Citizen Science

Open hardware and protocol projects for measuring things that are otherwise unmeasurable at home. Each project produces real data — about food composition, about individual reactivity — that can feed into the Confidente app or stand alone as a personal tool.

Projects

Food Science Kit

Food Science Kit/ — DIY colorimeter for measuring histamine, salicylates, and oxalates directly in food. Motivated by the fact that existing low-histamine food lists are built on inconsistent, poorly-sourced data. The kit enables actual measurement over lore.

• Research/ — Colorimetry methods for each compound
• Reagents/ — Bill of materials
• Protocols/ — Assay protocols and data logging
• Hardware/ — Colorimeter build

Mast Cell Reactivity Test

Mast Cell Reactivity Test/ — Home-usable kit for semi-quantitative nasal mast cell reactivity scoring. Measures how reactive your cells are right now, complementing the food kit’s measurements of what’s in the food.

• Research/ — Intervention targets, existing diagnostics, precedent
• Hardware/ — Vision model, hand centrifuge
• Protocols/ — Collection protocol, drop titration, feasibility experiment

Food Processing

Food Processing/ — DIY centrifuge-based protocols for reducing histamine and salicylate load in ingredients that would otherwise be off-limits. Two core methods (zeolite cation exchange for histamine; oil/alcohol partition for salicylates) with specific protocols for common ingredients.

• Method Z — Histamine removal via zeolite
• Method A — Salicylate removal via oil/alcohol partition
• Specific protocols: Cherry, Peach, Soy Sauce, Cheese, Cherry Juice

Maturity

Stage: Research and specification, no prototypes built. The chemistry is identified, hardware is specified, and protocols are written. None of the kits have been physically built or tested. The Food Processing methods are the most developed — the protocols exist and the equipment list is concrete.