The goal of this talk is to offer a starting point for those who want to experiment with hardware - using free software and self-hosted services.

• Why play with hardware?

• What sort of play is (easily) possible?

• Is it costly / tough to get access to hackable hardware?

• Other challenges in hardware hacking and experimentation

• What sort of hardware is there to play with?

  • lights
  • led panels
  • switches
  • sensors
  • routers
  • emulators
  • single-board computers
  • laptops
  • keyboards
  • serial consoles
  • entertainment centers
  • mobile phones
  • cars
  • 3d printers and engravers

• Building hardware like a sysadmin!

• (libre) Software backends and (self-hosted) services that hardware can talk to and rely on

• The community around hackable hardware

  • how large is this community?
  • how to build your own?
  • why is this community important to build and sustain?

• Licenses for hardware designs and the software which runs on them