Hi - there’s a group of us at the University of Cambridge who are also very keen to see XOD grow again. I thoroughly agree with your thoughts about it providing a natural way to collect and implement hardware-software problem-solving. We’ve been using it with non-programmer biologists for DIY instrumentation - more details at www.biomaker.org
At least if we can bring together enthusiasts - we’ll be in a better position to take advantage of any opportunities that might come by. Victor Nakoryakov and his colleagues have done an amazing job getting us this far, but now unfortunately stalled by war. Certainly, one possibility would be to explore open source models, if one could identify some financial support, and programming expertise to help.