Tonight I've looked over some pages I'd bookmarked last week:
citizensciencequarterly.com
p2pfoundation.net/Product_Hacking
Well I've come across a lot of interesting stuff in the first page! No doubt the most remarkable is an open source DNA oligomer synthesizer & microarrayer which was first published in 2004! Wow! Definitely "ahead of its time"... But also an orbital shaker and an electrophoresis chamber.
In the second, a wiki, well simply the amount of info there is overwhelming! I'm sure there are a couple of hidden gems there too... Just need more time.
These efforts convince me even further of the possibility to bring open hardware into science to change how science is done. Finally it should be possible to reduce the expense for acquiring the most commonly used instruments (bonus especially for small start-ups or poorer research institutions). More importantly the openness about the instrumentation used should speed up and facilitate innovation as the needs of scientists would translate sooner into practical solutions for unprecedented experiments. Then these open source developments would sooner reach potential users but also other people out there which can contribute yet more customizations and improvements.
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