the plant, along with local wind data, could show a pattern over an extended period of time. In theory, wind-borne flying objects like kites and drones could also collect data on air quality indexed by GPS location. [1] MQ series of gas sensors: https://www.open-electronics.org/presenting-mq-sensors-low-cost-gas-an…