Blackcloud Sensor Installation at Kudelabs in Guangzhou
Kudelabs Office in Guangzhou
Recently I worked with my friend, artist and UC Berkeley Professor, Greg Niemeyer to install one of his Blackcloud sensors at Kudelabs in Guangzhou, China, a great software company cranking out web applications you will be hearing more about in the near future.
Blackcloud is a quite interesting project to create highly sensitive pollution sensors to be distributed around the world with the data collecting at blackcloud.org to make observations and games around the concept of pollution. Each Blackcloud sensor tracks:
… CO2, your VOC’s, your city light, your endless noise, your rising heat, your damp confines in places all around the world. I visualze the Indoor Air in beautiful graphs so you can see when and where you pollute. Maybe I can predict your pollution cycles, too.
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| From Drop Box |
Blackcloud Sensor at Kudelabs office in Guangzhou
The sensors are quite interesting little boxes I thought I might have had a hard time transporting into China. They have little LEDs on the outside which show the previously discussed measurements. The whole box uses power-over-ethernet and of course a net connection to send and receive pollution data.
Here is more info for the tech nerds, Greg wrote:
I built two sensors so far. Both have a two-PCB board design, a ATMega 168 processor, a DCS CO2 sensor, and an array of other parts. The blue version sends data to my server via SMS text messaging, and the red version sends data via TCP/IP. I built the sensors using Eagle PCB design software, and a local PCB manufacturing plant.
I took a bunch of pictures of the installation and Kudelabs at Flickr, which I’m having a terrible time accessing today in the Great Firewalled China.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonphillips/tags/kudelabs
To me its quite curious to collect pollution data in China. It is often rumored that even during the Olympics, pollution measurements in Beijing were done far outside of the city away from the major sources of pollutants. With the lowering prices of sensors and affordable access to the Internet, it is possible for many to do their own fact finding. Now, if only the Chinese Internet could be made more reliable…
NOTE: Kudelabs is a gracious sponsor of the Laoban Soundsystem 2.0 being manufactured in Guangzhou, China, right now! Check out the latest in-progress pictures.
Jon — Love the project! It would be great to try and get more of them set up in different cities in China. Hey–please do give a beep next time you are in the Bay area. Would love to get together and chat.
–Lyn
Comment by Lyn Jeffery — June 8, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
Ok, totally…Lyn, shoot me an email at jon@rejon.org and lets set something up.
The problem with blackcloud sensors is that they are too expensive. I want Greg to explore making some really inexpensive ones here in China that more people may use on their computer, etc…sensors are quite cool in connection with inexpensive phones and devices.
Comment by jon — June 12, 2009 @ 12:30 am