7B Industries develops open source software and open hardware for under-resourced communities, collaborating with practitioners who bring the domain knowledge that drives the work forward.

The philosophy behind the work is straightforward: build tools that give communities and practitioners the means to solve their own problems, and trust that the people closest to a problem understand it better than any outside engineer ever could. That means everything 7B produces is freely licensed and designed to be adapted. Some projects begin with a practitioner's direct input. Others start as something that simply seems like it should exist, and are released in hopes of finding the researchers and communities who might find it useful and want to collaborate. Without that practitioner feedback and collaboration, a project may go dormant until someone shows up who needs it.

7B Industries is a one-person company, founded in 2015, that generates some income through open source consulting, but is primarily sustained by a commitment to the work itself. Projects have spanned open hardware for wildlife research, assistive technology, community network infrastructure, and coastal simulation tools for climate-threatened island nations. 7B also participates in the broader open science and open hardware communities, including GOSH (Gathering for Open Science Hardware).

The projects themselves are the best explanation of what 7B is. You can find them on the Hardware page.