Raspberry Pi: a versatile tool for Biological Sciences
Over the nine-ish years since the release of our first model, we’ve watched grow a thriving global community of Raspberry Pi enthusiasts, hobbyists, and educators. But did you know that Raspberry Pi is also increasingly used in scientific research?...[more]
How DIY technologies are Democratizing Science https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03193-5?fbclid=IwAR3vWsUFhbUXPNx9ro4LlZbay7FuwS5aa07W1NqjjOAINhoXeuu-Oi9IstE
From Nature:
Open science and 3D printing are making it easier than ever for researchers to embrace do-it-yourself lab tools...[more]
Mango Wine how to make at home – Healthy Homemade Wine without Yeast
From cuoredicioccolato:
Alternative Electricity Source for Rural Africa? Using Wood to Fuel a Generator! (How to Build a Wood Gasifier w/Demonstration)
From Randomonium:
I made this gasifier a couple of years ago now as a second attempt at the technology. My first attempt had a few bugs. The blower wasn't able to move enough air, the unit was over-sized for the amount of gas produced, and the gas wasn't cool enough upon exiting the gasifier, resulting in an unsatisfactory amount of condensate getting to the engine. So in this video, I show you how I built my new and improved homemade gasifier out of parts I could find for little to no cost. I use mine occasionally for generating electricity when the need arises...[more]
Community science: Not just a hobby
Chris Tachibana writes:
Community science groups have an inclusive, open-door ethos that makes them a natural place to learn informally about scientific careers. Members explore, create, and problem-solve as they work together on do-it-yourself projects in conservation, synthetic biology, and more. If you join a community science lab, don’t expect a straightforward path to a job. But do expect to meet potential mentors and advisors, make local connections, and gain skills to support your professional development...[more]
Banana Brandy – Making Ugandan Waragi (Moonshine)
From Tech Ingredients:
#OpenSource #Arduino blood glucose meter shield via @hackaday
From Hackaday:
Introduction
Diabetes is a serious disease which affects nearly 400 million people worldwide and is the 8th leading cause of death. Blood glucose meters play a very important role in managing diabetes as they provide the patient the ability to monitor their blood glucose levels from home and at any time of the day. The pharmacy provides a large number of blood glucose meters and accompanying test strips. Typically, the patients insert one of the disposable test strips into the meter, prick their finger, load a droplet of blood into the test strip, wait a few seconds and get an instant reading of the current blood glucose level...[more]
A DIY approach to automating your lab
Nature reports:
Do-it-yourself projects give researchers the equipment they need at bargain prices. But making your own technology requires commitment and time, and it is rarely easy...[more]
Forensic Science: Building Your Own Tool for Identifying DNA https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project-ideas/BioChem_p028/biotechnology-techniques/forensic-science-building-your-own-tool-for-identifying-dna?fbclid=IwAR126A2CL-KPP3vX2MoJjg6uOn8JtciWo4GnAoKMcuXnuZSsGVPWksMxECs#procedure
Building the Gel Electrophoresis Chamber
To start this science project, you will first need to build your gel electrophoresis chamber. The plastic box will be the actual gel chamber, the stainless steel wire will be the electrodes, the batteries will be the power source, and you'll use the Styrofoam to make a comb for creating wells in your gel...[more]
Making A DIY Modular Synth In Africa – Bamanya Brian
Bamanya Brian writes
via Synthopia
A few months ago I dipped my feet into the world of modular synths. The entire African continent has only one shop selling Euro rack modules, which is really sad. Also, Eurorack modules are over priced, for someone in my context. My only option was to go the DIY route.
I looked up schematics and started modifying some circuits and building others from scratch. All parts in my modular were sourced locally. In a few months I have learnt so much about electronics and analog synths and I have built what is an almost decent modular synth.
I believe this is Africa’s first home made modular synth.
I hope this video inspires someone out there to build their own synth. Feel free to ask any questions and please share and subscribe.
