GOSH 2022 in Panama: Seeed Organized AIoT2Wild and Custom Electronic Design Workshops Using SenseCAP K1100 Kit!
During October 26-29th, the 4th edition of Gathering for Open Science Hardware (briefly known as ‘GOSH 2022’) was held in Panama. On this occasion, Seeed’s Field Application Engineer joined the event on-site to organize 2 hands-on workshops on using SenseCAP K1100 Kit for environmental and wildlife conservation scenarios. On this background, we’re happy to have supported Mario’s trip to the event, as well as sponsored 11 units of SenseCAP K1100 Kit for his workshop participants.
Event Name: GOSH Gathering 2022
Event Location: Panama (Panama City)
Targeted Industry Type: Wildlife Conservation and Environmental Monitoring
Engaged Partner(s): 
Figure 1. GOSH 2022 in Panama
Ⓒ GOSH Community
During October 26-29th, the 4th edition of Gathering for Open Science Hardware (briefly known as ‘GOSH 2022’) was held in Panama City, Panama (Figure 1). On this occasion, Seeed’s Field Application Engineer based in Mexico, Mario De Los Santos (Figure 2), joined the event on-site to organize 2 hands-on workshops on using SenseCAP K1100 Kit for environmental and wildlife conservation scenarios. On this background, we’re happy to have supported Mario’s trip to the event, as well as sponsored 11 units of SenseCAP K1100 Kit for his workshop participants.
Figure 2. Mario De Los Santos, Field Application Engineer at Seeed Studio
Ⓒ Mario De Los Santos
“I traveled from Mexico City to Panama on October 25 with a bag full of SenseCAP K1100 kits, one of our new products for the IoT projects that we are presenting to everyone that wants to create projects to mitigate the global sustainability problems of our planet.”
– Mario De Los Santos
So, what is GOSH about? GOSH is a global community of artists, researchers, activists, hackers, and hardware developers dedicated to making open science hardware ubiquitous by 2025. For GOSH 2022, 75 participants visited Panama all the way from 20 countries in Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Europe, and Australia, among which the majority of them were hardware designers, researchers, policymakers, makers, and artists (Figure 3). In total, there were 42 unconference sessions held at the event, with a variety of sustainability topics ranging from hardware and software making, to environmental monitoring and conservation. GOSH community is passionate about developing open hardware for formal science research, while pointing out the fact that academia’s scientific research tools can oftentimes be too costly, distancing the democratization of the knowledge they produce. The open science hardware community is motivated by the idea of more efficient use of knowledge, local solutions, diversity, and bottom-up research decentralization, but more generally, in the inclusion of high-level technology to help.
Indeed, their motivation and passion goes hands-in-hand with Seeed’s #IoT2Wild and #OpenTech4SDGs initiatives, especially using technology for various environmental monitoring and wildlife conservation research in the wild, which is why we’ve supported Mario to participate in this event.
Figure 3. Mapping out the Participants’ Geographic Diversity
Ⓒ GOSH Community (Source: https://gathering2022.openhardware.science/attendee-list/)
One interesting fact about this event is that all the event agendas are referred to as “unconference sessions”, which are brainstormed and decided by the participants themselves on the first day of the event. For reference, an unconference session is a workshop facilitated by a participant who is interested enough to open a dialogue about the topic of their concerns/interests by involving others. Out of hundreds of participants’ proposals written on post-its in a ‘Design Thinking’ style (Figure 4), unconference sessions were chosen on the basis of the majority of participants’ preferences and interests.
Mario proposed 3 hands-on workshops, out of which the 1st and 3rd were chosen for the event agenda, and so the 2nd workshop contents were embedded to the 1st one:
- Develop IoT Projects in Minutes with Sensecap K1100 Kit for Environmental and Wildlife Conservation!
- How to Embed AI and IoT Using SenseCAP K1100 Kit?
- Tailored Electronic Design – Create Your Own AIoT Sensors!
Figure 4. Participants Brainstorming the Event Agenda on the Wall
Ⓒ Mario De Los Santos, GOSH Community
Now, let’s find out how Mario’s sessions went at GOSH 2022!
Workshop 1: Develop AIoT Projects in Minutes with SenseCAP K1100 Kit and Grove – Vision AI Module for Environmental and Wildlife Conservation!
