If like me you are running GNU/Linux and have spent a little money on a nice LCD/LED screen (or simply a modern laptop with great colour and resolution) you may have noticed that getting your colours right has been a challenge: indeed all the screen calibration devices are proprietary, do not have native software running on GNU/Linux and are rather pricey. Well this is over! Richard Hughes from the GNOME project among other things has just launched a fully open source hardware/software colorimeter project: the ColorHug!

It has a GPL bootloader, GPL firmware image and GPL hardware schematics and PCBs. It’s faster than the proprietary hardware, and more importantly a lot cheaper. […] I’m offering a 20% discount on each unit, on the assumption the first users will be testing the firmware and reporting problems. If you want to support a cool open source project, I’m asking £48 for each unit, plus postage and packaging.

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As the main website puts it the discount is based on the understanding you’re helping out testing the hardware and software and it might be a bit more complicated than just plug-and-play. You will always be able to update the firmware to the latest versions as the hardware is improved.

Well this is what I’ve been looking for for years so I already made my pre-order and if like me you’ve been longing to see real colours on your screens and can help out with the project then just go and pre-order yours as well!