TakingSpace Blog
community science
- Health
The Empowering Virtues of Citizen Science: Claiming Clean Air in Brussels
The AirCasting platform is used by individuals, communities, and institutions around the world to measure air pollution. In a recently published article, Nicola da Schio, a post...
Read more - Education
Breathe Better With AirCasting Actions
AirCasting Actions is a free resource for helping you and your community actively understand the air you are breathing and start taking action to improve it. Whether you’re a co...
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NYC Community Organizations Use AirCasting to Study Hyperlocal Air Quality
Air pollution levels in New York City can vary dramatically minute-to-minute and block-to-block, however, this variation is not captured by the New York State air monitoring net...
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New York Times Reports on Personal Pollution Exposures Using AirBeam2
In reporting their story, “Who Gets to Breathe Clean Air in New Delhi?”, The New York Times selected the AirBeam2 as their primary tool for measuring personal exposures to parti...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
Adding an NO2 sensor to the AirBeam
Some months ago, I took part in the Mobicitair experiment led by ATMO Auvergne Rhône Alpes, an agency that monitors air quality in southeastern France. Mobitcitair uses the AirB...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
Livestream Your AirBeam
You can now livestream your AirBeam! To begin, visit the Google Play Store and make sure you are running the most up to date version of the AirCasting app. Then launch the AirCa...
Read more - Open Source Software
1,000 AirBeams Worldwide
With over 1,000 AirBeams in use worldwide and more than 100 million data points, the AirCasting platform is now one of the largest open-source databases of community-collected a...
Read more - Open Source Software
Reprogram Your AirBeam
The AirBeam - HabitatMap’s low-cost, open-source air quality instrument for measuring PM2.5 - can be reprogrammed to meet the specific needs of your monitoring initiative. Don’t...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
Watch Our Kickstarter Video & Get An AirBeam
After more than 3 years of research and development and 6 prototypes, we finally cracked the code on bringing a low-cost, portable, accurate, open-source air quality monitor to ...
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AirBeam Technical Specifications, Operation & Performance
Hardware SpecificationsWeight: 7 ouncesParticle Sensor: Shinyei PPD60PVTemperature & Relative Humidity Sensor: MaxDetect RH03Bluetooth: Nova MDCS42, Version 2.1+EDRMicrocont...
Read more - Education
AirCasting Youth
AirCasting Youth is an educational program for high school students that teaches how to build AirCasting air quality instruments, develop air quality monitoring plans, utilize t...
Read more - Open Source Software
The AirCasting App Gets a Makeover
We launched the AirCasting app in December 2011. Over the past two years we've rolled out a slew of new features but never had a chance to rethink the user interface. That is u...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
Evaluating Low-Cost Gas Sensors
One of the major challenges facing air quality scientists and citizen scientists is the dearth of information available regarding the performance of low-cost gas sensors. Though...
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Make Your Own AirCasting Particle Monitor
Join us Tuesday, October 8th for the third installment of Make Magazine's Urban Sensor Hack. The event takes place on Google Hangout and is free and open to the public. During o...
Read more - Education
AirCasting: Education Edition
In the spring we had lots of fun teaching students how to make AirCasting compatible air monitors and luminescent accessories. For details on these educational programs, along ...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
More AirCasting Air Quality Monitors
It's been eight months since we released the DIY guide for the first AirCasting compatible air monitor. Since then we've been busy evaluating the performance of a variety of dif...
Read more - Health
AirCasting & HabitatMap in the News!
The New York Times followed us around while we went AirCasting, then wrote a story and made a video about it. The story is excellent in that it covers not only AirCasting but a ...
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My Air, My Health Challenge Update
We submitted our solution to the My Air, My Health Challenge judges a few weeks back. We won't know who won until they make the official announcement at the Health Datapalooza I...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
Now Streaming Data from the Zephyr BioHarness 3
We're happy to announce an update to the AirCasting app that includes connectivity for the Zephyr BioHarness 3. The BioHarness connects to the AirCasting app over Bluetooth, ena...
Read more - Health
AirCasting from Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Mayeta Clark, an intern at the New York Times video desk, contacted me a few months back to discuss AirCasting. I suggested that rather than do a sit-down interview, she capture...
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My Air, My Health Challenge
We're delighted to be finalists for the EPA/NIEHS/HHS sponsored My Air, My Health Challenge. Together with researchers and engineers from Carnegie Mellon University and New York...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
AirCasting Goes West Coast for Urban Prototyping
We had a blast last weekend in downtown San Francisco exhibiting AirCasting as part of the Urban Prototyping festival organized by the Grey Area Arts Foundation. We let folks ch...
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Lighten Up! Introducing AirCasting Luminescence
We've just released the step-by-step instruction manual detailing how to make your own AirCasting luminescent apparel. AirCasting Luminescence uses a IOIO microcontroller connec...
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Meet the AirCasting Air Monitor
We’re excited to announce the release of the step-by-step instruction manual for the AirCasting Air Monitor. This handy guide has all the information you need to build your very...
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AirCasting in Action, Now with 500% More Sensors!
This evening I clipped an AirCasting Air Monitor to my backpack, strapped a Zephyr heart rate monitor to my chest, and set out to find a good place to measure bad air. Conjectur...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
Come EcoHack with AirCasting!
Join AirCasting at EcoHack NYC this weekend, 4/20 - 4/21. I'll be giving an ignite talk Friday night to rally contributors for Saturday's Hackathon. I've posted my ignite talk a...
Read more - Sensors & Instruments
Apps & Sensors for Air Pollution
On March 25th I flew down to North Carolina to share AirCasting at the "Apps & Sensors for Air Pollution" workshop hosted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The work...
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AirCasting in Action
After taking time this weekend and yesterday to do more testing, we officially launched AirCasting today. Below I've described a couple of my recent sessions to illustrate AirC...
Read more - Open Source Software
Set Your Mic Max to Record Accurate Sound Level Readings
Different phones have different “microphone maximums”: the maximum sound level, as measured in decibels (dB), that the microphone can record. For most phones this is around 100 ...
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AirCasting is Live!
We released the AirCasting app to the Android Market late last night and the AirCasting website went live today! After spending the weekend testing and contributing data to the...
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