On October 27th, Mario organized a hands-on workshop on how to create AIoT projects in minutes with SenseCAP K1100 Kit and Grove – Vision AI Module for real-world applications on environmental and wildlife conservation in the wild (Figure 5). In total, 13 participants were actively involved in learning and exploring the possibilities of the AIoT tools, and they were happy to get to know of Seeed either for the first time, or at an in-depth level through multifold SDG case studies shared by Mario.
Figure 5. SenseCAP K1100 Kit and Grove – Vision AI Module
Ⓒ Alexandra Covor, Seeed Studio
First, Mario started the workshop with an introduction to Arduino, as some of the participants were quite new to the open hardware concept (Figure 6). Then, the serious, avid hacking started. Participants learned about how to transfer the collected data to the cloud using The Things Network, send the data to Helium LongFi Network through SenseCAP M2 Data-Only LoRaWAN Indoor Gateway, and even faster and easier, use SenseCraft v0.2 – an open source software platform to build smart sensors without coding!
Figure 6. Photos from Mario’s Workshop 1
Ⓒ Mario De Los Santos, GOSH Community
“As a result, we got participants interested in building things with their students at a high school level, such as Ernesto, who wants to involve his high school students in animal conservation using IoT through Helium. Or, George – He is working with students on an autonomous car that can detect lego and will use the Grove Vison AI sensor as an object detector!”
– Mario De Los Santos
Using various environmental sensors available in the Kit, the participants were able to learn how an AIoT solution works through tinkering with the sensors they were interested in for their own research prototypes and objectives. All in all, the workshop demonstrated the versatility of the Kit as the epitome for open source, AIoT hardware tools for sustainability in the field.
Workshop 2: Tailored Electronic Design – Create Your Own AIoT Sensors!
On October 29th, Mario’s second hands-on workshop started in the morning, for which 6 participants were actively participating to: i) explore the basics of electronic designs; ii) design their own PCB circuits for IoT application scenarios using open source software called Eagle design by Autodesk; iii) complete electronic design layouts to generate 3D views, and; iv) develop Gerber files for their own PCB designs that are ready to be manufactured. All in all, this workshop was planned to prepare the potential participants to continue their tailored electronic design ideas even after GOSH Gathering 2022, as well as to give them the basic understanding of how open source hardware can be fabricated through Seeed Studio’s Fusion PCB & PCBA services (Figure 7).
“Electronic design is a fundamental part of the creation of smart devices or custom solutions for sustainability. For example, designing a PCB for monitoring extreme conditions, as Shannon from Strong Water Research Center, who is designing custom monitoring systems for environmental studies and conservation initiatives. … This skill is needed when you are doing projects that require low-power consumption, or using sensors for extreme weather patterns with powerful microprocessors, or maybe you want to design your own plant’s irrigator without using a complete pre-built system.”
– Mario De Los Santos
Figure 7. Photos from Mario’s Workshop 2
Ⓒ Mario De Los Santos
Curious to know more? Check out Mario’s diary at GOSH 2022 here: https://www.hackster.io/491141/seeed-meets-gosh-22-the-path-of-the-open-hardware-community-ce4221
Last but not least, in an effort to demonstrate how the diversity and potentiality of shared knowledge from all over the world can create a beautiful melody for our sustainable planet, we’d like to share an interesting version of a Bella Ciao song, co-created by the participants of GOSH 2022 (Figure 8), as well as 2 meaningful quotes:
Lyrics:
English Version: “Open your toolbox, open your hardware. Open it now, open now, open now, now, now. We are the people. We love research. Collaboration for us all.”
Spanish Version: “Abre tu caja, de herramientas. Abrela ya, abrela ya, abrela, ya, ya, ya. Somos la gente. Que investiga. Colaboramos para el bien.”
“As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own. Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.”
– Amy Poehler
“If you had told me about a conference like this six months ago, I would never believe you. I can say thank you, GOSH, for showing me a new perspective of how science should be done, a new perspective of how collaboration brings together people from all over the world. Thank you, Seeed, for the opportunity to travel to this conference and work on democratizing knowledge.”
– Mario De Los Santos
Figure 8. Participants at GOSH Gathering 2022, Panama
Ⓒ GOSH Community
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@TresVista Glad to read that you found the article informative! 🙂