Now in Beta-testing on invite only
21st August 2026
Organisation: University College London
Authors: Michael A Parkes, Andrew Stewart, Rebecca Ingle
Chemistry laboratories contain significant amounts of expensive, energy-intensive, and water-hungry equipment, yet the conditions under which they operate are rarely monitored in any systematic way. Without data on water usage, energy consumption, or environmental conditions, it is very difficult to identify where savings can be made. Most existing solutions either require specialist technical knowledge to set up, or involve purchasing expensive proprietary systems. This project set out to show that low-cost, consumer-grade sensors combined with open-source software could provide a practical and accessible alternative for any chemistry research group.
Using microprocessors and off-the-shelf sensors, we developed modular monitoring devices capable of measuring a wide range of laboratory parameters, including temperature, humidity, pressure, water flow rate, pH, and conductivity. To make these accessible to chemists with no programming or electronics background, we created LabRat (https://gitlab.com/inator-project/LabRat), an open-source logging programme that allows users to set up a sensor database and live display dashboard with just a few mouse clicks.
Several monitoring devices were deployed across laboratories in the UCL Chemistry Department, tracking environmental conditions and comparing them against the building management system. A more extensive device was installed to monitor the water usage of a Transmission Electron Microscope — a class of instrument found in chemistry departments across the UK — measuring flow rate, temperature, pH, and conductivity continuously.
To share this approach with the wider community, we ran a series of hands-on workshops and hackathons at UCL, the University of Liverpool, and the University of Strathclyde, reaching around 50 participants. These were accompanied by freely available online tutorials (https://labrat-project.org/intro.html) designed for complete beginners, covering everything from installing software to wiring sensors into circuits.
Continuous monitoring of laboratory air conditioning has allowed us to gain better understanding of the behaviour of air conditioning in our laboratories. This in turn allows us to make suggestions on how to change these conditions to meet our needs. Liaising with maintenance staff with data on what is not working rather than a feeling on the fault leads to a more constructive relationship.
The TEM water monitoring results were presented at the RMS EM-UKI 2026 meeting in Dublin, a national meeting of electron microscopy facility managers. The ideas and results attracted considerable interest, confirming how widespread the unmet need for this kind of monitoring is across the UK.
The workshops reached researchers across the UK. Industrial interest has also followed, with companies exploring how these devices could be deployed in commercial settings. The electronic lab notebook company RSpace attended one of our hackathons and identified new directions for integrating sensor logging with their platform to improve FAIR data practices.
Additional funding from the AIChemy consortium allowed us to exceed our original targets. A fourth hackathon is planned for July, meaning we will have doubled our originally planned number of workshops. In total the project will have engaged more than 50 researchers across the UK, with feedback consistently positive: "The hands-on nature of the event was really excellent, and the discussions with people were super useful.
The most important lesson from this project is that the barrier to sustainable laboratory monitoring is not cost, it is accessibility. Once chemists are given hands-on experience and beginner-friendly tools, they quickly see the value and are motivated to deploy monitoring in their own labs.
We would encourage any group to start small: a single temperature and humidity sensor costs only a few pounds and can immediately reveal whether your laboratory environment is behaving as expected. The open-source tools and tutorials developed in this project are freely available and require no prior technical knowledge to use. You don't need to be an engineer — you just need to be curious about what is actually happening in your lab.