The DIY Tinkerers Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence https://www.wired.com/story/diy-tinkerers-artificial-intelligence-smart-tech/?fbclid=IwAR1fm9yW1xamQ7jQOPSSGNlOkVdS0NDbEWtp8MeUhVPxpTtlFC8bdq3rINk
From Wired:
IN LATE WINTER of 1975, a scrap of paper started appearing on bulletin boards around the San Francisco Peninsula. “Are you building your own computer?” it asked. “Or some other digital black-magic box? If so, you might like to come to a gathering.”More here
No PhDs needed: how citizen science is transforming research – Nature
From Nature:
Projects that recruit the public are getting more ambitious and diverse, but the field faces some growing pains.
Citizen science — active public involvement in scientific research — is growing bigger, more ambitious and more networked. Beyond monitoring pollution and snapping millions of pictures of flora and fauna, people are building Geiger counters to assess radiation levels, photographing stagnant water to help document the spread of mosquito-borne disease, and taking videos of water flow to calibrate flood models. And an increasing number are donating thinking time to help speed up meta-analyses or assess images in ways that algorithms cannot yet match.More here
The movement is surfing wider societal forces, including a thirst for data; the rise of connectedness and low-cost sensor technologies; and a push to improve the transparency and accessibility of science. Increasingly, government institutions and international organizations are getting in on the action. The US and Scottish environmental protection agencies, for example, have incorporated citizen science in their routine work. The United Nations Environment Programme is exploring ways of using citizen science to both monitor the environment and stoke environmental concern. And the European Commission has made a range of funding opportunities available for citizen science within its €80-billion (US$92-billion) Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
Attend re-publica 2018 workshop #Ghana – Making for Biotech in Africa: Manufacturing Low-Cost Lab Equipment
An upcoming workshop from Harry Akligoh from the forthcoming re-publica 2018:
Short thesis
Using 3D printing innovation, we will hack and build simple low-cost DIY open science lab equipment.
Description
Basic science and biotech research are driven by top-notch instrumentation. Unfortunately, the lack of instrumental access in labs in Africa affects how research is done. DIY Biohacking and Open science hardware, a movement that embraces the use of maker culture and open science, enables scientists from low resource backgrounds to use open manufacturing protocols and biology principles to build their own lab equipment. This workshop will re:connect DIY Bio lovers, tech makers and students...[more]
MAKERphone lets you build your own smartphone for $89
From Mashable:
In March 2017, 18-year old developer Albert Gajšak launched the MAKERbuino, an educational Kickstarter project that let anyone build an 8-bit, Arduino-based gaming console.
The project was a big success, overshooting its funding goal by 10 times. And now, Gajšak has used everything he learned from that experience to launch a more ambitious project: the MAKERphone.
The MAKERphone is again, an Arduino-based, DIY mobile phone which comes disassembled, as a kit. By building the phone yourself, you'll learn a bit about programming in environments such as Python and Scratch as well as basics of electronics...[more]
How to Turn Plants Into Tinctures, Like an Ancient Alchemist
From Gastro Obscura:
A beginner’s guide to extracting flavors from herbs and flowers.
...Theoretical curative properties aside, there are delicious reasons to extract flavors from plants. Compared with the complicated process of distillation, infusion (the method of stewing petals, stalks, or leaves in alcohol, oil, honey, or water) is nearly foolproof. Steeped in tradition, it’s an easy and affordable way to jazz up foods and drinks from trifles to tipples.More here
We asked Sarah Lohman, a historic gastronomist and the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, to lay out a recipe for making simple infusions at home.
Build Your Own Acoustic Levitator
From Makerfabs:
Use acoustic waves to hold in mid-air samples such as water, ants or tiny electric components. This technology has been previously restricted to a couple of research labs but now you can make it at your home.
How To Make Soap At Home In #Nigeria via @BattaBoxNIGERIA
A BattaBox report on the DIY Space:
A new way to equip Africa’s science labs: get students to build their own
Over at The Conversation:
LabHack. is an event that aims to inspire budding innovators to take matters into their own hands and build the equipment they need to learn. Undergraduate student teams compete to design low-cost versions of basic laboratory equipment using hardware available in a local African context...[more]
Building A Gasometer To Store Wood Gas And Other Bio-Fuels
via Hackaday:
Old solutions are often so elegant and effective that they keep coming back. The gasometer, or gas holder, is one such example. Now [NightHawkInLight] has built one for storing the wood gas he’s been experimenting with, and it’s pretty neat to watch it rise and fall as he first adds gas and then burns it off. The mechanism couldn’t be simpler...[more]
A How-To on Aquaponics Farming in Africa from Unitan Aquafarms
Unitan Aquafarms was founded by Nelson R. Mmbando and his partners Robert King’ori and Austin Bono their goal is the promotion of sustainable agriculture through the use of aquaponic gardening:
: Watch their series of DIY videos here
: Watch their series of DIY videos here
Kite : An Open Hardware Android Smartphone
From Hackaday:
More here
Make & 3D print your own phone with sensors, displays, electronics, batteries and antennas. Customize Android and do exactly your thing!
