If you want to get involved in open hardware, a good first step would be to learn KiCad. It’s is used to create electronic circuit schematics and turn them into printed circuit board (PCB) designs. Here’s a pretty good tutorial to get started with it. Please ignore the instructor’s obnoxious Ronald Reagan quote in the second episode.
A PCB is usually not enough, of course. You should also learn FreeCAD so you can design the mechanical aspects of the hardware, whether that be a simple enclosure, or a more complex system with multiple moving parts. Here’s a good FreeCAD tutorial.
I mention KiCad and FreeCAD specifically because they’re both free and open source. You can check out this awesome list for a list of cool open hardware projects and learning resources. Two projects that really stand out to me are the LumenPNP pick and place machine and the Voron 2.4 3D printer.
For in-person groups, see if there are any makerspaces/hackerspaces in your city. That’s where you’ll most likely find like-minded people.
There’s more than this required to build anything that’d be needed to survive in an automotive environment, and considerably more if you are hoping to have an open source/FOSS design that would be accepted as a suitable replacement for something proprietary, although I don’t think that was your aim (but it does sound like OP’s). I’m all for grassroots/homebrew stuff but we’re talking about a thousand kilos+ of steel and plastic being hurled down a road carrying people, in and around other people in similar contraptions. This isn’t something I’d exactly condone throwing a hackerspace’s resources and some Arduinos at.
If you want to get involved in open hardware, a good first step would be to learn KiCad. It’s is used to create electronic circuit schematics and turn them into printed circuit board (PCB) designs. Here’s a pretty good tutorial to get started with it. Please ignore the instructor’s obnoxious Ronald Reagan quote in the second episode.
A PCB is usually not enough, of course. You should also learn FreeCAD so you can design the mechanical aspects of the hardware, whether that be a simple enclosure, or a more complex system with multiple moving parts. Here’s a good FreeCAD tutorial.
I mention KiCad and FreeCAD specifically because they’re both free and open source. You can check out this awesome list for a list of cool open hardware projects and learning resources. Two projects that really stand out to me are the LumenPNP pick and place machine and the Voron 2.4 3D printer.
For in-person groups, see if there are any makerspaces/hackerspaces in your city. That’s where you’ll most likely find like-minded people.
There’s more than this required to build anything that’d be needed to survive in an automotive environment, and considerably more if you are hoping to have an open source/FOSS design that would be accepted as a suitable replacement for something proprietary, although I don’t think that was your aim (but it does sound like OP’s). I’m all for grassroots/homebrew stuff but we’re talking about a thousand kilos+ of steel and plastic being hurled down a road carrying people, in and around other people in similar contraptions. This isn’t something I’d exactly condone throwing a hackerspace’s resources and some Arduinos at.