In development

The air column monitor is currently in early phases of development. The April 2012 EcoHackII at Parsons in NYC brought together a group of developers, scientists, data visualizers and activists to work on the initial design. This tool is being developed as a partnership between Public Lab and the AirQualityEgg/Sensemakers community.

Some brainstorming has been conducted on this page: http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/ecohackii

Purpose

Purpose

This tool is being developed to experiment with mapping indoor air quality. A Roomba--the room cleaning vacuum--is programmed to travel all around a room once it is left to roam. Therefore, it is an ideal tool to assess the quality of air through out a room.

Infrared cameras for vegetation analysis

Infrared photography can help assess a plant’s health, and has been used on satellites and planes for agricultural and ecological assessment, mainly by vineyards, large farms and large-scale (read: expensive) research projects. By creating a low-cost camera and working with farmers and environmental activists, we hope to explore grassroots uses for this kind of technology. What could farmers or activists do with this kind of data if the equipment costs as little as $100?

Plants and infrared

A kite balloon combines a lifting gas with active lift structures like wings to fly in all conditions. A good design may solve the common difficulty of flying in light winds, which makes balloon mapping difficult, but still falls short of kite-flying weather. It may also help reduce helium use, and therefore price.

Developments thus far:

Materials:

Basics

We started developing a stereo camera set-up so that we could capture two images simultaeously -- one visible, one infrared (for more on infrared imaging see our near-infrared camera tool). The visible imagery can be stitched normally, or overlaid with the infrared to create NDVI - Normalized Difference Vegetation Index.

NDVI can be used to identify not only the presence of but also the health of vegetation. Since the 1980's NDVI has become one of the important tools for mapping and monitoring vegetation.

NDVI = (NIR-RED) / (NIR+RED)

Purpose

Chemists use expensive tools called spectrometers (there are several kinds) to analyze unknown solid or liquid samples. We are working on a cheap version which we hope to use to identify oil contamination in water and soil, as well as a range of other possible toxins.

Spectrometers can also be used to identify species of plants or crop diseases, assess plumes from smokestacks, and have many other applications.

Applications

Thermal imaging can be used to document heat/AC leaks from insulation gaps on a building's facade, reveal warmer ground water inflows (either fresh or chemical-laden) or "thermal pollution" from industrial processes entering ocean-temperature waterbodies, as well as identify areas on the human body experiencing infection or stress (includes epidemiological applications).

Community applications so far include both a "heat-busters" program in East Harlem and a "forensic" water quality monitoring program in the Gowanus Canal.

Approaches