Solar balloons, bubbling bacterial broths, and floating sensors: three reasons to attend The Barnraising

[Liz Barry]

Hey folks, 

Just confirmed: three awesome hands-on projects that you can build at The Barnraising, Nov 20-22: 

> PS Register soon, as there are only 8 slots left for Friday afternoon's kayaking trip. 

OpenAir: build your choice of experimental indoor air filters, the BiobrothBubbler or the RhyzoRemediator (shown below). 

Below: bacteria living on plant roots -- or in its own biobroth -- digests formaldehyde, the most common indoor air contaminant. Build your own and join a massive experiment to test whether 1970's NASA research on cleaning the air in space stations actually works! Photo and sketch by Jeff Warren. 

OpenWater: build a conductivity sensor to indicate conditions such as heavy metal contamination from mining or salt contamination from fracking. 

Below: the mockup for the Riffle-328p board that leverages the Arduino Uno platform (front and back). At 18mm wide, it's designed to fit through the 20mm opening on a standard water bottle. Water bottles are water-tight, making them the perfect housing to protect water-sensing circuitry from actually getting wet.

Below: the Riffle-328p board is "spring-loaded" into position in an empty water bottle using zipties. Photo by Tony C. 

OpenLand: learn to fly a solar balloon and finally (finally!) kick your helium habit! 

Below: Tomas Saraceno's "Aeroscene" solar balloon project rising in the Solomon Islands, August 2015. Depending on their size, solar balloons can carry sensors, cameras, even people. Rumor has it more than five versions of lighter-than-air tetrahedral structures will be available to fly at LUMCON. Photo by Nick Shapiro.

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Liz Barry
director of community development
@publiclab

publiclab.org

+1-336-269-1539

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