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Mothbox 4.0

(digital-naturalism-laboratories.github.io)
207 points bookofjoe | 6 comments | | HN request time: 0.201s | source | bottom
1. morninglight ◴[] No.41849000[source]
This could be a great teaching tool, BUT at about $375 per Mothbox, it's going to be a hard sell for most schools.
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2. hansihe ◴[] No.41849105[source]
$375 per box doesn't seem bad to me at all when you probably only need a couple per school?
replies(1): >>41854163 #
3. yapyap ◴[] No.41849777[source]
I don’t think it’ll be a hard sell for schools at that price, school budgets tend to be fairly elastic for new things (and sometimes for wholly unnecessary things, for the price of less than 1/4th of new MacBook for the principal (for example) they could have this.

Edit: also if schools were to be interested in this (which they should be, it’s very neat) they could group together and buy in bulk which would also greatly reduce the price

4. hikinghack ◴[] No.41854163[source]
Yeah, i feel like currently they are at about the price of camera traps 10 years ago. There is very little mass-manufacturability to them right now (it's all open source and made from off-the-shelf parts) but later if we can find more funding, we are going to make a design more for manufacturing which should hopefully drive the costs down even more! :)
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5. fn-mote ◴[] No.41854630{3}[source]
> There is very little mass-manufacturability to them right now (it's all open source and made from off-the-shelf parts)

This is the obstruction to using them in an educational setting. If they were available for $600+ each but already completely built (minimal DIY), they would be more likely to get into (some) schools.

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6. max-ibel ◴[] No.41855776{4}[source]
OTOH, it'd a fun science project just to built one, for maybe a different set of kids that operate the box.

Just needs motivated teachers, if you ask me. I assume the mothbox is more of a high-school project, building one seems on that level as well.