Public Lab community newsletter 4.27.12

[Shannon Dosemagen]

It's been a busy week! A wide range of new research notes have gone up, the air column monitoring project was launched and there are a number of new additions to the website. Below are a couple of highlights from Public Lab for this week:

1. NYC - EcoHack on Earth Day Weekend was a smashing, stormy success at Parsons the New School for Design. Collaborating with the Sensemake.rs community (creators of Air Quality Egg) resulted in a sensor pack wirelessly transmitting 6 variables from balloon to ground. Check out the research notes. Next steps will be to coordinate with data visualizers and test the lenticular balloon case + “tail fin” combo.

2. Public Lab community members made two new batches of H2S test strips for lab and field testing. This is the first batch to be sent out to Colorado for field testing of the cool tent container that can be shipped flat.

3. The infrared camera assembly/use documentation collaboration is starting this week. The Kickstarter dual camera kits (visible and infrared) shipped this week and there is an ongoing collaborative documentation project going. A couple of key research notes on this topic so far: http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/ndvi-plots-ir-camera-kit and http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/dual-camera-kit-guide.

4. The "plots-boston" list has been launched. This list will be used for coordinating local PLOTS events in the Boston area.

5. Invitations to PublicLaboratory.org: you can now invite others to PLOTS, if you think they’d be an asset to the community or if they could leverage some of our expertise (but of course invites are not required to join).

6. NYC is investigating shared workspace, please email l...@publiclaboratory.org if you are interested in renting with the group.

7. iLAB fellowship of dance+ecology is kicking off this week. Please get in touch if you are interested in exploring choreography as part of flying aerial research equipment or other embodied research approaches.

8. There was a three-fold balloon aerial research workshop held on lower Manhattan rooftop. Hosted by Open Plans on their roof terrace, a camera with intervalometer, an air quality sensor pack from a #sensemakers collaboration, and a 4G phone streaming video to UStream were each hoisted from the 13th floor and controlled with two tethers.

9. NYC event: iSPY with fluxfactory.org will host live aerial video streaming in Central Park this Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 at Tavern on the Green, Central Park, Manahttan, 6pm-7pm. 

10. The PLOTS Archive has reached over 100 maps!

11. There is a new mailing list overview page. Find out about the different lists available to participate in and how they are currently structured.

12. Randomly selected research notes to highlight for this last week:

Tiny remote control (posted by Chris Fastie)

Light aircraft aerial mapping set-up (posted by Stewart Long)

Air Quality Egg sensor-box for realtime air column monitoring (posted by Ed Borden)

University of Texas-Austin map

370nm UV detection of Corexit-dispersed oil on Gulf Coast beaches (posted by Eustatic)

Balloon kite design and prototypes (posted by Valerie)

Please email with any questions and if you'd like to have something included in the newsletter next week, please send it by 5pm Thursday. Best, Shannon

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Shannon Dosemagen
Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science
504.239.4642
publiclaboratory.org