Open Hardware Summit 2025

The Open Hardware Summit took place in Edinburgh’s award-winning Nucleus building on the 30th and 31st of May. This two-day event, which included tables, talks, panels and workshops, had something for every hardware enthusiast.

All the talks and panels were recorded and are available to watch on The Open Source Hardware Association’s YouTube channel.

In this post, we’ll review a few of the many highlights from the event’s talks and panels, with links to their YouTube recordings.

Highlights

All Yarns Are Beautiful: Breathing new life into old knitting machines

From 4400 BC Egyptian looms to late-20th-century punch card knitting machines, Carson Holgate takes us through the history of knitting machines. She highlights the efforts of the All Yarns Are Beautiful project, which has breathed new life into the 1980s and 1990s knitting machine hardware that would otherwise be left on the shelf.

The open source hardware and software communities have come together to create custom PCB designs and software, allowing knitting machine owners to replace the outdated or broken electronics of their 1980s knitting machines with newer, better hardware and software.

This is a must-watch for hardware repairability advocates and knitting enthusiasts alike*.

The Mothbox Project: How Open Source Hardware Can Benefit Conservation Research

Andy Quitmeyer discusses the fascinating work of the Mothbox Project, which has developed “a low-cost, high-performance insect monitor” with a “power efficient and lightweight design that helps field biologists deploy it in the depths of the jungle”.

Andy explains how bugs’ hyperdiverse and highly localised properties make them an excellent source of data for measuring ecosystem health. He then explores the unique challenges and design choices associated with designing and deploying such hardware in the extreme conditions of a jungle.

Maintaining KiCad’s libraries

In this talk, Kliment discusses the challenges in maintaining KiCad’s libraries and the progress made in addressing these issues. Challenges addressed include the never-ending nature of incoming pull requests and the lack of code reviewers.

This talk provides excellent insight into managing a large open-source project’s quality, development, and maintenance and techniques for helping prevent maintainer burnout in such projects.

Disability & Open Source Hardware

The Disability & Open Source Hardware panel provides a challenging but important insight into the way tech and disability interface.

From Eilidh Troup’s “MrFlashyBeepy” project, which she used to treat her stroke-related vision loss, to Lorraine Underwood’s single-handed keyboard project, to Phoenix Perry’s approaches to disability-inclusive design, this panel offers eye-opening insights into the power tech has to help those with disabilities, why disability-driven design is important for all of us and how we can do better.

Final comments

This has been just a brief overview of my top highlights from the Open Hardware Summit 2025.

With so many amazing projects and speakers, I highly recommend that you look through the event schedule and the Open Source Hardware Association’s YouTube playlist to learn about even more amazing projects from the Open Hardware community.