The Public Laboratory

Have an idea for the Challenge? Learn more »

PLOTS Balloon Mapping Kit – get started for $95

You can always assemble your own, but for a quick start PLOTS now offers a retail kit. You supply camera & helium. Read more »

PLOTS Archive maps republished on Google Maps/Earth

Maps produced by members of the Public Lab community were recently republished by Google »

PLOTS Spectrometer kits

PLOTS offers $40 kits to build your own optical spectrometer. Measure the spectrum of light bulbs or help develop techniques for analyzing water samples »

Infrared vegetation monitoring

Balloon mapping with DIY infrared cameras »

Contamination monitoring

Brooklyn activists document the Superfund cleanup of the Gowanus Canal and other sites of industrial contamination »

Public Lab is a community where you can learn how to investigate environmental concerns. Using inexpensive DIY techniques, we seek to change how people see the world in environmental, social, and political terms.

Community members develop tools and write open source instructions as research notes, wiki pages, printable guides, and videos, so others know how to use these tools, and many have started local groups in their area. We also provide support through our mailing lists. This works because everyone both learns from and helps each other out, and we all contribute to the growing body of documentation as we go.

Join now to take part!

This community began as the Grassroots Mapping project, an effort to produce Do-It-Yourself satellite imagery with balloons and kites, most notably during the 2010 BP oil spill. We are now broadening our scope to explore new inexpensive and community-led means to measure and explore environmental and social issues.