Five new open-hardware KiCad projects released under CERN-OHL licenses

The Tindie Blog has published a roundup of five new open-hardware projects with editable KiCad engineering files, all released under CERN-OHL licenses on November 4, 2026. The collection spans an RC car controller revision, two backup boards for the Genie camera, two Tag-Connect debug adapters for ST-LINK V3 and Renesas E2 Lite programmers, and an experimental power supply. Only one project—the ST-LINK V3 to TC2030 adapter—has been fabricated and tested by its author; the others range from unbuilt engineering drafts to designs with known fabrication blockers.

The projects use various KiCad versions from 7 through 10, with board complexity ranging from two-layer adapters to four-layer camera and power-supply designs. Licensing varies between CERN-OHL-P-2.0 for permissive hardware and CERN-OHL-S-2.0 for strongly reciprocal terms. Several designs carry significant caveats: the RC controller has ERC and DRC warnings with a 10 V power limit, the Genie boards have 92 and 18 DRC warnings respectively plus a revision numbering discrepancy, and the e-psu power supply requires footprint replacement before it can be manufactured.

Project status and technical details

• RC-Car controller rev 2.0: KiCad 10 schematic and two-layer PCB under CERN-OHL-P-2.0; unbuilt and untested with two ERC/DRC warnings each, 10 V maximum power input requiring battery voltage regulation.
• Genie camera backup boards: Pair of four-layer KiCad 9 PCBs (battery and power) under CERN-OHL-S-2.0; 92 and 18 DRC warnings respectively, revision label mismatch between README (0.2) and title blocks (0.1), power and thermal copper still under review.
• ST-LINK V3 to TC2030 adapter: KiCad 10 two-layer PCB under CERN-OHL-P-2.0; author-reported fabricated and tested status, does not supply target power, no vendor 3D models included.
• Renesas E2 Lite to TC2030 adapter: KiCad 10 two-layer PCB under CERN-OHL-P-2.0; unfabricated, requires debugger target-power disable for self-powered targets, protection circuitry not guaranteed against backfeeding, KiCad libraries under separate CC BY-SA 4.0 terms.
• e-psu Rev A power supply: Eight-sheet KiCad 7 schematic with four-layer PCB under CERN-OHL-P-2.0; LM76003 footprint U201 is temporary and must be replaced before fabrication, no firmware provided, specifications are design targets not measured values.

Why it matters

This release pattern illustrates the growing normalization of CERN-OHL licensing in the maker and small-scale hardware ecosystem, providing reproducible starting points that reduce duplication of effort for embedded developers and hobbyists. The explicit documentation of build status, known warnings, and fabrication blockers sets a useful transparency standard, though the high warning counts on several designs underscore that open hardware files still require careful engineering review before production. For Linux and open-source hardware practitioners, the debug adapters in particular offer practical bench tools compatible with widely used ARM and Renesas toolchains.