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Do you have an interest in air pollution? making things? electronics? art? data? environmentalism?
Join us for a two-month long environmental hackathon where we try and explore all of these themes with a pollution monitor that you can build yourself. We will give you some electronics, some help, and the freedom to go in any direction you can imagine.
This project is a collaboration between Birmingham University and FizzPop Makerspace in Birmingham.
This hackathon aims to raise awareness of air pollution in and around Birmingham in a creative way. We will provide a way of monitoring particulates in the air around you, and plenty of help with setting this up. This is inspired by Robin Price's art pieces on pollution using a particulate sensor just like the one we'll give you. Then, we encourage you to experiment with your setup and we will all brainstorm ideas we can try out!
Here is a picture from the BOM Article on Robin's art. The picture is a long-exposure of a string of LEDs which light up more if there is more pollution, thus showing a visible example of the pollution of an area, something which is usually invisible to us.
- Raspberry Pi Pico W
- SDS011 Air Quality Sensor
- Connecting wires 'n' bits
Check out Getting Started to see how to build the initial project. Briefly, it will involve:
- soldering some of your electronical bits together
- finding a USB cable to connect to the Pi Pico
- uploadinog the basic code provided by FizzPop to the Pi Pico
- finding or making a case for the setup if you're putting it outside
For all of this you can get help anytime on the Discord, or in person at FizzPop on Wednesday evenings or weekends.
This phase is all about playing around with the setup (hacking!), whether it's tinkering with the electronics, changing the code, or looking at the data being collected by everyone. Whatever you find interesting!
There will be lots of opportunity to talk about your ideas, discuss how you would do what you want, and get help, via the Discord, and social nights at FizzPop, on Wednesday and weekends.
FizzPop also has a bunch of different sensors you can try out, and a bunch of knowledge to bounce ideas off and point you in the right direction if you have an idea.
Through this, it's your freedom to come up with ideas of what to do with the kit. Some random examples for inspiration:
- Design a "pollution badge", a wearable monitor and screen to take around with you
- Hack together something with all the data from everybody's sensors
- Design a PCB with a bunch of surface-mount sensors
- Design something that could be deployed to anyone volunteering their house to be sensor'd up
- Come up with a way to wirelessly power a sensor suctioned to the other side of a window
- ...
With everyone's ideas, we will put together a list of "orders" which we will use remaining funds to purchase, about halfway through the hackathon.
These will be prioritised price-ascending, so the cheaper your idea, the more likely you'll end up with the components you want.
Then, you'll get some time to develop your idea, and try to make it! Again, FizzPop and the community are around to help with ideas and plans via Discord or in-person at the FizzPop space.
We will have a closing ceremony with awards for categories such as "prettiest project", "most social media clout", "best technical innovation", etc..