Trailblazers

Museduino Creator Miriam Langer Named OSHWA Trailblazer Fellow

The idea of the Museduino was born in early 2015. The Cultural Technology Development Lab (CTDL), an ad-hoc team of faculty and students in the Media Arts and Technology at New Mexico Highlands University had been grappling with the role of supporting the development of responsive exhibits for museums, historic sites, and traveling exhibits. The team found they were repeatedly making versions of the same thing – different sensors (proximity, capacitive touch, buttons) and actuators – lights, audio, motor movement, video – similar processes with different inputs/outputs. The challenge was often the maintenance, cost, and the footprint size (ie- sensor in a doorway, actuator across a gallery space). So, after lots of discussions and proof-of-concept work, Stan, Rianne, Miles, and Miriam developed the Museduino.


In the summer of 2015, Rianne Trujillo and Miles Tokunow, then graduate assistants leading the project, shipped version 2.0 (1.0 was internal) to some friends who had agreed to try it out. After receiving feedback the team built some “first one is free!” demos for their cultural partners, and continued to develop and refine a modular, open-source Arduino shield with external boards that could respond with no detectable delays using CAT5 cable at distances of up to 100 feet from the central microcontroller.

The team led Museduino workshops at ASTC (Association of Science and Technology Centers) in 2015, Museums and the Web in 2016, and INST-INT in 2017. Since the CTDL was something all members squeezed into their full-time academic schedules, they posted documentation and tutorials as they could, but finding the time to fully document both the technical iterations, code examples, and project demos/tutorials was difficult. The OSHWA Trailblazers Fellowship will be dynamic resource to revitalize the project after 18 months of being away from the lab due to COVID restrictions of state museums being closed.

The OSHWA Trailblazers fellowship will allow the current team, Rianne Trujillo (research/technical lead), Miriam Langer (PI, researcher) and Becca Sharp (graduate assistant, technical assistant, exhibit designer) to update the online documentation (museduino.org and GitHub repository) including tutorials, schematics, soldering instructions, and project examples. Along with this, each team member will be writing a textbook – with case studies from our various projects with museums, national parks, historic sites and installation artists, addressing issues around design, installation, and example applications. This document will be posted on the Museduino site, and distributed through OSHWA, along with partners at a few other universities and organizations.

Like most OSH projects, Musedino’s work would benefit from a larger community of users/practitioners who could modify the work, make changes specific to their needs, and share back to GitHub or another shared repository.

Internally at NMHU, they are working with faculty in the Forestry Institute to help their students work with sensors spread out over a large area (where wireless communication is impractical). It may seem that running CAT5/6 cables is impractical, but it does take some uncertainty out of the hardware setup, and Museduino easily accommodates 50+ meter runs in four directions from the central microcontroller (operating on battery or w/ solar).

Primarily many may think of Museduino as an OSH tool for arts/culture/exhibits – as they say, “The street finds its own uses for things”, or in this case, the forest does (apologies to William Gibson).

About the team:

Miriam Langer (she/her) is a professor of media arts/cultural technology at New Mexico Highlands University, an Hispanic Serving public institution in northeastern New Mexico. Miriam has been a professor of multimedia & interactivity with a focus on cultural technology at NMHU since 2001. In 2005, she initiated a partnership with the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs and has since worked with cultural institutions (museums, historic sites, national parks and libraries) around New Mexico (and elsewhere) to use emerging technology and open source solutions for these organizations. Since 2005, 268 projects have been completed at 62 cultural institutions. She is one of the founders of the Museduino, along with Rianne Trujillo, Miles Tokunow, and Stan Cohen – an open hardware platform for responsive exhibits and installation art. Her partners for this fellowship are Rianne Trujillo, instructor of software design and co-developer of the Museduino and Becca Sharp, an MFA student in Cultural Technology.Museduino.org, cctnewmexico.org

Rianne Trujillo is a professor of Software Systems Design at New Mexico Highlands University where she teaches web programming languages, experimental interfaces, physical computing/ internet of things. As the lead developer of the NMHU Cultural Technology Development Lab, Rianne has worked on Museduino and several exhibits for cultural institutions using open source software and hardware.

Becca Sharp (she/her) is a physical computing and fabrication artist with different focuses such as conservation and technology as well as technology and mental health. She has created projects using recycled materials, reused electronics and information about climate change, and is currently focused on mental health. During her undergraduate studies she had her first gallery showing and was in multiple art shows. She strives to create her work based around empathy and understanding. Her work often places one in “another’s shoes” to help spread information about current matters that need attention. She works primarily with 3D modeling, video game design, generative art through coding, soldering and physical computing. She has worked with museums and visitor centers around New Mexico including Bradbury Science Museum (2017), Meow Wolf (2018), Jemez Historic Site Visitor Center (2019), and New Mexico Museum of Art (2020). She is currently working on her MFA with mental health and technology as the center of her thesis, she is also teaching a course in her program using open-source softwares Unity 3D and Blender.

