###Five points from Public Lab on starting a community-based technology development project: Lots of people have been interested in using the Public Lab network as a platform to build a DIY environmental science tool, and we've found this checklist to be a good starting point for such collaborations. * Start by writing to the [main Public Lab mailing list](/wiki/mailing-lists) to introduce your problem or idea * Try posting to our "requests" board with a request for collaborators (link forthcoming) * [Create a Tool wiki page](/wiki/new) to introduce your project and explain the environmental or health concern you're investigating * [Share your work in Research Notes](/post) with a consistent tag so people can follow your work as it develops * Create a “plots-projectname” [mailing list](/wiki/mailing-lists) as your group of collaborators grows, so that others can take part **Staff support:** Once you've completed the above, we're happy to help, but given our limited staff resources, we ask that you post a minimum of three research notes, and try to bring ten or more people together on a mailing list, at which point we can potentially provide the following: * Mentorship sit-down sessions * Listing your mailing list on the [Public Lab mailing list page](http://publiclab.org/wiki/mailing-lists) * Helping you grow your community through matchmaking * Assistance on joint fundraising for tutorials, tool assembly diagrams, videos, research supplies, community workshops and software for processgind data from the hardware * Assistance with tool distribution