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Air quality monitoring is definitely the future. In home and all over every city. They really should be in every K-12 school and college university on a publi

by ck2 3y ago

Air quality monitoring is definitely the future. In home and all over every city. They really should be in every K-12 school and college university on a public open network. PurpleAir's network is the best we have right now because the federal airnow network is absolutely terrible with too few sensors. Hopefully AirGradient can build their public network, I've suggested before they try to get integrated with the WeatherSTEM network which has everything but air quality nationally.

ahaucnx 3y ago
Yes this is a really good suggestion and still on my to do list. If anybody is involved in the WeatherSTEM project and can make an introduction please reach out to me.
ahaucnx 3y ago
One more thing that could be of interest. We are currently running a very large global co-location project where we place our open hardware monitor next to reference devices. The aim is to develop algorithms to compensate for different environmental conditions (eg high humidity) in a structured way. These algorithms will then be publicly available and can be used to enhance the accuracy of low cost monitors. More information: https://www.airgradient.com/research/ https://www.airgradient.com/research/
jiggawatts 3y ago
> absolutely terrible with too few sensors. Different country, different government, same problem. I've dealt with the air quality services department in my state and they're so, so far away from what they ought to be doing that it's almost a joke. The best analogy I can come up with is the NASA/Boeing Space Launch System, which is so absurdly expensive that one of its single-use rocket engines costs more than several entire flights of a Falcon 9. Yet, everybody keeps moving on with the SLS project as-if it wasn't an absurd monstrosity. It's like the emperor's new clothes, there gets to a point where nobody will even admit the enormity of the error, so in some sense it ceases to exist. Back on the topic of air quality: I attended a meeting where they finally got a decent budget (a few million) and started talking about big data, scalable cloud services, and IoT. "Great," I said, "how many IoT devices were you thinking of? Ten thousand? Twenty? Fifty?" "Fifty" they replied. "Finally, we can get some decent coverage and accurate maps!" "No, not fifty thousand. Fifty." "Err... they're like $100 each. If you're only buying $5000 worth, where is the rest of the money going?" "Oh, we've spent that already on the planning phase. We don't have any budget left! What can you set up for free?" "Nothing."

by ck2 3y ago

ahaucnx 3y ago

Yes this is a really good suggestion and still on my to do list. If anybody is involved in the WeatherSTEM project and can make an introduction please reach out to me.

ahaucnx 3y ago

One more thing that could be of interest. We are currently running a very large global co-location project where we place our open hardware monitor next to reference devices. The aim is to develop algorithms to compensate for different environmental conditions (eg high humidity) in a structured way. These algorithms will then be publicly available and can be used to enhance the accuracy of low cost monitors. More information: https://www.airgradient.com/research/ https://www.airgradient.com/research/

jiggawatts 3y ago

> absolutely terrible with too few sensors. Different country, different government, same problem. I've dealt with the air quality services department in my state and they're so, so far away from what they ought to be doing that it's almost a joke. The best analogy I can come up with is the NASA/Boeing Space Launch System, which is so absurdly expensive that one of its single-use rocket engines costs more than several entire flights of a Falcon 9. Yet, everybody keeps moving on with the SLS project as-if it wasn't an absurd monstrosity. It's like the emperor's new clothes, there gets to a point where nobody will even admit the enormity of the error, so in some sense it ceases to exist. Back on the topic of air quality: I attended a meeting where they finally got a decent budget (a few million) and started talking about big data, scalable cloud services, and IoT. "Great," I said, "how many IoT devices were you thinking of? Ten thousand? Twenty? Fifty?" "Fifty" they replied. "Finally, we can get some decent coverage and accurate maps!" "No, not fifty thousand. Fifty." "Err... they're like $100 each. If you're only buying $5000 worth, where is the rest of the money going?" "Oh, we've spent that already on the planning phase. We don't have any budget left! What can you set up for free?" "Nothing."