““Instrumentation is a central facet of student, amateur and professional participation in science. STEM education, recruitment of scientists and experimental research are thus all hampered by lack of access to appropriate scientific hardware. Access restrictions occur because of: 1) lack of capital to purchase or maintain high-cost equipment, and/or 2) the nature of proprietary ‘black box’ instrumentation, which cannot be fully inspected, understood or customised…
…In addition to reducing opportunities for people to engage with science, this lack of access to appropriate hardware restricts scientist’s creativity in experimental designs.”
Last year’s intense deployment schedule focused on getting more sensors into the field, which left little time for development of new approaches to the logger itself. Now that everything is settling into the school term routine, it’s time to update the “classroom edition” of the Cave Pearl Logger with feedback from three years in the trenches:”