Open Environmental Kit is a research project within the field of citizen science whose aim is to foster a critical use of technology through open access to knowledge. The project proposes the development of tools that enable people to measure and understand the environmental conditions that surround them, expanding their perceptual capacity beyond the limits of the body.
It is a collaborative, open-source initiative that provides citizens with the resources needed to create wearable environmental devices. These kits allow users to record variables such as air quality, humidity, atmospheric pressure, temperature, or the presence of particulate matter, among others.
Throughout history, humans have developed tools to extend their sensory capabilities. Today, technology forms part of this bodily extension, from invasive prosthetics to portable devices that expand our perception of the environment. However, although access to open hardware and software platforms has increased in recent years, the information required to independently build complex environmental devices remains fragmented and difficult to access.
Open Environmental Kit emerges as a response to this situation, proposing a platform that gathers, organizes, and facilitates access to the technical knowledge, materials, and processes needed to create these devices. The project documents each phase in detail, from design and sensor selection to programming and use, employing accessible technologies such as 3D printing, low-cost tools, and open-source systems.
As part of the project, a series of devices was developed and used by different participants in their daily lives in the city of León. Over a period of time, these kits were integrated into their everyday routines, continuously recording environmental variations in their surroundings. In this way, the research relied on a distributed data collection network, generated through the direct experience of those inhabiting the city.
In addition to recording environmental variables, the devices make it possible to establish relationships between these data and the subjective experience of their users, opening up ways to reflect on how environmental conditions influence physical and emotional states. The kits operate both outdoors and indoors, making visible variations that usually go unnoticed but directly affect our daily lives.
Open Environmental Kit thus proposes a tool to observe, understand, and question the environment from a situated perspective, fostering a more conscious relationship with technology and with the ecosystems we inhabit.
