The rise of inexpensive sensors and microcontroller-based boards such as Arduino, Intel Edison, Raspberry-PI etc. have democratized the ability to monitor, record, and control. It is now possible at all educational levels ranging from high school students to professors, to develop and build specific devices to study processes occurring in the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, cryosphere, and lithosphere. Scientific discoveries are often made using highly specialized instrumentation. The suite of inexpensive microcontroller-based boards allow scientists to develop systems, which are both targeted directly for the study at hand and offer the possibility to deploy multiple systems making observations in a grid. On the educational side, inexpensive microcontroller-based boards and sensors offer the possibility for teachers at a low-cost to educate students on automatic data-acquisition of environmental processes.

To facilitate sharing ideas and information on microcontroller-based sensors and control systems used in scientific discoveries, we invite abstracts from across the geoscientific disciplines. We specifically call for the use of the PICO-presentation format to enhance both the scientific and more detailed technical discussions related to developed custom-built systems. To support the open-source philosophy of these new microcontroller-based boards we encourage the presenters to share information regarding part-numbers, technical drawings, and/or code used. With this session we hope to create a platform for sharing information about custom-build systems not often included in scientific papers or in supplementary materials.