## What is the Open Pipe Kit?
OPK Volunteers are working on a set of documentation and software called the Open Pipe Kit that is going to empower thousands of data journalists and civic hackers to collect data without needing a programmer's assistance or being locked into a data platform from a proprietary turn-key solution.


## How can I get started?
When the Open Pipe Kit is ready, the Open Pipe Kit documentation will illustrate how you can assemble Pipes from $60 of readily accessible parts.  Choose a sensor from the list of supported sensors, plug it into the Pipe, and then use your smartphone to configure the Pipe to send data to a location of your choosing. If the sensor you're hoping to use isn't on our list of supported sensors, someone with programming knowledge can contribute a driver for that sensor back to the Open Pipe Kit project. It's Open Source!


## Minimum Viable Product: Goals for OPK's first prototype, 
- Get the underlying OPK Engine framework nailed down ([see code base here](https://github.com/open-eie/Sensor-Pipe-Engine)).
- Build the User Interface for configuring Sensor and Data Reservoir Drivers that then configures the underlying OPK Engine.
- Build half a dozen Sensor drivers for sensors from the [pluggable sensor platform known as Grove](http://www.seeedstudio.com/wiki/GROVE_System). We'll utilize Dexter Lab's [GrovePi shield](http://www.dexterindustries.com/GrovePi/) to allow the Grove sensors to be pluggable on Raspberry Pi. This will make Grove sensors plug __& play__!
  - Grove Dust sensor driver
  - Grove Moisture sensor driver
  - Grove Loudness sensor driver
  - Grove Temperature and Humidity sensor driver
  - Grove Air Quality sensor driver
  - Also Don's Water Depth sensor driver for variety!
- Build Data Reservoir Drivers that allow users to configure wether they want to store data locally or remotely, and if remotely, on which server.
  - CSV data reservoir driver, for local data storage
  - Dat data reservoir driver, for local and/or remote data storage
  - Apitronics Hive database reservoir driver, for local and/or remote data storage   


## The Open Pipe Kit Manifesto
Our mission is to develop a kit for building Pipes that ...

1. __Empower non-programmers to collect data from a large selection of sensors__.  Other systems require programming to set up data collection.

2. __Fight vendor lock-in by giving users the freedom to choose where their data flows__.  Other proprietary turn-key systems lock users' hardware to one proprietary data service.

3. __Spur innovation by giving programmers the freedom to write additional sensor and database drivers__.  Other systems require users to buy and use their own proprietary sensors and databases.

The Internet has often been compared to a system of pipes.  Imagine that these pipes carry water: for someone interested in collecting water from a local river in order to store it for later use, then, to date, nearly all the "Internet of Things" sensor data solutions are like companies that sell customers proprietary pipes and fittings designed to transport the user's water (sensor data) to a remote, hidden reservoir (a cloud-based server); and typically the user is then required to pay a fee in order to access this now-remote resource. 
 
We believe it is vital for people in the fields of sensor journalism, environmental monitoring, and agriculture to have full control over the data they collect, and to be able to use reliable, easily-acquired, open source hardware and software that can be modified and repurposed without permission.

The Open Pipe Kit is a system designed to meet this need, based on a Raspberry Pi and Node.js.  Users of OPK will be able to collect data from sensors and store it either locally (on microSD) or remotely on a server of their own choosing.