In #Uganda an Open Source Toolkit – RootIO Radio
Low-Cost, High-Connectivity, Resilience
RootIO Radio stations are tiny FM radio stations that require little investment, maintenance, or contribution from the community, yet at the same time offer more and better modes of interaction than traditional stations. After a few days of installation and training, stations can start to facilitate new economic opportunities, new opportunities for expression and deliberation, and provide information across, into, and out of the community they serve.
The Commoner Scientists
The Commoner Scientists is a documentary project on DIYBiology across the globe.
Genetics and molecular biology may seem complicated. However, DIYBiology enthusiasts claim that everybody can understand them, and even better : use them ! Dive into a world inhabited by passionate people, more or less silly projects and citizen right fights...[more]
Do-it-yourself science is taking off
How DIY communities are pushing the frontiers of science
Lucy Patterson reports back from Science Hack Day Berlin
DIY Acoustic Levitation
This Interview Was Conducted on an Anonymous, DIY Cell Phone Network – Meet Sopranica
Over at Motherboard:
Sopranica is a surveillance-free cellular network built by volunteers from around the world. It’s easy to use and free to set up.More here
"Utilities are a thing of the past" – Making Your Own Power Using Recycled Laptop Batteries
From Motherboard:
Making Spaces for “Makers” in #Nigeria: Why It is a Must Do…
Uchechukwu Ajuonuma writes:
I might be tempted to jump very fast into a request for spaces for “Makers” in Nigeria. But to clear some ambiguity, it may be fine if I can tell you a little story to paint a clearer picture of my point...[more]
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An anarchist takes on the drug industry — by teaching patients to make their own meds
A follow-up story on the work of "EpiPencil" maker Michael Laufer covered earlier:
More here...The de facto leader behind the leaderless collective Four Thieves Vinegar, Laufer is now on to his next project: He’s developing a desktop lab and a recipe book meant to equip patients to cook up a range of medicines, including a homemade version of the expensive hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, on their kitchen counters.
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Health professionals have strenuously warned against DIY pharmaceuticals, but Laufer sees his work as a moral crusade against the patent laws and market forces that let drug companies price vital remedies out of reach for many patients.
“To deny someone access to a lifesaving medication is murder,” he said. And “an act of theft [of intellectual property] to prevent an act of murder is morally acceptable.”
DIY Powerwall Builders Are Using Recycled Laptop Batteries to Power Their Homes
Louise Matsakis reporting for Motherboard:
In May of 2015, Elon Musk unveiled Tesla's Powerwall. The battery allows homeowners to store electricity, either from the grid or solar panels. The tech was alluring to those interested in alternative energy, but for many, the starting price of $3,000 was too steep. The battery could only store up to 10 kWh of electricity, or around a third of the amount the average American household consumes a day (the newer version can hold up to 14 kWh).
For some alternative energy enthusiasts, Musk's deal wasn't good enough. Instead of buying Tesla's Powerwall, they build their own DIY versions using recycled batteries for a fraction of the cost. Then, naturally, they share their creations and swap knowledge with other hobbyists across the internet. DIY powerwall enthusiasts congregate on a dedicated forum, in Facebook groups, and on YouTube. They live all over the world: I spoke to makers on three different continents and a half dozen time zones...[more]
Four Thieves Vinegar Collective is Kickstarting a DIY revolution for Legal Drugs
Kristen V. Brown writes:
More here
...Laufer has a doctorate in mathematics, not medicine. By day, he’s a math professor at Menlo College, a small private college in the heart of Silicon Valley. He’s also a pharmahacker, the most visible and outspoken member of a small community of hobbyist chemists who believe that pharmaceuticals, like some software, should be open-source and accessible to all. In 2015, he founded the Four Thieves Vinegar collective, a loose consortium of hackers and scientists aiming to kickstart a DIY revolution for legal drugs.
