Slashdot Mirror
Modular Science is Building Hardware and Software for Lab Automation (Video)
Modular Science is something Tim Lord spotted at last month's O'Reilly Solid Conference in San Francisco. Its founder, Peter Sand, has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT. He's scheduled to speak at this year's OSCON, and his speaker blurb for that conference says, "He is the founder of ManyLabs, a nonprofit focused on teaching math and science using sensors and simulations. Peter also founded Modular Science, a company working on hardware and software tools for science labs. He has given talks at Science Hack Day, Launch Edu, and multiple academic conferences, including SIGGRAPH." And now he's also been interviewed on Slashdot. Note that there are plenty of lab automation systems out there. Peter is working on one that is not only "an order of magnitude cheaper" than similar devices, but is also easy to modify and expand. It's the sort of system that would fit well not just in a college-level lab, but in a high school lab or a local makerspace. (Alternate Video Link)
Particularly for schools, Vernier Software and Technology, has continually added sensors, now about 60 sensors, over the last 33 years.
http://www.vernier.com/
Some sensors include carbon dioxide, water flow, radiation, respiration, soil moisture, spectrometer, UV.
I have about 20 of them for my child at home, and hope to get the blood pressure sensor for myself.
Being for schools, they are the least expensive sensors I've seen.
All these sensors plug into their Labquest 2 interface (or one of their older interfaces) which looks more like a smartphone with touch screen, WiFi, Bluetooth, and several device ports. Top 10 ranking high schools like Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax county use these, though that high school has also had genetic sequencers for the last 15 years.
I'm glad to see competition, but one should never overlook what has dominated this arena for decades.