What is Pocket Science Lab?

Pocket Science Lab also known as PSLab is a small USB/Li-Ion Battery powered open source hardware extension board. This device can be directly connected to an Android phone or a computer to be used with the GUI applications.

• Desktop app
• Android app

This small board follows Arduino Mega form factor and compatible with Arduino Mega casings; if you have one. However, this is not an Arduino clone or an Arduino like board. PSLab can do a lot more!

PSLab can measure voltage and current. It can generate sine wave and square waves. It can also visualise waveforms like an oscilloscope. PSLab supports I2C, SPI and UART communication protocols. That means all the sensors that are compatible with those protocols can be integrated with PSLab. Have a look at the features section to know more about what PSLab can do.

Use this embedded link to find all the production files and resources.

Features

Pocket Science Lab offers a variety of features as listed below.

• 3-Channel up to 2MSPS Oscilloscope. Software selectable amplification/gain with trigger support
• 12-bit Voltmeter with programmable gain. Input ranges from +/-10 mV to +/-16 V
• 3x 12-bit Programmable voltage sources +/-3.3 V,+/-5V,0-3 V
• 12-bit Programmable current source. 0-3.3 mA
• 4-Channel, 4 MHz Logic Analyzer
• 2x Sine/Triangular wave generators. 5 Hz to 5 KHz
• 4x PWM generators. 15 nS resolution. Up to 8 MHz
• Capacitance Measurement. pF to uF range
• Resistance and frequency measurement
• I2C, SPI and UART data buses for external sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, humidity and temperature sensors etc.)
• SDCard data logging
• Dual power supply with in-built battery charger
• ESP01 WiFi and HC06 bluetooth support
• USB-C connection

Motivation

Learning science is fun; as long as you have all the tools and resources to work with. Most of the students all around the world do not have direct (private) access to electronic measurement instruments and sensors. Most of the time they get to use them on time sharing basis. Instruments like oscilloscopes are not that even cheap to buy for oneself. Each individual tool can do only limited tasks.

What if we had a device that comes with all the measurement instruments in a science lab at an affordable price? That's what motivated us to develop PSLab and to continually keep on upgrading the design with more and more cool stuff. The features PSLab support is quite sufficient to complete most of the experiment in a school curriculum. We call these features, "instruments". Oscilloscope is an instrument. So is a Logic Analyzer.

Some instruments in PSLab are quite advanced and rich in function, that it would be quite useful even in undergraduate studies.

PSLab also tries to mend the gap between experiments and development. Users do not need to know how to program and interface a sensor like one would do with an Arduino. PSLab GUI applications have many pre-built sensor configurations that would allow a user to just plug in a sensor and work with it right away without having to learn how to program.

PSLab in action

Here are some Instrument pictures captured from PSLab Android app.

Oscilloscope

Logic Analyzer

Multimeter

Waveform Generator

Sensor Interface

PSLab is backed by FOSSASIA; a renowned open source tech organisation. I'm the hardware engineer in this project and also leading the firmware development in PSLab.