Very interesting project. I am very busy with another open hardware project at his moment, but I can provide some tools, if someone wants to take this further, if you contemplate a **collaborative venture **. They were created in the context of open source scientific instruments made for practicing open science.
You can start with this template that helps a group of people collaborate on design (copy and remix as you please). The methodology is designed to leverage stigmergy and collective intelligence, which are not just empty words or buzzwords…
You can get inspired by our plant protein extruder, designed open source with DIY in mind. In order to have an impact, we create an open venture around this solution and build a dissemination network (the equivalent of marketing and sales, but we’re not selling a product, so we bypass market / transactional dynamics). To insure future stability we design ecosystem services (repositories, communications and peer learning tools, etc.) around this hardware solution. A model similar to Precious Plastic if you will.
The Raman spectrometer and other similar devices are very suitable for such open and collaborative ventures. The problem today is that everyone treats these instruments like a small / personal project and they get designed in an uncoordinated fashion. The true power of open science and open innovation is unleashed when all these instruments share standards, become interoperable and share features that ties them to the open culture and to underlying economic model. There’s no coherence because there is no true economic engine behind these projects. When we speak about a collaborative venture we go beyond the project. We project further into the future and connect with other things. We include economic considerations into the process. We see a bigger picture.
So you can collaborate on a project and make yet another stand alone device, or you can collaborate on a venture and add more coherence to the field, develop open science, open innovation and a commons-based peer-to-peer economy.
More about Collaborative Entrepreneurship.