Africa tackles biohacking for healthcare
In the Makery
They organized in May a seminar on biohacking in Yaoundé. Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou and Jérôme Avom explain in what way open science would make access to healthcare easier in developing countries.More hereOn May 23-24, 2017, the Association for the promotion of open science in Haiti and in Africa (Apsoha) and the Yaoundé Higher institute of medical technology (ISTM) with support from the international network Open Science Hardware (Gosh), organized in the Cameroonian capital the first seminar dedicated to biohacking and open hardware equipment in healthcare: “Biohacking in the medical field: perspectives for developing countries”. On the first day were presented the different advances, uses and applications of DIYbio in the medical field. The second day was dedicated to workshops where participants had to apply and contextualize acquired knowledge.
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The NanoStillery™ – Whiskey Distillery
via Hackaday from Goat Industries:
The world's smallest fully automatic whiskey still built with safety as the foremost consideration.
Charles Ofori’s Portable Science Set
OMG Voice reports:
More hereCharles Ofori designed a portable science set for students which are also affordable. The highly scalable science laboratory can fit into a bag and can be set up on a student’s desk.
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The Landscape of Artificial Intelligence Quantitative funds and DIY funds
Etienne Brunet writes:
High frequency traders are not anymore the cool kids on the block. Margins are shrinking and major players such as Virtu and KCG are now merging to profit from economies of scale. On the other hand, artificial intelligence and quantitative strategies seem to be the new solutions to the alpha generation headache. There has also been lots of news (noise) about DIY (Do It Yourself) hedge funds (Wired, Bloomberg and also FT). More recently, Point72 announced that it handed its first check of c.$10m of the $250m promised to Quantopian.
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The AI & Quantitative startup spaces are interesting and have the potential to disrupt a $3.2tn industry. In order to better understand the different actors, I tried to map and to categorise the different players in the market. Please find below a landscape mapping and thereafter the full list of companies as well as some brief comments...[more]
Field Instruments: Build it yourself
Roberta Kwok writing in Nature:
From custom wildlife collars to underwater recorders, a tailor-made field device is within a biologist's grasp...[more]
Building Wireless Meshes in Ibadan, #Nigeria
From Village Telco:
Michael Adeyeye has been a member of the Village Telco community since its earliest days. Back then he was a graduate student at the University of Cape Town but has since gone on to earn his PhD there. He is now a lecturer in the faculty of Informatics and Design at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. As a researcher, Michael has published papers on Village Telco and has volunteered his time in helping to deploy one of the first Village Telco test networks but more recently has set up his own Village Telco network in his home city in Ibadan, Nigeria..More hereVillage Telco Deployment in Ibadan The map shows the different Mesh Potato nodes in the network and strength of the links between them. Working through his own company, Asmicom, Michael partnered with colleagues in Ibadan to set up the Ibadan Wireless User Group. Asmicom’s goal is to transfer technical know-how to Nigeria and empower her youths. Their first project was to deploy a Mesh Potato network at a housing estate in Ibadan. The estate is home to a number of hostels for postgraduate students (studying at nearby institutions), offices and business centres. There are single family houses on the estate mostly occupied by their owners. The students, like the home owners, wanted a reliable way of communicating with one another. In addition, the organizations (which are mostly non-profit organizations) wanted an affordable communication service that could be used as an alternative to the costly GSM mobile service.
The map shows the different Mesh Potato nodes in the network and strength of the links between them.
#Arduino Controlled Micro Distilliery
From Hackaday Richard Baguley reports:
Booze, they say, is one of the major factors that shaped human history. And creating new and faster ways of making booze has always been a big engineering problem, so this project by [Goat Industries] is rather interesting. It’s a completely automated micro-distillery called the NanoStillery...[more]
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Making high-performance batteries from junkyard scraps
In Next Big Future:
Take some metal scraps from the junkyard; put them in a glass jar with a common household chemical; and, voilà, you have a high-performance battery.
