Fossasia’s PSLab Puts an Open Source Electronics Lab in Your Pocket

Fossasia defines their Pocket Science Lab (PSLab) as “an open source hardware device that can be used for experiments by teachers, students, and citizen scientists to learn and teach electronics.”

The tiny pocket lab is outfitted with a myriad of sensors and measurement devices that allow you to perform science and engineering experiments.

According to Fossasia, the PSLab was inspired by the open source hardware community and ExpEYES (Experiments for Young Engineers and Scientists) — a laptop-like platform that enables you to learn about science through experimentation. Although PSLab uses some of the same technology as ExpEYES, Fossasia’s offering is much smaller and sports updated technology.

As far as the features are concerned, the PSLab is equipped with a 4-channel oscilloscope (up to 2MSPS), 12-bit voltmeter with programmable gain (input ranges from +/-10mV to +/-16V), 3X 12-bit programmable voltage sources (+/-3.3V, +/-5V, 0–3V), and a 12-bit programmable current source (0–3.3mA).

It also packs a 4-channel 15nS Logic analyzer (4MHz), a pair of sine wave generators (5Hz to 5KHz with manual amplitude control), 4X PWM generators, capacitive measurement, and I2C, SPI, UART data buses for sensors — accelerometer, gyroscope, humidity, and more.

On the software side, Fossasia has uploaded a repository for the Android app (for mobile experiments) and firmware, as well as a Python communications library on their GitHub page. You will also find KiCad schematics and other necessary documentation (including a pinout PDF) to get your experiments up and running. Everything (hardware/software) is open source, and Fossasia even lists a BOM for the hardware needed to build your own PSLab.