Realised Projects

From OHO - search engine for sustainable open hardware projects

Search Engine for Open Hardware

Project Goal

Development of a search engine on which as many Do it Yourself and Open Hardware projects from all over the world as possible are published with short project descriptions.

Problem description

Most Do it Yourself (DIY) and Open Hardware (OH) projects are developed by individuals or small organizations. They are often located on unknown websites and are usually published in only one language. Unlike open source software, there are no leading platforms (like Github or Gitlab). Therefore, it is often difficult for potential users to find suitable DIY and OH projects.

Action taken

Therefore OHO has developed a special search engine www.oho.wiki for Do it Yourself and Open Hardware projects. This is to contribute to the fact that

  • potential users as well as Open Hardware developers can find existing projects faster and easier,
  • new projects can build on the experiences of already realized projects.

The following measures were realized:

  • Selection, installation and adaptation of the basic software to be used (Mediawiki) and the necessary plugins (extensions)
  • Development of the necessary webcrawlers and interfaces
  • Development and implementation of the web design
  • Programming of the forms for editing and creating projects
  • Development and programming of a multilingual category system


Certification of Open Hardware

Problem description

Open Hardware (OH) refers to hardware whose blueprints are made publicly available for anyone to study, modify, and redistribute. Until 2020, there were neither standards nor certification bodies for Open Hardware that guarantee that Open Hardware projects meet certain minimum requirements. This has severely hampered the dissemination of Open Hardware.

Actions taken

  • Development of DIN Spec 3105 together with Open Source Ecology e.V. and other organizations.
  • Development of the certification platform at www.oho.wiki, which enables community-based reviews by independent reviewers.
  • Development of standards for tec


Establishment of a CAD center for Open Hardware

Problem description

According to a study of the Technical University of Berlin less than 5% of the examined Open Hardware projects have sufficient documentation (construction plans, parts lists etc.). As a result, other people, companies or organizations are unable to reproduce the projects, or can do so only with difficulty.

Measures implemented

  • Recruitment of a team of experienced draftsmen and engineers.
  • Development of workflows and systems (e.g. Gitlab) for quality assurance, version control, etc.
  • Realization of the first test projects and optimization of workflows and systems


Establishment of a YouTube channel OHO

Problem description

Good Open Hardware projects are difficult to find on the Internet. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the awareness of these projects through various measures. One measure is the creation of project videos, which are published on the platform YouTube. YouTube is the largest search engine in the world after Google. A study by OHO showed that 80% of the best content from the Do it Yourself area can be found on YouTube. This is why YouTube is the first port of call for many users when researching building plans.

Actions carried out

  • Recruitment of a team of experienced video developers.
  • Development of the procedures to convert CAD files into attractive 3D animations
  • Development of the first test projects
  • Evaluations of traffic parameters on YouTube
  • Optimization of workflows


Realization of more than 100 real Open Hardware projects

Problem description

The main long-term goal of OHO is to build a collection of sustainable Open Hardware projects ("Wikipedia for Sustainable Technologies"). As a first concrete action, more than 100 projects from different categories were fully documented and published in 2021.

Measures carried out

  • Creation of all necessary documentation for the selected projects, such as construction plans, parts lists, assembly instructions et cetera.
  • Realization of videos of a part of the projects
  • Publication of all relevant data and files on OHO, such as P


Open Hardware in the field of renewable energies

Problem description

There are a large number of good Do it Yourself projects in the field of renewable energies, such as wind turbines, water turbines, photovoltaic systems, solar panels etc.. However, of the projects studied, none had sufficient documentation so that it could be replicated by other people or companies without difficulty.

Actions carried out

  • Research of Do it Yourself and Open Hardware projects in the field of renewable energies.
  • Evaluation of the individual projects according to specifically defined criteria
  • Selection of the best 20 projects
  • Documentation and certification of the sel
OPEN HARDWARE OBSERVATORY 2020
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