Playful Learning Lab Director AnnMarie Thomas Named Trailblazer Fellow

AnnMarie Thomas, the founder/director of the Playful Learning Lab (PLL) at the University of St. Thomas was awarded the OSHWA Trailblazer’s Fellowship.

The PLL is an undergraduate research lab that focuses on the intersection of Art, Technology, and PK-12 Education. I’m fortunate to work with faculty colleagues from other departments such as Music Education, Physics, and Emerging Media. Over the years some of our projects/collaborations have included:

• Partnering with OK Go to develop OK Go Sandbox (the band’s videos and lesson plans for educators),
• A nearly decade-long partnership with Metro Deaf School developing STEAM classes, camps, and programs for their students (who are Deaf and DeafBlind) (such as the afterschool program shown here
• The development of engineering classes and demonstrations that use Flying Trapeze (and other circus arts) to explore physics

Most relevant to her work with open source hardware, though, is the Squishy Circuits project. Over a decade ago, Annmarie was wanting a way to teach young daughters about circuits, and with the help of an amazing first-year undergraduate engineering student, Sam Johnson, we created a method for building simple circuits that relied on two recipes for homemade sculpting dough; one that was very salty (and conductive) and one that was not salty (and worked as an insulator for electricity.) We decided to share all of our recipes and parts lists on line, and the team was amazed by how quickly the idea was embraced by teachers and parents around the world. This was the Playful Learning Lab’s first foray into open source hardware (or as we preferred, “open source squishy ware.”) This work led to the creation of a company, that is run by a former PLL member.

Annmare was an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at the time her team developed Squishy Circuits, that project played an important role in my tenure portfolio. Happily, I received tenure, and have gone on to become the rank of Full Professor, in both the School of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Opus College of Business School of Entrepreneurship. She also teaches in the university’s School of Education, in both the Engineering Education program (which she co-founded) and the Education Leadership department.

The focus of the yearlong trailblazer’s project for her will be examining the what and the where of Open Source Hardware in PK-12 Education. Her team of undergraduate researchers, overseen by Annmarie and my PLL faculty colleagues (Douglas Orzolek, Jeff Jalkio, and John Keston) are undertaking a large-scale literature review process to see where PK-12 usage of Open Source Hardware is showing up in scholarly peer-reviewed publications. They will also be compiling in-depth case studies on how some of these projects were developed in academic settings (by faculty and graduate/undergraduate students.) PLL are also aware that many of the teachers and extracurricular programs that use open source hardware are not publishing this information, so PLL will also be developing and distributing surveys to educators in hopes of getting a fuller picture of the ways in which they use open source hardware, and why.

This program gives opportunities for talented undergraduate students to actively learn about open-source hardware.

Dr. Kevin Eliceiri named Open Hardware Trailblazer Fellow

UW-Madison

Innovation in scientific instrumentation is an important aspect of research at
UW–Madison, in part due to efforts of researchers such as Kevin Eliceiri, professor of
medical physics and biomedical engineering.
Eliceiri, who is also an investigator for the Morgridge Institute for Research,
member of the UW Carbone Cancer Center, associate director of the McPherson Eye
Research Institute and director of the Center for Quantitative Cell Imaging, was recently
named an Open Hardware Trailblazer Fellow by the Open Source Hardware
Association (OSHWA).
Open hardware refers to the physical tools used to conduct research such as
microscopes, and like open software, helps to ensure that scientific knowledge is not
just found in research settings, but that it supports the public use of science as is the
mission of The Wisconsin Idea.
“Kevin Eliceiri is a pioneer in open source hardware and software design that
allow for richer data collection than traditional methods and support innovative research
on campus and around the world,” says Steve Ackerman, vice chancellor for research
and graduate education. “Open hardware allows for interdisciplinary collaboration and
for a research enterprise to start small and then scale up to meet their needs. Open
source hardware is a good investment and holds promise for accelerating innovation.”

The OSHWA fellowship program seeks to raise the profile of existing open hardware
work within academia, and encourages research that is accessible, collaborative and
respects user freedom.
The one year fellowship, funded by the Open Source Hardware Association, 

provides $50,000 and $100,000 grants to individuals like Eliceiri who will then document
their experience of making open source hardware to create a library of resources for
others to follow. The fellows were chosen by the program’s mentors and an OSHWA
board selection committee. 

Eliceiri says “ There is already widespread community support for making the
protocols for any published scientific study open and carefully documented but the
hardware used for most experiments whether homebuilt or commercial can often be
effectively a black box. In this age of the quest for reproducible quantitative science the
open source concept should be applied to the complete system including hardware, not
just the software used to analyze the resulting data.

Universities often try to recover the costs associated with developing new
scientific instrumentation through patenting, commercialization and startups. This
process works well at times. But for some highly specialized instrumentation, the
traditional model can be too time consuming and costly. Thus, some highly useful
innovations never reach other labs.

