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Gathering Open Science Hardware is a global community of artists, researchers, activists, hackers, and hardware developers dedicated to making open science hardware ubiquitous by 2025. Sound like a lot of work, doesn't it?
Last week, thanks to Seeed, I had the opportunity to witness a conference like any other, an event as flexible as any other and as fun as a few others. From October 25 to 30th, I went to the county known as the bridge, Panama. I went there expecting the classical conference organization, with a schedule full of predecided activities, conferences, and some spaces to guide workshops. As a company, we prepared three workshops with that idea in mind. So, let me tell you the story of this unique event full of amazing people and ñeques!
I traveled from Mexico City to Panama on October 25 with a bag full of SenseCAP K1100 kits, one of our new products for the Internet of Things projects that we are presenting to everyone that wants to create projects to mitigate the global sustainability problems of our planet, hopping not to be stopped by the authorities for that (spoiler, it happened). Once I arrived at Tocumen airport in the periphery of Panamá City, surprised by the city's architecture during my trip to "La Ciudad del Saber, " my home for the next five days.
Day 1 (The surprises started): We received an introduction to GOSH; the introduction was in the main conference room. We also had the ñeque room, a lab with all the toys for electronics (with a lot of Seeed sensors! ), and the Perezoso room, a zone for talks and conferences that do not require hard tools. Then, an introduction about the principles and rules for the event started; the organizers talked about the importance of open hardware for science and what is considered open hardware for the community and from a legal perspective. Something pretty interesting about these talks is that you have an open conversation between the presenter and the community, looking to enrich the knowledge of everyone there.
This community looks to develop open hardware for formal science research, pointing to the fact that academia usually uses pretty expensive equipment, distancing the democratization of the knowledge they presume. The open science hardware community is motivated by the idea of more efficient use of knowledge, local solutions, diversity, and the global democratization of research, but more generally, in the inclusion of high-level technology to help.
Back to our history, we had an activity looking to meet each other; a high percentage of the participants were new to this conference (the last was in Shenzen in 2018). The activity was simple: talk with whoever you have in front for two minutes and then move to the right. I was amazed by all the people from so far, and I couldn't even imagine that people from Romania, Uk, Brazil, Africa, or the UK would be in Panamá for this event!
However, one of the group's main goals is to invest in projects to accelerate GOSH's mission. Last year, they distributed $420,000 USD for open-source hardware projects around the globe.
Day 2: The second day was the most occupied day; as I mentioned before, this conference is flexible, so flexible that people choose their own "unconference sessions" and how they want to invest the next four days that we have. So, you may think, "Ok, Mario, but what is an unconference session?" Basically, an unconference session is a conference facilitated by a participant who is not fully an expert in the area but is interested enough to open the dialog about it. For example, imagine that we had a group of ten people that wanted to talk about whales. Still, none of us is an expert on marine biology, specializing in whales, so we chose a facilitator that is interested enough to guide a talk, compiling and verifying the information that everyone is contributing to the talk. That could be the essence of the unconference sessions. Now, there are ways to catalog those sessions, such as exploratory sessions, where the group gathers perspectives on the topic or explores together the state-of-the-art of the topic, or mapping sessions, where you try to map the initiatives of the topic or build a picture of what we know about it, and also learning sessions, guided by someone with enough expertise to introduce the topic to others.
How are the topics proposed and selected? (Figure wall) Well, you take a sticky note of the color of your preference and paste it to propose the topic on the chosen wall, and then the magic starts. We (Seeed and I) proposed three workshops during the sticky note session: 1. Developing IoT projects in minutes with the SenseCAP K1100 kit for environmental and wildlife conservation; 2. How to embed artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things using the SenseCAP K1100 kit? and 3. Tailored Electronics Design: Create your own IoT sensors. There were an incredible number of proposed workshops and sessions where we could present the first and third workshops.
We had thirteen participants in our first workshop! Many people are interested in how we can create complex projects in just minutes.
Based on the available time, we introduced the SenseCAP k1100 and all the facilities we are creating in Seeed to help the makers and researchers get ideas on the ground in minutes. The first point we touched on was the introduction to Seeed for those who are not fully familiar with all we do, from electronics design to industrial IoT projects and from manufacturing to sustainability projects around the world!
Then, we started with an introduction to Arduino, as some of the participants needed to become more familiar with it; if you are not familiar with either, here is the main website: Arduino. Then, we talked about our new Vision AI sensor. Do you know you can implement AI models like neuronal networks in a single sensor? That's amazing. If you are curious, here is the amazing tutorial our coworker did for everyone! (Train and Deploy your own AI model into the Grove Vision AI). Finally, we explored the No-Code system, SenseCraft. A smart firmware to help you in your project development without any piece of code. Check this out! SenseCraft.
