My names is Thomas, I am from Cameroon. I am very excited to be part of this event, since I am trying to promote Biohacking in french speaking african countries and Haiti. This is the event that I will organize in May.
During the Bioffabing, I want to share with you, learn from you in order to make first, the biohacking event in Cameroon very interresting. In that optic, if we can talk about:
Second, for at mid-term I want to set up a biohackerspace devoted to produce low cost lab material to help rural hospital where even an optical microscope does not exist. What can we do? I need your Ideas and thougts.
@dusjagr I donāt know if it is still possible to transform my question in an unconference on African purpose where every person can share their experience and help me frame the movement in my context
hi @thomasmboa,
of course you can propose a dedicated session around low-cost biohacking equipment.
this will be a great workgroup for all of us to share/learn and discuss!
i am switching this topic to the āunconferenceā category to start collecting ideas and interests.
This is something Iām definitely interested in (although know very little about!).
@thomasmboa are you familiar with Manu Prakashās work? Maybe you could get some of these donated for the conference and then hand them out for people to take home and work with.
@jbsteinhardt thank a lot for this link, I was not familiar with Prakashās work. It is so interesting and it is this kind of experiment that I want to perform in Cameroon.
Since you have mentionned it, can you help me do to get some kits of foldscope and paperfuge during our meeting in Geneva?
Please if you have others idea to help me perform the seminar in Cameroon, donāt hesitateā¦
Iām also a big fan of Prakashās work ā only a bit overhyped.
If we can get a similarly powerful lens, (they claim 140x magnification and 2 micron resolution) we could easily design our own little low-cost microscope. If anyone knows where to get them (really cheap!) it would be great to have some to play around.
these are the specifications: ā2.38mm borosilicate glassā
For all those who are based in Switzerland can you find and bring for us, lens with these specification: ā2.38mm borosilicate glassā. we will replicate the foldoscope.
hey @thomasmboa - I have some different sized glass beads (the kind you use in the lab for plating bacteria, homogenising stuff etc) that we could prototype with - Iām not sure exactly the diameters, but they look like around 1mm, around 2.5-3mm, and around 5mm. The smaller the bead, the higher the magnification. I have some really tiny ones around 0.5mm, though I think thatās probably too small to be useful. There is a project from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that includes files for 3d printing a little clip that holds the bead in front of a smartphone lens: http://availabletechnologies.pnnl.gov/technology.asp?id=393
It works fairly well (I have one I printed earlier I can bring)ā¦ The only problem is the beads tend to get a bit scratched kicking around in their containers, so combined with the tricky optics you get from a spherical lens, itās not so super easy to use.
I also still have an actual foldscope (not yet assembled) from their 10 000 signup campaign a few years ago that I can bring for the full foldscope experience - compare and contrast
ahjaā¦ single lens microscopy, re-packached in cardboard and hyped by big media departments of elite universities, to pretend to save the world (where did this millions of $$$ went, which the project raised? flights to TED talks?)
itās been about 400 years that we make borosilicate glassbeads to look at the microcosmosā¦
we can always look up how good old leeuwenhoek did it, but he was also a businessman and never shared his method of fabrication to get a head-start for his āscientificā publications.
I am very satisfy after this first day in the Biofabbing. With the helps of many geeks present today, we have designed the logo for the biohacking movement in Cameroon. Then, we have succeed to run the workshop on the waterscope. Thank a lot to @vlorenzolana@hil2oo@oliverkeller for their patienceā¦ Donāt nmiss to visit the Cameroon biohacking worstation tomorrowā¦and propose activities.
The plus of working with billion-dollar universities is that they over-flow with capital and resources! A few boxes of foldoscopes and paperfuges sent to Cameroon is like a drop in the ocean for them.
