In Issue 19 of HelloWorld magazine for educators, Sidharta Vadaparty describes how he builds open-source lab instruments that facilitate discovery-based STEM learning for older students.

My goal is to democratize STEM learning through open-source, affordable, portable, and modifiable hardware and software, giving students full control to explore concepts. To achieve this goal, I started a company, GearsNGenes, as a high-school freshman (gearsngenes.com). Over the years, I have built scientific devices using products from Adafruit Industries and Raspberry Pi.

In this article, I discuss two of my devices that enable hands-on learning in linear kinematics and electromagnetism, the FEATURE bookends of standard physics curricula. Documentation of these devices is publicly available on the GearsNGenes website (gearsngenes.com), GitHub (helloworld.cc/githubgears), YouTube (helloworld.cc/ytgears), and Instructables (helloworld.cc/instructablesgears).

Two open source instruments are presented in the article – a Kinemeter built around an Adafruit ESP32 Feather and an EMF meter with Raspberry Pi and an Adafruit ADS1115 sensor.

You can learn more about these efforts as follows:

• The pdf for the RPI HelloWorld​​​ journal issue 19: https://helloworld.raspberrypi.org/issues/19/pdf
• The GearsNGenes GitHub repository links to the devices  https://github.com/gearsngenes/
  • Code for Linear motion Kinemeter with MQTT: https://github.com/gearsngenes/Kinemeter_ESP32
  • Code for Circular motion Cirkinemeter: https://github.com/gearsngenes/
  • Code for EMF Meter: https://github.com/gearsngenes/EMF_Meter_Class
• YouTube channel where providing demonstrations for these tools and more: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMH8Gw6IxXYRETRTJV2K52w