Are you thinking about developing kits with Public Lab through our Community Kits initiative? This is a short overview of the steps that contributors and potential partners will go through in order to begin developing kits for sale through the store. This is a new initiative, so this list may be fine-tuned as we evolve (and it's likely that some items on this list may not weigh equally for every kind of kit, project or publication). A more comprehensive overview of these items can be seen here. Please post your questions, suggestions, thoughts below!
Prerequisites checklist
To be considered for listing, and before being listed in the Public Lab Store, the following standards must be met. The Open Hardware Community Manager, other Public Lab staff, and active members of the community are here to support you in the following:
- Your kit and method is open-source and available to all.
- Your kit is designed to be accessible.
- You support your kit by providing documentation, instructions, and activities on the PL website.
- You are actively engaged with PL users around Q/a, replications, etc
- You offer a transparent timeline for development
- Above information is made easily available on the Methods Template
Here are some projects preparing to join the Community Kits program:
| Title | Updated | Version | Views | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coqui conductivity sensor | 2 days ago by zengirl2 | 44 | 12,040 | 18 |
| SERC | 10 months ago by warren | 24 | 289 | 2 |
| Hydrogen Sulfide Copper Pipe Testing | 11 months ago by stevie | 13 | 887 | 3 |
| Basic Microscope Kit | 11 months ago by asnow | 25 | 936 | 4 |
| Photometer Kit Breakdown | about 1 year ago by programmer1200 | 7 | 272 | 2 |
| Mini Pearl Logger | about 1 year ago by cfastie | 6 | 637 | 1 |
16 Comments
Looks great! We're working on this for the Basic Microscope and the exploratory Hydrogen Sulfide Copper Pipe Kit too! Wondering how we should track this with you? Is there something we should do on those wiki page?
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Great question! The best thing to do is to keep adding content to your pages following the Method Template, which both of these projects are already doing. Both of these projects are getting close to production, and folks have been documenting progress (using the Q/A feature, replicating activities, etc) along the way. At this point, both the Microscope and H2S detecting teams will start working with the Kits team to plan for inclusion in the store. Since these tools are in the first cohort of Community Kits projects, we expect that we'll be fine-tuning this process along the way, and will be documenting it all as we move forward.
Also: using the tag community-kits-prep on your methods page will add a link to the Community Kits page! It's a great way to let other folks keep track of what's making its way to the store.
Hi If I have a project how do I join the Community Kits program, I designed a photometer for analyzing turbidity.
Hi programmer1200, that's an excellent question! I see you've got some content up about your project already, so the next thing you should do is start building a page using the method template, where you can start gathering how-to's, posting activities, etc. If you're available this coming Monday, Feb 5th at 1pm you can also join us for Open Hour, where we'll be talking a little more about Community Kits with some of the people who currently have projects in the pipeline. Looking forward to hearing more about your work!
Hi, our KnowFlow team is interested! Here's our documentation: https://publiclab.org/wiki/knowflow Sorry we didn’t update this page for a while... now we are trying some cheaper sensors~ and Rockets is really working on how to make it compatible with riffle.
Hi shanlter, that's great! I know folks have been excited to the KnowFlow evolving. Now that the riffles have been sent out and more people are using them, it might be possible to post questions about working with the riffle (or even other kinds of dataloggers) on the Q/A board. I bet that other people would be interested in how you're trying to make that work as well. Thanks for posting, we'll follow up more soon!
Hi, @AyakoM -- we're sort of thinking about the SERC manual ( #serc ) as part of our community kits program, even though it's more of a Public Lab Press project... anyways just to loop you in over here too! Looking forward to seeing a blurb on the manual and check out the SERC page that already exists here:
https://publiclab.org/wiki/serc
Hi, @cfastie - shall we tag https://publiclab.org/mini-pearl-logger as a community kit candidate? I really appreciate all the work you've been putting into documentation, activities, parts lists, etc!
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Also -- @kanarinka -- would it be possible to have the #coqui be part of the first batch of community kits? The page is already really well documented, of course!
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Oh I would love that! Do you all have some bandwidth to help support it? I'm happy to help support people who want to use it or run the activity in their classrooms. We also have the colorful Sensor Journalism booklet that we made which demos a way to use the coqui with learners in a workshop situation. I think the one thing that is missing is an up-to-date parts list
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Hi @kanarinka -- if you can help us out with an updated parts list, we'd be happy to include this in our first group of Community Kits -- I think you have everything else ready to go! Do you know if the list in this note is for 15x kits @ $277.53? #11209
awesome!!
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Yay! The list in that note is correct, though there are a couple other things that are helpful to have that are not shown (like the probe made from the top of a water bottle with two screws in it and alligator clips to attach that to the breadboard). I'm sending you a digikey parts list (via email) from when we made five kits for my class last year with the exact part names.
Hi @kanarinka - awesome! Yes of course and the guide can go with. I added the shopping cart you sent to the #coqui wiki page at http://publiclab.org/coqui -- can we attach the PDF there too?
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Cool - I added a new activity here: https://publiclab.org/notes/kanarinka/03-01-2018/sensor-journalism-a-guide-for-educators?_=1519946308 and I also added a link to the guide from our Coqui tutorial page.
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Amazing!!! I'm trying to get some folks from AS220 to add their wind sensors via community kits too -- NASA folks are very interested!
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