The Oak Sensors range, produced by Toradex, is to be made available for open source use.

Horw, Switzerland December 17, 2012

The Oak product family from Toradex is a range of USB interfaced sensors and actuators that can be connected to a wide variety of different USB host devices, extending capabilites to interface with the environment.

Over the last few years, the wide variety of different Oak products have found their way into a diverse range of applications. They have been used for all sorts of purposes, from professionals in laboratory automation to hobbyists interfacing them with the latest Android smartphones.

Toradex received regular feedback that customers want to be able to modify individual Oak sensors for their own purposes. Whether this is changing the hardware configuration to fit mechanically into a different enclosure or developing custom firmware for the device to support a custom feature, it was clear that it is this flexibility that customers really wanted.

As any companies resources are finite, Toradex have decided that in order to best support customers they are going to make the entire Oak product family Open Source. From the beginning of December, Toradex will be putting the entire Oak product range into the hands of the open source community. Toradex will be publishing all design and manufacturing data relating to each and every Oak product on ther developer website under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

This design data will include a wealth of different resources to allow you to customise the devices as much as you like, such as Gerber files and BOM (Bill of Materials) for manufacturer, hardware design schematics, and source code, amongst others.
Customers will be free to take the design data and modify it as required and manufacturer the devices independently. The only small thing they ask is that the original work remains attributed to Toradex.

As ownership and maintenance of the Oak product range will now lie with the Open Source community, Toradex will not continue to manufacture and supply any Oak product variants. They will continue to serve customers from stock on a first come first serve basis, but once individual Oak products have sold out, they will no longer be able to supply them in any quantity.

For more information visit:
http://developer.toradex.com/hardware-resources/usb-sensors-and-peripherals

About Toradex

Founded in Switzerland, today the Toradex network stretches across the world. Its direct sales model and local service approach puts Toradex in regular contact with more than 3,000 customers around the globe. Toradex supplies embedded computer modules for demanding applications and offers premium support service to help its customers rapidly bring product to market. Toradex's strategic vision and long term orientation makes it the company of choice for ambitious and creative people.

Toradex products are deployed within a diverse range of markets and industries. Typical industries include: automotive, medical devices, laboratory equipment, point of sales, gaming machines, navigation systems, musical instruments, machine control, virtual reality simulation, digital signage, traffic control systems, building automation, security systems, robotics, process control and auto pilots.