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

> **Key takeaway:** Five editable hardware designs including an RC car controller, camera backup boards, debug adapters, and an experimental power supply were published with open-source licensing on November 4, though most remain untested.

**Published:** 2026-11-05T07:36:29+00:00 
**Source:** Tindie Blog 
**Category:** open-hardware 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/five-new-open-hardware-kicad-projects-released-under-cern-oh.html 

## Summary
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.