What are the best practices you've seen from low-cost, open-source systems?

Ecosystem
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This could be in terms of design choices, preassembly, kits, build instructions, marketing, troubleshooting, community help, etc. Repeats are OK. A few points that really stand out as awesome, and up to one point that could be improved.

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I’ll start out:

Jubilee:

  1. Filastruder sells a kit! This saved us a lot of time, I think. Likewise, replacement parts are readily available

  2. I was pleasantly surprised by how responsive and quick people were on the discord channel

  3. It’s backed up with two main peer-reviewed manuscripts, one with a real-world materials discovery application, so this makes it a lot easier to advocate for

  4. It would be amazing if Jubilee could come as a more pre-assembled kit with firmware and configuration files loaded in advance. We would have paid more if this were an option.

Pioreactor:

  1. It takes less than an hour to set up and start testing it due to preassembly and clear video+text instructions. For example, Assembly introduction | Pioreactor Docs (I’d like to ask them about the behind the scenes tips/tricks for making this video - was it someone internal? Did they record in segments? How did they manage stitching? How do they manage version control? The voiceover was after recording, correct?)

  2. The accessories are really useful, I bought a lot of add-ons because I think they’ll be generally useful in our lab settings. This included some key things that could be bought elsewhere, but would be more convenient to buy in the same shopping list (e.g., spare vials)

  3. The creator has been very responsive in adjusting the software to meet a request of mine, which occurred on the Pioreactor discourse forum

  4. It’s highly tailored to biology, so it can be a bit hard to sift through what’s most relevant to me in chemistry and materials science

Farmbot:

  1. It is commercialized and widely sold

  2. It has both a maker/hacker oriented version and an “express” version

  3. The documentation is easy to navigate, and it’s easy to switch between versions of the system (likewise, it’s straightforward to get back to the “main route” when reaching forks in the road that is left to the user to decide, e.g., building a raised vs. mobile garden bed)

  4. It’s all about farming/gardening, so same issue as above with the Pioreactor.

OpenFlexure Delta Stage Microscope

  1. There are a lot of different configurations that meet related, but distinct functionalities, with documentation for each option

  2. There have been quite a few follow-up manuscripts which have been consistent over the years. This is impressive considering that it has largely been carried out by students within a particular research group.

  3. The dynamically generated bill of materials based on the content from the instruction files was pretty neat. I think there was some custom/special markdown syntax that was used. This cross-linking makes it a lot easier to know what item is being referred to while reducing the amount of copy-paste or split versions that might otherwise be required. It’s sort of a fluid bill of materials. If it’s not mentioned in the instructions, it’s not in the BoM, which I think makes sense in nearly all cases.

  4. It took a fair bit of work to source all of the parts (UK-based, so even when links were given, generally needed to source elsewhere). I still need to print the 3D printed parts, so this has been delayed. I can’t help but think this would be a great product for Labmaker (see below).

While not a specific product, I also wanted to bring up Labmaker, who advertises themselves as:

a maker and assembly service for OPEN SCIENCE instruments. OPEN SCIENCE initiatives provide part lists or “Bill Of Materials” (BOM) for openly available scientific instruments. LabMaker bridges the gap between the BOM and the ready-to-use instrument for those not wanting to build by themselves.

I’ve bought a number of products from them, and I’ve been meaning to reach out to them. I haven’t started working with these items yet, but as advertised, they seem to be coming in a fairly ready state. The issue I think will more be the detail and quality of the documentation from the original creators.

As I delve into these products more, I may come back to add updates.