"Imagine that the tons of metal waste discarded every year could be used to provide energy storage for the renewable energy grid of the future, instead of becoming a burden for waste processing plants and the environment," said Cary Pint, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Vanderbilt University...[more]
Jellyfish – A Mini DIY Educational Aquaponics Kit
From Kijani Grows:
Smart Aquaponics is a fun way to study STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math) and to grow your own food. We designed this kit for Makers of all ages as a tool for reducing friction in integrated and project-based learning.More here
This kit is designed to make learning STEAM easy by focusing on fundamental knowledge, which is the foundation to creating great engineers. The Mini DIY Smart Aquaponics Kit combines aquaculture, farming and robotics to build an internet-enabled aquaponics garden ecosystem.
Oakland Hackers Try to Make Insulin and Disrupt Biotech
Andrew Stelzer at KQED News reports:
How many times have you had a conversation about when are “they” going to find a cure for the common cold, or make decent-tasting vegan cheese? Well, what if you had a chance to do it yourself?
That’s the idea behind the trend of do-it-yourself biohacking: to get regular people involved in scientific discovery. A group of DIY scientists at a new crowdfunded lab in Oakland are doing just that...[more]
Books You Should Read: The Annotated Build-It-Yourself Science Laboratory
Cairo’s Nerds Scrape Together an Egyptian Tech Scene
On Bloomberg:
Wary of the cops, Egyptian DIYers are grinding and 3D-printing the beginnings of a startup economy.
Pi-Top | A build-it-yourself Raspberry Pi based laptop
A raspberry pi product:
pi-top is a DIY laptop you build yourself. It’s the perfect tool to help you start learning how to code, create awesome devices, and take your knowledge to the next level.
Converting Hot Air to Cool Air using Zero Electricity with the Eco-Cooler
From Architechpreneur:
More here
Eco-cooler is made up of repurposed plastic bottles and density board / any sturdy board. That’s it! It is made up of recycled materials.
THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT:
The neck of plastic bottles, helps compress the air. As the hot air pushed towards the rim of the bottle, it starts expanding. The rapid expansion of the warm air-cools the air down.
SIMPLE IDEA BEING ADOPTED ACROSS THE COUNTRY
This creative and sustainable idea made the hot, humid temperature to be bearable. It decreased by 5° C. It is now being adopted by the villagers across the country.
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Maker Scientists Build a World-Class Lab
Annalee Newitz writing in ArsTechnica:
Hope Jahren's memoir about becoming a biogeoscientist—someone who studies the deep geological history of plant life on Earth—is the year's biggest surprise bestseller. Humbly titled Lab Girl, it's the story of how Jahren escaped a working class town to become a young scientist in the high-tech labs of UC Berkeley and Georgia Tech. It's also a fascinating introduction to the ways plants survive, even though they can never flee from danger. But most of all, it's a crazy adventure about two broke geeks, Jahren and her lab technician Bill Hagopian, who somehow scrape together enough cash and spare parts to build lab instruments unlike anything the scientific world had ever seen. You won't be able to put this book down, and that's a quality one rarely finds in a nonfiction book about science...[more]
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Open source and DIY hardware for DNA nanotechnology labs
Over at NCBI:
Abstract
A set of instruments and specialized equipment is necessary to equip a laboratory to work with DNA. Reducing the barrier to entry for DNA manipulation should enable and encourage new labs to enter the field. We present three examples of open source/DIY technology with significantly reduced costs relative to commercial equipment. This includes a gel scanner, a horizontal PAGE gel mold, and a homogenizer for generating DNA-coated particles. The overall cost savings obtained by using open source/DIY equipment was between 50 and 90%.
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DIY Atomic Force Microscope
From Instructables:
More here...the DIY AFM was reported by Nature Nanotechnology 10, 480 (2015) that the DIY AFM is assembled by junior high school student and successfully measure PM 2.5 particles.
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Microscopes are awesome! They help us see things that are not visible to bare eyes. Optical microscopes can only see micro scale (1/1,000 millimeter) structures. However, you can explore nano scale (1/1,000,000 millimeter) world by Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM). Yet a stock-ready AFM usually costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy. Thus we are providing you a solution to make your own AFM optomechanical system out of daily used parts including optical pickup unit (OPU) in a DVD player and piezo buzzers in your watch.