Five points from Public Lab on starting a community-based technology development project:

Lots of people have been interested in using the Public Lab network as a platform to build a DIY environmental science tool, and we've found this checklist to be a good starting point for such collaborations.

• Start by writing to the main Public Lab mailing list to introduce your problem or idea
• Try posting to our "requests" board with a request for collaborators (link forthcoming)
• Create a Tool wiki page to introduce your project and explain the environmental or health concern you're investigating
• Share your work in Research Notes with a consistent tag so people can follow your work as it develops
• Create a “plots-projectname” mailing list as your group of collaborators grows, so that others can take part

Staff support: Once you've completed the above, we're happy to help, but given our limited staff resources, we ask that you post a minimum of three research notes, and try to bring ten or more people together on a mailing list, at which point we can potentially provide the following:

• Mentorship sit-down sessions
• Listing your mailing list on the Public Lab mailing list page
• Helping you grow your community through matchmaking
• Assistance on joint fundraising for tutorials, tool assembly diagrams, videos, research supplies, community workshops and software for processgind data from the hardware
• Assistance with tool distribution