HardwareX Podcasts

The Franz Diffusion Cell (FDC) is a piece of equipment used for studying in vitro drug absorption across the skin and other biological membranes over time. Internationally recognised as vital to commercial drug certification and pharmacological research, yet FDCs present a dilemma: Manual systems are cumbersome and introduce more human error, while automated FDCs often come with a high price tag and vendor lock-ins. 

Enter OTTO...

In this episode of Open Hardware Talks, the founder of the RepRap Project, Dr Adrian Bowyer MBE, sits down to explain how it all came to be. Beginning with a childhood dream and ending with an uplifting perspective on human progress, Dr Bowyer takes us from the past to the present, and onwards to the future, handing out golden nuggets on Darwinism, AI and open source along the way.

Few things have been as groundbreaking for hardware...

Increased evaporation leads to increased precipitation. Warming at nearly twice the rate of the global average, Asia is increasingly prone to heavy rainfall and flooding. While monitoring river levels can help warn local governments and communities of risks, a majority of the world's rivers remain ungauged.

To scale river level monitoring, researchers in Laos set about developing an affordable, frugal design for an open-source laser...

As tools at the forefront of innovation in medicine and biotechnology, bioreactors are increasingly taking centre stage in research facilities and industrial labs alike. From acting as the fermentation vessels that give us beer to enabling a greener, more sustainable way of treating wastewater, bioreactors have played a key role in ensuring the quality of modern life. Yet, the high cost and low flexibility of bioreactor designs can...

Space is busier than ever before.

In the latest edition of the global space race, private actors have joined the game. But space as the next frontier for businesses comes at a price. As debris in orbit continues to increase and more fossil-fuel-powered rockets are sending celebrities into space, what will happen to our ecosystems on Earth? Should the galaxy really only be in the hands of a few, and if not, what happens if everyone c...

As the right to repair gained political momentum, it obliged companies to share design files and repair guides with every new device. But what about the right to upcycle older technologies?

With the power of machine learning, computerised microscopes are increasing efficiency and accuracy in scientific research. However, commercially available microscopes often come with a large price tag, rendering them inaccessible to labs or inst...

MedTech has an accessibility problem. 

Life-saving medicine, groundbreaking diagnostics technologies and much-needed lab equipment at the hands of profit-driven companies and oligopolies. What are the consequences of betting human health on proprietary markets, and what alternatives can open-source offer?

In this Open Hardware Talks, Lukas Winter (Open Source Imaging Initiative), Joe Knapper (OpenFlexure) and Anthony Di Franco (...

How can we elevate life quality for patients in some of the world's most underserved regions?

Negative Pressure Wound Therapy (NPWT) is a proven and efficient method for treating chronic wounds. This is particularly useful in low- and middle-income countries, where diseases like leprosy, limited healthcare, low infrastructure and poverty combine to make chronic wounds and commonality. 

Devices for treatment are costly, overly co...

Open Hardware Talks is back. This series invites interdisciplinary experts and advocates to a roundtable discussion on the most relevant topics in open-source hardware.

Discoverability: How To NOT Reinvent the Wheel.

Open and collaborative development promises to accelerate innovation by allowing individuals and teams to share new ideas, build on top of existing ones and improve designs according to multiple use cases. So, how do you...

Much like plants can turn carbon into energy, researchers have been striving to scale the potential of photocatalytic CO2 reduction. Promising as the technology may be, little progress has been made to scale its potential. If the net human-caused CO2 reduction target of 45 % from 2010 levels is to be reached by 2030, the science must be shared.

That is the notion that propelled Prof. Dr. Jennifer Strunk and Dr. Nikolaos Moustakas Ph...

Did you know that honey bees dance?

When honey bees return to the colony from foraging, they share info about their journey with their fellow honey bees by dancing. Besides getting the boogie on, however, little is known about how far honey bees go foraging and what ecological factors impact their journey, e.g. pesticide exposure.

In this episode of HardwareX, Entomologist Margarita López-Uribe, Ph.D., specialised in bee species, tog...

The advancement of low-cost sensors has sparked a boom in air quality monitoring devices. From backpack add-ons to citizen bicycles, air quality devices are enabling citizens to get involved in monitoring local air quality.

When looking at global air quality maps, however, the data for South America and Africa remain scarce. As primarily consumer-based products, these devices remain subject to demand and supply, limiting acc...

What if research labs didn't have to reinvent the wheel all the time?

Rodents like mice and rats play a pivotal role in neuroscientific research. Through a process known as 'head fixation', scientists surgically implant cannulas and electrodes to measure neurophysiological activity. As mice share roughly 95% of our DNA, head fixation experiments greatly contribute to advancing our understanding of the human brain and disease...

Did you know that our understanding of basic functions such as memory, learning and sleep is largely thanks to a giant sea slug?

For more than 50 years, Aplysia Californica, a type of slug also known as the California Sea Hare, has been important for understanding how the nervous system works and for investigating the cellular and molecular basis of behaviour. As an essential resource for neurological disease research acros...

Urgent needs require urgent solutions, but is open-source always the answer?

The UN aims to eradicate malaria in all countries by 2030. However, in some parts of the world, incidents are increasing as the parasites transmitting the disease grow increasingly tolerant to treatment drugs.

A novel treatment method using microwaves to kill the parasite shows promising results. One that could save both lives and economies ...

How inclusive are advanced prosthetics technologies?

The global demand for prosthetics and orthotics is only expected to rise. Yet, access to affordable and innovative solutions varies greatly at local, national and international levels. And while 3D printing has greatly contributed to making prosthetics available in low-income and developing regions, the benefits that robotics and technological innovation bring users remain...

What does it take to make research catch up with climate change?

The Arctic regions hold crucial information about the environmental impact of rising temperatures. Calving glaciers and treacherous territories make it a life-threatening mission to collect it though.

As autonomous technologies improve, drones, boats and rovers are increasingly being deployed in place of humans to sample, monitor and manage marine and a...

Why did high-tech farming go bust?
Vertical Farming was one of the big new technologies of the early 2010s. By growing crops vertically with less water and no pesticides, big vertical farms promised to revolutionise food production. So why are the same vertical farms going bust across Europe and the US just ten years after they boomed?

In this episode, we journey to Cambridge University in England to meet Vijja "Pat" Wichitwechka...

Welcome to a new HardwareX podcast series: Open Hardware Talks.

In addition to our regular episodes exploring open-source hardware projects, we're launching a new deep-dive series. Open Hardware Talks explores key concepts of open-source hardware in casual conversations with experts and practitioners from across the ecosystem.

For the first episode in this new series, we ask: How do you validate the openness of a give...