Article fully written by human
If you take a look in the url, you’ll see this blog is on opencalc.fr, so let’s see what’s OpenCalc
OpenCalc is an open source calculator, both hardware and software (although it could be funny to give names to each). At the time I’m writing this neither the code nor blue prints are available but both should be made public soon enough.
OpenCalc allows you to perform calculation, graph functions, solve equations systems or explore the periodic table.
We currently have a working firmware and hardware, some work still need to be done in order to reduce the size of the calculator by a few centimeters (no freedom units will be allowed here by the way) and add a battery (could be useful)
The main goal of this project are
- Be fun because it is always fun to build something from scratch
- More seriously, drop down the prices of calculator for middle and high schooler which often are around 100€ down to 20€
How to do this ? If they are so expensive there must be a reason, right ?
Well, we’ve been thinking about it and, turns out we found nothing… They are not made from edge cutting tech, rather decade old one, the software is not some kind of super secret code: it’s literally high-school math. The reason is probably the lack of competition because you can find phone from 60€ thousands time more powerful than a graphic calculator need to be.
OpenCalc will soon be available on KickStarter for pre-sales, probably at the same time or soon after the code and blue prints are released
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