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I don't understand how it is a PhD project, at MIT nonetheless. From http://web.media.mit.edu/~mellis/cellphone/index.html I get it is not much of a technical projet, more like a sociological one (how hard can it be for a layman, is that useful, why, etc.), but I don't understand what the challenges are.

Can you explain how it useful as a research project ? What are you expecting to learn overall ?

Thank you.

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MIT media lab tends to actually be in the space you are describing (novel application and positive social impact rather than fundamental science. For what it's worth David Mellis is one of the original creators/founders of Arduino so everything he does is probably seen through that lens.

Doesn't the third sentence in the article you linked to answer your questions?

Not really, I think I agree with the GP. This is a pretty easy project, and even though the author spun it well, it's still nowhere near PhD level for even unrelated fields.

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