As part of my project with Mozilla and to support growth, I want to map the equipment demand/necessities researchers and educators have inside Academia.
I started with this sub community because this is where I’ve been working for the last 10 years, so it is where I’m better equipped to investigate.
by no means should we stop here, or wait for this to be done, before start working to map demands/necessities in other communities!
I already started working with networks in Brazil and we ran a pilot survey. The questions, answers and code to process the data is under constant update on Github @map_fosh_demand .
Some have already contributed with ideas and suggestions, and it would be an honor to have more input from you lovely people!
Right now I would like feedback on the part of Open Source, which I think is a bit weak, and also on how we ask people if they would be willing to test things from new brands. Sounds a bit like a promo for a company, and that is not the goal… Otherwise general suggestions and comments are always welcome
We’ve got an extra grant from the mozilla foundation and worked up a “distributed hackathon” event, where we will cover the costs for parts/components for participants that want to build the first prototypes of the devices mapped on the survey.
The call for participation should come out on monday (08.04.2019)! So stay tuned!
The event idea is being debated here and we welcome more ideas/suggestions and criticism!
Calling all makers, DIYers, researchers and educators: let’s build the science and education tools people need
Good news! Our survey on demand of open source hardware tools for education and science has finished, and results of the mapping project are in.
In this second stage we want to engage communities and build the tools to address people’s needs.
To achieve this we will run a distributed building event; more details can be found here.
Briefly, people interested should apply in groups of at least three members, be able to dedicate at least 8h per week to build and document their prototypes over a period of 3 months.
We will cover costs for components up to 800 dollars and provide support with documentation tasks, knowledge generation and project development through weekly check ins and bringing in external expertise when necessary.
By the end of the 3 month period we expect groups to gather online, share their experiences and discuss ways to take their projects further.
30/07/2019 update:
Sorry for the long break in between updates, but things switched into gear and I had little time to write down things.
so we got several applications and selected 7 groups to develop tools.
The groups were distributed in different places/countries:
1 group in the Netherlands
1 group in Ghana
1 group in Cameroon
1 group in the UK
1 group in the USA
1 group in Peru
1 group in Argentina
Some of the groups came from the Gosh community, some of the groups were introduced to it.
Some groups developed more then one tool.
Tools developed/ in development are:
Centrifuge
Incubator
Shaker
Plate reader
Flow through colorimeter
Micromanipulator
Behavioural box
PCR machine
Bio printer
Syringe pump
all of the designs, together with developer info and ways to contact them are present on the github organization we created for the umbrella project https://github.com/FOSH-following-demand
Outcomes:
Other than the prototypes and documentation, some groups started interacting with one another for co-development.
A part of the whole group is preparing an application for OLX, to create an “Open Leaders program” for open source hardware.
Some groups are still having calls with their mentors, as they want to keep developing and improving their tools.
Next steps:
Write up about this whole project
Find funding sources to implement this for a second time
Work with the groups to turn their projects into academic papers
Hi Andre
I have been looking at the las community call and the repositories.
Great work! Thanks.
Sorry that we didn’t advance that much the flow through colorimeterin but the latinamerican residences took a lot of our time.
Hopefully when @pablocremades comes back we will work to complete this project.
I thought we did?
I mean everything is hosted on Github (which wasn’t microsoft when we first started, I think). the surveys were conducted using Limesurvey, and the landing page is jekyll/github pages/markdown mix.
Some of the conversation happened here, some of it in Slack (which is not open source), but other then this. everything else using as open tools as we could find?
I can do that!
but here again: 
