Windmill SAO

[!IMPORTANT]

Hackaday Europe 2026 and Open Hardware Summit 2026 folks:

Please use README.md from the rev1-rc2-wip branch.

Dutch tower mill in a SAO (Simple Add-on/Shitty Add-on) form factor.

The project consists of:

• 3D printed enclosure (see enclosure/)
• PCB design (see hardware/)
• PCB firmware (see firmware/)

Some components are available in the repository only as scripts that generate resources. See the releases for generated outputs.

Enclosure

Enclosure is built from a headless Python script that generates a FreeCAD model. Use FreeCAD 1.0 stable.

Windows

1. Add FreeCAD's bin/ directory to PATH. Usually C:\Program Files\FreeCAD 1.0\bin\

2. Generate the model:

   cd enclosure/
   freecadcmd model.py
   

Linux

1. Install FreeCAD:

   # Install FreeCAD
   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:freecad-maintainers/freecad-stable
   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install freecad
   

2. Generate the model:

   cd enclosure/
   freecadcmd model.py
   

PCB

The PCB was designed in KiCad. See hardware/ for the source files and releases for generated outputs.

Firmware

The PCB is built around CH32V003 and the firmware uses open-source ch32fun stack. Use PlatformIO to program the chip.

License

Open source hardware project: [OSHW] PL000026

This project in its entirety is licensed under the CERN-OHL-S-2.0 license - see the LICENSE file for details.