Thanks Peter!

http://www.treedev.eu/

I've bookmarked the link, and will add it to the OSHUG wiki (which is still down to me to setup).

The page describes the supposed device itself, the development path and the way to finance the development and production / distribution.

It does seem to be at a very "embryonic" stage -- which is cool!

Something which interests me, is how projects such as yours may best open up the design artifacts for contributions from others. I guess that's predicated on good, open, interchange formats between circuit, PCB and other physical designs which is lacking.

I am free to discuss it, adopt it, do it together with other people.

Thanks Peter, I'd be interested to see how this progresses, and lessons learnt on the way. Good luck with your project!

Hi Peter!

I do not know if I understand You right.

Sorry, I was rather terse.

You ask about how people could contribute to the technical development?

Yes, in software terms, what's the best way to enable people to submit patches?

1. From my point of view I see very few open, interchangeable formats / tools in the field of electronic CAD.

This is indeed a problem for Open Source Hardware!

I already suggested colleagues to do a project into this direction, but I was not able to meet interested people (in my small world).

I'll start to collect design tools people currently use on our wiki and see if I can make some sense of the landscape.

2. We can discuss the specs, our »wishlist« for this device. The design phase is very important and for this, we do not need any tools. Only discussion and I will put our agreements into the specs.

Right, some means of tracking requirements, features, stories, and issues ..

3. So for this dvb-s2 router project, I suggest to discuss the specs, then give the schematic and pcb layout work to a professional company. This will lead to a project folder tree / file set for a commercial not-open CAD tool. But we can publish the schematics, pcb prints, silk prints and docu as pdf-files. And we can be ready to give the whole project to somebody who wants to take care, in case we do not want to go on with it.

That's great!

4. During the first weeks of the »professional phase«, there will be a lot of discussions with the company. I could forward important questions and we could discuss them together, then I will respond our agreement to them.

It would be interesting for you to record your decision process, say in a blog, and open that up so people can learn from your project and contribute advice.