Public Lab Archives

Public Lab Community Spotlights: 4 Projects

Make: Editors

January 7th, 2020January 28th, 2020

Public Lab’s contributions come from all over the globe. Here are a few of the members that are providing tools for all to use. ROCKETS.XIA, co-founder of Mushroom Cloud Makerspace Location: Shanghai, China Our project, Knowflow, is a water quality monitoring project funded by the Green Seed foundation and Mushroom Cloud Maker Space, with contributions from Shan […]

Build Yourself Some Science: Inside Public Lab’s Open Source Tools

By Bronwen Densmore

Bronwen Densmore

is Public Lab’s Open Hardware Community Manager. She comes from background in art, fabrication and academic librarianship. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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January 7th, 2020January 28th, 2020

In the summer of 2012, I came across an event listing for a kite building workshop and the next thing I knew I was on a loading dock in Brooklyn, NY, building kites and solar balloons with two of Public Lab’s founders. Seven years later, I am Public Lab’s Open Hardware Community Manager — one […]

How Public Lab Enables Environmental Mapping Through Collaborative Science

By Shannon Dosemagen

Shannon Dosemagen

Shannon Dosemagen is an anthropologist by training and a community organizer and informal science educator by experience.

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January 6th, 2020January 28th, 2020

In May 2010 I set out early one morning with a small group of concerned Gulf Coast residents, headed to meet a boat captain who would take us to the Chandeleur Islands, a chain of barrier islands in southeast Louisiana. Within minutes of leaving the harbor and navigating out into the Gulf of Mexico, […]

Tune into Public Lab’s Community Science Tool-Building Workshops This Month

By Mike Senese

Mike Senese

Mike Senese is a content producer with a focus on technology, science, and engineering. He served as Executive Editor of Make: magazine for nearly a decade, and previously was a senior editor at Wired. Mike has also starred in engineering and science shows for Discovery Channel, including Punkin Chunkin, How Stuff Works, and Catch It Keep It.

An avid maker, Mike spends his spare time tinkering with electronics, fixing cars, and attempting to cook the perfect pizza. You might spot him at his local skatepark in the SF Bay Area.

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October 4th, 2019October 4th, 2019

Make: vol. 71 is on its way to mailboxes right now, and inside the issue we have a wonderful profile of community science advocacy group Public Lab, including a tear-out insert of their paper spectroscope. To further augment the article and help guide people into building and using open-source tools to measure environmental conditions and […]

Public Lab Puts Eco Justice in the Hands of Citizen Scientists

By Benjamin Preston

Benjamin Preston

Benjamin Preston is one of the few journalists to hold he dubious distinction of having been an alignment technician at a Pep Boys in Fredericksburg, Va., and a automotive reporter for the New York Times, among a wide variety of other occupations. He is currently a writer- and greasemonkey-at-large for Time Inc's online automotive publication, the Drive. In addition to the Timeses, he has written for the Guardian, BBC Autos, Car and Driver, Jalopnik, and, he is very proud to say, Petersen's 4 Wheel & Offroad. When he's not writing about cars, he's either working on his own beaters or at the beach surfing.

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February 9th, 2016February 8th, 2016

A network of DIY environmentalists is helping monitor oil cleanups and busting polluters.