Printers 3D, Arduino and hydro-meteorological stations

One of the innovative works I  had the occasion to see at the 2014 AGU Fall Meeting was the use of two emerging technologies to build low cost hydro-meterological stations. The poster was presented by Jay Ham of CSU, and a copy of it can be downloaded here.

The corner stones on which everything is built are 3D printers (Lulzbot Taz 2.0, Airwolf 3D) and the Arduino software.

A full set of instrument was presented, and frankly, I think it can be a viable way to do reasonably accurate measures and, at the same time, to multiply them ... or teaching the right way to students what an instrument is about the bottom up. The other aspect that I liked very much is that all of this is Open Hardware, a category that I never saw before. The software professor Ham built for running his weather station is  available on github.

If I never thought to build my instruments before, now I am seriously tempted to do something.