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2nd International Ocean Research Conference, One planet one ocean, 17-21 November 2014, Barcelona, Spain, The technological advances in embedded systems and low-cost sensor have increased the interest of people in creating their own scientific instruments. The main advantage of this new Do-It-Yourself (DIY) instruments, is that DIY developers are able to obtain high resolution time series of parameters of interest that may share easily with the rest of the community by using existing communication channels (social media, mobile devices, ...). DIY is one of the key technologies to build the future Citizens' Observatories In the framework of coastal monitoring based on DIY and mobile technologies, the Citclops European project aims to develop systems to retrieve and use environmental data. Simple parameters related to changes in optical properties (colour, transparency) are used to evaluate the water quality in coastal systems. One of the proposed DIY technology for measuring water transparency is based on an open-hardware and open-source low cost buoy. The easy-to-use hardware and software facilitate the citizens' engagement in the scientific monitoring and is an ideal framework to develop transversal environmental education projects (involving science and technology) for young people