Guides
A major goal of Public Laboratory is to produce simple and easy guides to construct many of our low-cost tools. Here are some of the illustrated guides, tutorials, and other supporting materials we've put together so far:
Aerial mapping
Grassroots Mapping with balloons and kites
- Grassroots Mapping Guide 2.0, (1mb pdf) - This improved version of the guide is more concise (prints on 4 pages, or a single 11x17 sheet, double sided) and has been updated with more recent, simpler, more reliable techniques. It is available for anyone to edit or modify as a Google Doc.
- http://grassrootsmapping.org/guide - Our first illustrated guide attempts to thoroughly explain how to construct and use a balloon mapping kit.
- Step by step slide presentation - all the drawings of the Grassroots Mapping Guide 2.0 shown one at a time on 15 slides. Useful for projecting during rig-building workshops.
Balloon Mapping Quick Start Guide
We made this one specifically for filling and flying our balloon kit, but the flying info is generally applicable.
Anyone can print, add to or edit the Google Doc, please translate it to new languages if you can!
Balloon Mapping Flight Checklist & Packing Lists
Sequential to-do lists and packing lists for every step of the process. Do it right every time! use a list.
Again, anyone can download, print, or edit the Google Doc.
Making Maps with MapKnitter
Public laboratory's open source MapKnitter.org tool: MapKnitter Guide
Translations
- Castellano/Spanish: Guía ilustrada de hacer mapas con globos o cometas
- Portuguese: Guia ilustrado para Mapear Comunidades de base com balões e pipas
- Georgian (older 5 page version): PDF (26mb)
- מדריך מאוייר למיפוי עצמאי עם בלונים או עפיפונים (older 5 page version): A4 PDF (3.1mb), Letter-sized PDF
- Korean: see research note by Jaekyung Lee
- Chilean: external site
- Ukrainian: Картографування за допомогою Повітряних куль та Зміїв (995kb PDF) Google Doc
- Russian: attached PDF
Spectrometry
- PLOTS DIY Spectrometer Guide v1.0.pdf (2 pages, black and white, 1.4 MB)
- PLOTS DIY Spectrometer construction (wiki page): http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/video-spectrometer-construction
Older spectrometry guides:
These may be out of date
- Making a spectrometer:
- plots-spectrometer-guide.pdf (17.4mb)
- plots-spectrometer-guide-small.pdf (4.3kb)
- Parts and Crafts revised spectrometry booklet (fantastic!): http://archive.publiclaboratory.org/download/partsandcrafts-spectrometer-guide.pdf (21mb, print quality)
In progress
We're constantly improving and exploring new ways of documenting and disseminating our designs. Here are some prototypes and planning pages:
- T-shirt guide - A t-shirt with instructions for balloon mapping printed on it.
In-progress Translations: