Most of the comments posted so far have been jokes. But I think this is great.
I would have very much loved to have one of these when I was taking science classes in high school. Heck, I'd love to have one now.
The biggest flaw is that this is an expensive piece of custom equipment. No criticism of Dr. Jansen intended; he made the gadget he wanted to have. But I would like to see a design that is less expensive and mass-produced, that has just the sensors in a sort of cradle; you would put a smart phone into the cradle and plug in by USB. The cradle might need to contain a battery (I'm not sure how much current a smartphone micro-USB port can source).
It would be more elegant if it used something like the iPhone's docking connector, but Apple charges money to use that thing, and on Android there is no similar standard. Just using USB would seem to offer the widest compatibility.
Since the CPU needs are low, you should be able to use phones from 2+ years ago. When people upgrade to new phones they often have a surplus older phone, and maybe they will donate the older phone to the high school science program. Or if you just want one for yourself, you could buy something from eBay or Craigs List.
This makes me think back to when the Palm PDA was new. The Palm had a serial port on the bottom, and there were sensor packages you could get to plug in to it. I read about a high school science teacher taking his class on a field trip, and they used pH and temperature sensors to measure a wetlands.
Back when I carried around a Handspring Visor, I always wanted a Springboard module with a Volt/Ohm meter and probes; and another one with thermometer and such. There really was one with a magnetic compass, and I think there was at least one with a GPS receiver in it.
steveha
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