[RFC] Looking for hardware/software repos + issues for a 2-day contribution spree at PESU

Students Program FOSS Clubs
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TL;DR:
PES OpenSource (the PES University open source community) and Silicon (the ECE tech forum) are running a uni-wide contribution spree/hackathon on 7-8 Nov 2026. Instead of building throwaway projects, ~50 student teams will fork real open source hardware and software repos and work on real issues. We’re looking for repos and issues from maintainers like you​:raising_hands:

Who we are [PESOS | PES Open Source]

I am Rohini, a junior at PES and the co-founder of PES OpenSource (PESOS). Revived a few months ago, we have transformed from into a community of over 900 members across two campuses, supported by an active multi-year alumni network. We hold frequent events on all things FOSS, and recently became a part of the FOSS Clubs network! This contribution spree is an open-hardware initiative from our side to introduce students to FOSS in a fun way :slight_smile:

Why we’re posting this

Mr. Balu from Absurd Industries (@Balu_B) suggested we ask the community here, since the people who actually maintain these projects know best which issues are worth a student’s weekend. Balu Sir, if you know people who’d be up for this, please pull them in!

What MachZero is [https://machzero.vercel.app]

(Partners: Absurd Industries, PCBCupid, CraftifAI)

  • When: Sat 7 and Sun 8 Nov 2026, (7am-7pm both days)
  • Where: PES University, Ring Road Campus, Bengaluru
  • Who: ~50 teams (~200 students) from first through third years in ECE, CSE and other branches.
  • Tracks: hardware and software
  • How it works: over 3 rounds, teams are given an issue to work on from a repository. They fork a repo, tackle the issue as much as possible in the time frame, and explain their thinking. The top 10 teams present on stage to an industry panel on Sunday
  • How we judge: We judge thinking over the code. How well a team understood the repo, what plan was made, and why the process.
  • Post event: standout work can go upstream as PRs

What we’re asking you for

Maintainers don’t need to attend or commit any time on the weekend. Teams work on local forks, and our judges and mentors review the work.

All we need from you is a repo and a few issues. If you’d like to do more, say so! Dropping in for a call, or looking at a PR later, would be a bonus!

Reply with this, if you can:

  1. Hardware or software:
  2. What it does (1-2 lines):
  3. 2-5 issues students could realistically tackle in ~2 days (links):
  4. Setup difficulty (rough time to get it running):
  5. Hardware needed? (or can it be emulated/simulated?):
  6. Contact for follow-up (optional) :))

Repos that work best: active, a clear contribution guide, buildable by a first-timer without special gear, and a few well-scoped issues so several teams don’t collide.

Timeline

Please reply by 6 Nov (12pm) so that we could lock the repo list before the event. Late replies are still welcome, and we’ll add what we can.

Thank you!
Questions, ideas and feedback are all welcome below.

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You could consider my project jigita.

The project is a fun mix of hardware and software. Helps anyone create a soldering jig from a KiCAD board file - using 3D printing. It is quite a novel thing, and I don’t know of any equivalent project in the hardware world. So, this could be quite useful.

The project is CLI only at the moment.

I would propose exactly one one enhancement - a local GUI - which could even be an export plugin from KiCAD, depending on the expertise level of the contributor taking this up.

Pretty easy. The CLI was tested on Windows and Linux - and indeed I have even given workshop where the participants used Windows. All the dependencies are python packages.

The slight hitch might be that it depends on a one year old version of KiCAD - but that’s easily addressed by using that version.

Easily simulated in software. The minimum hardware you need is a two pin berg stick :slight_smile: Just a Raspberry Pi Pico works well too.

See the comprehensive demos and examples in the project’s github repo. Highly recommend you and participants to checkout my talk in the open hardware devroom at IndiaFOSS 2025.

This post has everything you need to contact me directly - you don’t have to read till the end - just the first post :slight_smile:

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