Fifty-seven niche projects that are obvious if you work in the domain — and invisible if you don't. Brain-computer interfaces you can solder, AR glasses open down to the schematic, CAD an LLM can actually drive, and the registries insiders use to look hardware up.
Most "open hardware" lists are the same famous names. This isn't that. Every entry clears four bars at once — each scored 1–5, then summed into a composite out of 20.
Lesser-known but credible. Insider gems score high; household names score low. The whole point — signal you'd only have from inside the field.
Genuinely maintained. Verified via recent commits, releases, stock and community — most within 18 months, many shipping in 2026.
You can get it today: buy it assembled, buy a kit or bare PCB, or build from published files. Concepts and dead repos don't count.
Technically real. Research-grade instruments, foundational designs and peer-reviewed builds score high; toys score low.
Every project plotted by obscurity (x) against how actively maintained it is (y). Bubble size is the composite alpha score; color is the domain. The sweet spot is the upper-right: obscure and alive. Hover for detail, click a bubble to open the project, toggle domains in the legend.
Full set, sorted by composite alpha. Sort any column, filter by domain, or search by name. Honesty flags stay visible — closed-source, discontinued, or stale repos say so.
Candidates were sourced across neurotech/BCI, CAD & AI design, smart glasses and wearables, plus high-signal adjacencies (lab & bio, RF/SDR, robotics, prosthetics) and the registries and marketplaces where open hardware is catalogued, certified and sold. Each was checked for live signals — commits, tagged releases, stock status, community activity — most within the last 18 months.
Every entry is scored 1–5 on four axes — obscurity, alive, buildable, legit — summed into a composite out of 20. Scores are an editorial judgment call, not a measurement; they exist to rank and compare, and to keep famous-but-low-alpha names from crowding out the gems. Where a project is closed-source, discontinued, or running on a stale repo, the table flags it rather than hiding it.