Developing low-cost, open-source oceanographic hardware for researchers, educators, and citizen scientists.
The tools necessary to study, explore, and understand the ocean are often inaccessible to the vast majority of ocean users. By nurturing a community of open-source hardware developers, scientists, and ocean stakeholders, we want to change that.
Whether you’re a researcher looking for alternatives to expensive scientific equipment, a citizen scientist interested in building a marine monitoring program, a fisherman exploring new tools to understand their catch, or an ocean enthusiast seeking new ways to interact with the sea, this community is for you.
Under each project, you will find links to resources, build guides, 3D-printer files, code repositories, and, eventually, databases. Each project section will also point you towards ways that you can help contribute to the project. This website serves as the community portal, but the action really happens in the Oceanography for Everyone GitHub repositories.
The ocean belongs to all of us. Let’s ensure that everyone has access to the tools needed to understand it.
DIY Oceanography
Oceanography for Everyone projects are designed to be easy to build yourself. We focus on accessibility of parts, tools, consumables, and skills.
Connection to the Sea
By giving people access the tools to study and understand changes in their own local waterways, we foster stronger connections to the sea around us.
Data Ownership
People can collect their own data with their own instruments, driven by curiosity rather than the goals and values of funders and research institutes.
Community
By nurturing a community of researcher, makers, adventures, advocates, and other stakeholders we can broaden the definition of what it means to be a scientist.
“We believe that ocean exploration shouldn’t require a research grant, it should require curiosity.”
Eric Stackpole, Sofar Oceans
How to contribute.
Thank you for your interest in Oceanography for Everyone! This is a completely open-source project and you are invited to contribute to it at any level—from helping develop and refine code, to building and testing instruments, to taking these tools out in the field and collecting data—and if you just want to build one of these projects for your own personal use, that’s fine, too!
GitHub.
We use GitHub to host our various projects. GitHub can seem a bit daunting to people who aren’t familiar with it. At its core, GitHub is a tool to organize files, coordinate files, and maintain version control (multiple people can edit the same file, while keeping everything in sync). GitHub has compiled a set of useful guides to help you get started.
Getting started.
Projects are organized into repositories (‘repos’) that contain the source code, supporting documents, data files, and other materials needed for each project. When you visit a repo, check the README.md, this will describe the project (including the current status), contain necessary guides, and let you know how to help.
Issues.
If you see a problem or have an idea for how something can be improved, raise an issue. The “issue” tab can be found at the far right corner of each repo, under the “code” tab. An issue can be as small as a typo or as big as an entirely new project. Here is an example of the issue we raised when we realized that the site would benefit from this guide.
Pulls.
When you are ready to make contributions to the projects, send a pull request. A pull requests creates a new copy of the project files that you can edit. When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made “commit” them to the repo. Don’t worry about breaking anything, commits have to be reviewed before they are added to the master file.