Open hardware and sharing designs for instruments without patenting — as an
alternative to the traditional model — is growing in popularity. Three open hardware journals have come of age in the past five years, offering venues to share how to build
research instrumentation that can be tweaked for a specific use, instead of starting from
scratch

With open hardware, anyone can replicate or reuse hardware design files for free
and this increases the accessibility of hardware tools such as specialized microscopes.

The infrastructure of desktop 3D printers is another example of how open
hardware can accelerate and broaden scientific research. The National Institute of
Health (NIH)’s 3D Print Exchange is a library designed to advance biomedical research
by allowing a researcher to print hardware on site. With local production, there is a
reduction in cost and supply chain vulnerabilities.

Since 2000, Eliceiri has been lead investigator of his lab known as the Laboratory
for Optical and Computational Instrumentation (LOCI), with a research focus developing
novel optical imaging methods for investigating cell signaling and cancer progression,
and the development of software for multidimensional image analysis. LOCI has been
contributing lead developers to several open-source imaging software packages
including FIJI, ImageJ2 and μManager. His open hardware instrumentation efforts
involve novel forms of polarization, laser scanning and multiscale imaging.

Using the open hardware laser scanning platform known as OpenScan Elicieri
plans to evaluate what are the most relevant best practices from open source software
that can be applied to hardware and what are unique open hardware criterion needs
that have to be implemented for successful sharing of open hardware.

Eliceiri, a highly cited researcher, has authored more than 260 scientific papers
on various aspects of optical imaging, image analysis, cancer and live cell imaging.

Robotics for the Streets: From Outreach to Education to Research

Dr. Carlotta Berry

Engineering has a diversity problem. It has for a really long time. Despite many years of programs and interventions, the number of Black and Brown people pursuing degrees in engineering has remained relatively flat. It is more than just a broken pipeline, it is an obstacle course with pitfalls, daggers, darts, and detours that lead to dead ends. People are lost at every step of the journey due to lack of a sense of belonging, no mentors and role models, not being able to see the relevance of the work they will do, and how to relate it to real world applications. My purpose here is to propose we devise more novel and innovative approaches to get more minds, hands, and eyes on STEM.

Engineers solve the problems of a global and diverse community so they must reflect that community to come up with the best and most unique solutions. When this doesn’t happen, there is the potential for bias, discrimination, and injustice to creep into our technological solutions.  In recent years, we have seen artificial intelligence technology used to falsely identify the perpetrator of a crime, eliminate women candidates for job interviews and inaccurately identify individuals most likely to reoffend. 

As an Open Hardware Trailblazer fellow, my approach for doing this is to remove the barrier to knowledge and resources for all ages. I want to be for others what I did not have as an engineering student. Show them that they can be what they can or cannot see with a bit of diligence, dedication, and discipline. Remove the barrier that keeps some individuals from ever seeing themselves in this field and make it more accessible.

A robot is a mechanical system that uses electronics and software to achieve missions and tasks in the world, it connects several disciplines. Therefore, one of the greatest benefits in using robots for open-source hardware development is the fact that it is used for multidisciplinary collaboration. The documentation of robotics projects can be generalized to academics in engineering, computer science, human computer interaction, informatics, sociology, psychology, and cognitive science. Since my area of research focuses on controls, software development, kinematics, as well on electronics it touches on many such fields. In the past, academics have used robotics to teach design, controls, physics, mathematics, mechatronics, and programming so the opportunities are endless. In addition, since robotics is taught in so many different ways with no standardized curriculum, this is one way to unify the community around best practices. By having a shared repository online, users will be encouraged to not only consume content but also contribute their innovations.

This multi-pronged approach to diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in STEM technology will meet people where they are. Through a repository of social media posts, videos, lectures, assignments, labs, code, workshops, and curricula, it lowers the barrier for educators and users. By documenting and disseminating the use of open-source platforms for research, it will illustrate to academics that it is not necessary to raise massive amounts of money, purchase expensive hardware or get patents to make an impact.

In conclusion, my work as an open hardware trailblazer fellow will illustrate to universities and academics that there is more than one way to produce and share intellectual property. It will cause a paradigm shift that illustrates that there is just as much intellectual merit in producing open source hardware as there is in getting patents or publishing in journals, conferences, or technical magazines. In addition, using open source hardware will produce greater visibility for universities as well as yield broader impacts for the STEM community. By exploiting these non-traditional avenues for disseminated projects, it will enable a more diverse segment of the population to engage. In this way, open source hardware creates more diversity, equity, justice, and inclusion in STEM. For example, individuals who cannot afford a college education, will now benefit from some of the knowledge garnered from engaging in open source hardware projects that would have previously only been accessible to the university community. It is my hope that by promoting and using STEM to make connections with various communities and bring more people to STEM, we will change the face of STEM and diversify the profession.