Relab is an open-source research platform for collecting and publicly viewing data on the disassembly of durable goods. It is built at CML, Leiden University to support industrial ecology and circular economy research with better primary product data.
Repairers, refurbishers, dismantlers, and recyclers meet products at the point of failure. Relab turns their routine work into structured, openly shared records of what products are made of and how they come apart. Why Relab exists sets out the argument.
It combines:
- a FastAPI backend for structured product, media, and user data
- an Expo / React Native app for authenticated data collection
- an Astro site for publicly viewing project and dataset information
- a docs site for users, architecture, and self-hosting
Use the hosted platform at app.cml-relab.org.
To go deeper:
- Install and self-host for running or self-hosting the stack
- CONTRIBUTING.md for making code or docs changes
- docs.cml-relab.org for architecture and user-facing docs
| Path | Purpose |
|---|---|
backend/ |
FastAPI API, auth, data model, file handling, plugins |
app/ |
Expo / React Native research app |
www/ |
Astro public website |
docs/ |
Documentation site |
Docker Compose orchestrates the stack from the repo root.
Shared brand assets live in assets/; just assets-sync copies them into the consumer subrepos.
Configuration has five homes: the committed secret inventory in deploy/env/variables.toml,
deploy-host inputs in the gitignored root .env, runtime secrets in gitignored secrets/<env>/
files, optional backend-only local overrides in backend/.env.dev, and framework/test fixtures such
as app/.env.development and backend/.env.test.
just setup # install workspace dependencies and git hooks
just ci # run the canonical local CI pipeline
just test # run local test suites
just security # run dependency and security checks
just dev # start the full Docker dev stack with file watching
just deploy-secrets-template dev # create local backend secret filesCI runs axe scans and per-PR a11y lint across www/, docs/, and app/. See
Quality Controls for what runs where.
| What | Licence |
|---|---|
| Platform software: backend, app, www, docs site | AGPL-3.0-or-later |
API specification: openapi.public.json, openapi.device.json, and client types built from them |
Apache-2.0 |
| Site content: the writing on the docs site and on cml-relab.org (code samples are Apache-2.0) | CC BY 4.0 |
| Curated dataset releases | CC BY 4.0, planned |
Relab, the logo, and the wordmark are not licensed by any of the above. The licensing page explains each choice, the RPi camera schema's separate licence, and the limits no licence changes.
Questions about the platform, code, or dataset: relab@cml.leidenuniv.nl