As a result, we got participants interested in building things with their students at the high school level, such as Ernesto, who wants to involve his high school students in animal conservation using IoT through Helium, or George. He is working with students on an autonomous car that can detect lego and will use the Vison AI sensor as an object detector!
(If you want to know more about the workshops, please feel free to send me an email at mario.dh1@seeed.cc).
Day 3 (Bella ciao: the phantom menace): We had an expedition to Gamboa, a town close to Panamá City. This region is a tourist zone now, but 70 years ago (approx) was a colony built for the Americans working on the Panama Canal. We started the expedition in an old building with the last hoist tower of the original equipment installed in the canal, a historical piece of metal from Ukraine to move the containers from the ships.
During the expedition, we had three main goals:
- Visit the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
- Meet DinaLabs (Digital Naturalism Labs).
- Visit the rainforest paths created by the Americans during the canal construction and the cold war.
This expedition was incredible; I didn't expect to find such amazing labs to study the biodiversity in the country and help the community with open-source technology. We started with the STRI, where some researchers showed us their works and the animals they work with, especially ants, butterflies, and bats. Do you know that the ant colonies can be the size of a soccer court? I know; it blew my mind.
Then, we visited DinaLabs, an open-hardware lab where Andy, one of the organizers of GOSH 2022, works and creates super fun stuff with recycled materials. Finally, we had the opportunity to explore the rainforest through an old path opened by the Americans in the 70s; our guide, Andrew, is a researcher focused on discovering the historical points that the forest is hiding. All this stuff happened in just one day! We returned to a small restaurant where the thoughts about Bella ciao for GOSH started!
Day 4 (Bella ciao strikes back): Tons of unconference sessions and another workshop to close these amazing days in the conference. We started the day with a recap of the community's accomplishments in the last ten years. Did you know that UNESCO recognized the term open-hardware, thanks to the GOSH community? That's absolutely remarkable! People worldwide fighting for the cause are making tremendous changes to democratize knowledge.
Many participants presented their projects in a demo space session, and we observed interesting things. First, some projects include using microscopes to observe bacteria in multiple light spectrums. A trackcamera project to detect and follow wild animals. The interesting part of this project is that some improvements were made during the conference! This CNC machine for chemical manipulation through test tubes is fully open for any lab that wants to reproduce it! Another interesting project was a machine for DinaLabs that recycles plastic to produce 3D printing materials! Also, we saw an amazing scientific monitoring system working around wild fields in the US ;).
Then the sessions started; we presented our second workshop! This time we got six participants looking to learn electronics design with open-source software called Eagle design by Autodesk, a powerful tool to create small or even industrial projects (look at our products in SeedStudio, 90 percent of our products are designed using this software). We talked a little about the rules you must follow to scale your project to the next level to optimize the manufacturing process. As you may know, electronic design is a fundamental part of the creation of smart devices or custom solutions for sustainability, for example, designing a PCB for extreme conditions monitoring, as Shannon from Strong Water Research Center, who is designing custom monitoring systems for environment study and conservation with the minimal necessary to have a long-term battery consumption! On the other side, you could design your custom mechanical keyboard, as many participants of our contest are doing! This skill is needed when you are doing projects that require low power consumption or using sensors for extreme weather, powerful microprocessors, or maybe you want to design your own plant's irrigator without using a complete prebuild system.
This software is an easy way to start creating your devices. Just remember; 1. Schematic, all the diagrams that will make your circuit operate as you want it to. 2. Layout is the part where you will design the actual PCB; this part will determine how the CNC machine will route your circuit. 3. Manufacture, remember to create your Gerber files and use our Fusion service. So, let's talk about Bella ciao. I know you are waiting to solve this clue!
As I mentioned, people worldwide with multiple areas of expertise, talents, languages, and cultures in one conference may create things that could surprise you. This time, music brings together multiple areas into a single song, and here are the results:
"Open your toolbox
Open your hardware
Open it now, open now, open now now now
We are the people
We love the research
collaboration for us all
---
Abre tu caja
de herramientas
Abrela ya, abrela ya, abrela ya ya ya
Somos la gente
Que investiga
colaboramos para el bien"
Day 5 (Bonus day): I had a few hours before to fly back to Mexico, so I grouped up with some friends I met at the conference to meet the Biomuseum, an amazing national museum designed by Frank Gehry, an architect from the US and winner of the Pritzker Prize. This museum holds the history of Panama and how the country created a bridge for life on the continent, changing the biodiversity when the life from the south faced the life from the north! Here are some photos to give you a little glimpse of this amazing place!
"As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people's ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life." - Amy Poehler
If you had told me about a conference like this six months ago, I would never believe you. I can say thank you, GOSH, for showing me a new perspective of how science should be done, a new perspective of how collaboration brings together people from all over the world. Thank you, Seeed, for the opportunity to travel to this conference and work on democratizing knowledge.
- Mario De Los Santos, 2022.
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