With STELLA, we want to democratize scientific instrumentation, in the same way that Landsat Science has democratized Earth science data; by making the science and scientific tools available to people who are interested. We built the STELLA instruments so that anyone who can solder can build one. Building your own instrument teaches you to think about the capabilities and limitations of instruments we use to do science. The limits of our instruments set the limits of human understanding, so understanding our instrumentation is key to scientific discovery.