About us
Tinkerforge is the affordable system of building blocks that will drastically simplify the implementation of your project. The modules are pluggable and they have an intuative API that is available for many programming languages. Through the high degree of abstraction the actual purpose of the project comes into focus while the technical implementation becomes a side issue. Tinkerforge is open source and Made in Germany.
The Tinkerforge GmbH was founded by us in 2011 to simplify the handling of embedded systems. Our goal is to make sure that a user of our system does not have to do any unnecessary tasks. It should be possible to work on the main task without beeing occupied by secondary tasks. To achieve this we want to offer one easy-to-use module per application. We started in 2011 with only a few modules. Through continuous development we were able to increase to amount of available modules to more than 70 and many more are planned. Our team consists of seven employees that are dedicated to the open source philosophy. We use open source tools and open our source codes, circuit diagrams and layouts. We believe that customers should be able to understand and change products they bought.
Our Team
Olaf Lüke
(Development Software)
Bastian Nordmeyer
(Development Hardware)
Matthias Bolte
(Development Software)
Steffen Polzin
(Testing, Packaging, Dispatching, Everything)
Nicolai Jakob
(Public Relations, Purchasing, Sales)
Tim Schneidermann
(Development Hardware, Quality Control)
Erik Fleckstein
(Development Software)
Mr Coffee
(Coffee)
Open Source
We promote the open source / open hardware philosophy by conviction. Not only are all of our products open source, we also use open source tools to create them. This starts with the compiler (GCC), but also includes the CAD tool (Freecad) and circuit board layout and design (KiCad). Currently we make 122 repositories on github available.
You can take a look at the source code or circuit layout at any time. If necessary you can modify the code or even use it for your own projects.
Our products improve every day because they are open source.
Made in Germany
We do nearly everything in-house. Starting with the hard- and software development right through to the testing and shipment of the products is done in-house. The only exception is the manufacture of our products.
The actual manufacturing, that is the parts placement onto the circuit board, is done by EMS businesses situated right next to us (photo is from Smyczek GmbH). In contrast to cheaper ems contractors from abroad we have a considerable increase in control over the quality of our products.