Internet-connected, community-driven air quality sensor network. airqualityegg.com
In 2012, I co-founded a Kickstarter project born from my thesis, Citizen Sensor. We raised over $142,000 and instantly grew an international community of DIY scientists and hardware developers still active today.
Air Quality Egg is an IOT sensor system designed to allow anyone to collect very high resolution readings of NO2 and CO concentrations outside of their home. These two gases are the most indicative elements related to urban air pollution that are sense-able by inexpensive, DIY sensors.
AQE began as a collaboration with Ed Borden at Pachube (Cosm, now Xively) and WickedDevice on the idea and tech development behind AQE. Beginning in early 2011, we held public workshops at Eyebeam in NYC and have since held meetups in NYC, Spain, and Amsterdam working to develop the concept and prototyping of the project. That year we started a group called Sensemake.rs to support projects around IOT, energy harvesting, and more.
The concept and technology is largely based on my graduate thesis work. It evolved into an international community, that is still active, as well as many really exciting speaking engagements, workshops all around the world (see my CV for a list). In 2013 I won $25k EPA Citizen Science Grant in collaboration with the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science and the Cypress Hills School District in Queens, NY. We developed and taught a 7-week curriculum to 8th grade science students at the low-income district's PS89 MIddle School. You can see some of the student work here.
Really proud to be a part of one of the first large-scale deployed DIY and IOT air quality projects, in one of the most democratic ways in terms of development, as well as get such a great Kickstarter experience, as well.
Selected as the Best of Kickstarter, 2012.
ROLE
Co-Founder, Project Management, Public Speaking, Hardware and Firmware Development
TECH
Environmental + Gas Sensors,
Modular AVR based hardware,
RF Wireless Communication,
Websockets, Databasing
TEAM
Sensemake.rs, Ed Borden,
Albert Chao, WickedDevice
PRESS + LINKS
Forbes
Wired
Wikipedia
Kickstarter
YEAR
2012 - 2013