In 2022, GOSH launched the Collaborative Development Program (CDP), an initiative designed to support the development of open science hardware through funding, documentation, and collaboration. The program encouraged project teams to seek out expertise beyond their immediate circles, experiment with new forms of partnership, and share both their designs and their learning with the broader community. Looking back, the projects supported through the program offer an interesting lens into one of GOSH’s enduring strengths – its ability to connect promising ideas with the people, resources, and support needed to move them forward.
Among the projects selected was Shazam for Bats, a collaboration between researchers at University College London and the Bat Conservation Trust. The team set out to transform an existing proprietary wildlife monitoring platform into an open system capable of automatically detecting bat calls in the field. By redesigning the hardware around open components, improving machine learning capabilities, and documenting the resulting system, the project sought to make biodiversity monitoring more accessible, adaptable, and reproducible for researchers and conservation practitioners alike.
In Argentina, Open Lab Automata (OLA) approached accessibility from a different angle. Led by Nicolás Méndez and collaborators, OLA focused on developing a low-cost liquid handling robot capable of automating repetitive laboratory tasks. In an earlier interview in the GOSH@10 series, Nicolás explained that one of the programs most significant contributions for him and OLA was the fact that its funding was extended to people working outside traditional funding hierarchies, including to him as a student. Indeed, CDP funding ultimately supported a growing team in building and refining early prototypes, while the broader GOSH community provided collaboration, feedback, and visibility. Working together, those resources helped transform a personal solution to a local challenge into a project that would later attract additional funding, new partnerships, and external users.
Photo courtesy Nicolás Mendez, Open Lab Automata
Meanwhile, the Spectrometer Resurrector project tackled a different but equally tenacious problem: the growing number of scientific instruments rendered obsolete by aging electronics and proprietary software. Rather than replacing these devices, the project developed an open-source replacement “brain” capable of modernizing affordable second-hand spectrophotometers. Working through community hack nights at Oakland’s Sudo Room hackerspace, collaborators documented the instrument’s internal architecture, modernized its software stack, and developed open replacement electronics capable of extending the useful life of equipment that might otherwise be discarded. The project combined technical problem-solving with a broader commitment to sustainability, autonomy, and repairability, demonstrating how open hardware can help scientific communities retain control over the tools they depend on rather than replacing them when proprietary support disappears.
Photo courtesy juul and the Spectrometer Resurrector project.
This series – the GOSH@10 series – has run since the start of this year, celebrating the legacy of GOSH over the course of its first ten years. The projects highlighted here, funded in 2022 through the Collaborative Development Program, illustrate a common theme that is emerging from our GOSH@10 reflection, in which projects that began as responses to local challenges – monitoring biodiversity, automating laboratory workflows, and extending the life of scientific equipment, for example – grow to be something larger through the combination of funding, collaboration, documentation, and community support that has arisen through GOSH over the years. Together, they point toward a future in which open science hardware continues to grow not only through technical innovation, but through the networks of support that make innovation possible in the first place.
