Map OScH hardware demand (initially in academia)
This project started as a collaboration with the "Rede de Pesquisadores", when we did an online questionnaire with researchers in Brazil, to ask what was their knowledge on Open Source tools and what kind of tools they needed/missed in their labs.
It gained momentum and speed when got funding from Mozilla and Wikimedia Germany (via two fellowships) to have a person dedicated to the project (@amchagas).
This is the rationale behind it:
Many groups and people are building super cool and interesting hardware projects for science. Normally these projects start from a local demand from the group/main developer and are not necessarily targetting needs that are common to a big group.
So if we learn what are those needs, we can develop tools that will from the get go have a large user base and higher chances of seeing collaboration and further development.
The big dream in stages:
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We map the demand using online questionnaires, and make the raw data (only anonymous information) openly available
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We dig through the data and find common needs (example: devices that are needed by a large group of researchers)
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Together with volunteers, we build proof-of-principle devices (newly developed or further developed from existing projects)
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These devices are locally changed/updated to adapt to local realities (example: battery operating X mains operation)
- Calibration manuals/protocols will help in making sure devices built in different locations/conditions will achieve similar results, or at least will have very well characterized functioning.