
Pigeons with Rucksacks Measure London's Air Quality - tomjhill
http://www.pigeonairpatrol.com
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J-dawg
In Lima they have vultures looking out for illegal rubbish dumps. [1]

Is the use of animal "volunteers" the natural next step for the sharing
economy?

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/29/drowning-
rubbi...](http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/29/drowning-rubbish-lima-
vultures-gopro-video-cameras)

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andor
It's a great workaround for bans on quadrocopters.

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coldcode
Pigeons With Rucksacks would make an awesome band name.

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alva
Yes, they do tweet you the results

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tkinom
Optionally via Carrier Pigeons or Owl Post for the few without internet
access.

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fredley
IP over Avian Carriers:
[https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt)

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TrevorJ
As I recall, packet loss was the main issue, as the packet size was enormous.

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brokentone
Cutesy copy written from pigeon perspective: "So don’t worry, we love flying,
we’re pigeons after all." But serious copy about needing bicyclists as beta
testers -- is the pigeon deal a publicity stunt, or a real situation?

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Fizzadar
Super interesting, shame both my home and work are engulfed in moderate
pollution :/

Also a possible major UI fail (unless it's just me): I can't move the map.

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michaelmior
Not just you. I'm guessing the map wasn't intended to be moved, but if that's
the case, hovering shouldn't show the hand cursor.

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hughperkins
They cant spell dioxide, and theyre not measuring pm2.5 theres a site at
heathrow that does measure pm2.5
[http://www.heathrowairwatch.org.uk/data/graphs](http://www.heathrowairwatch.org.uk/data/graphs)

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Piskvorrr
Particulates are usually at larger concentration at ground level; not sure if
using variable-height sampling would make sense there.

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sktrdie
Damn couldn't they be used for mesh internet in cities?

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capote
Tiny pigeon backpacks! Cute!

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brink
Get your website in check. Using that much of my CPU on idle is ridiculous.
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/coda-
files/2016-03-14_12-33-55.png](https://s3.amazonaws.com/coda-
files/2016-03-14_12-33-55.png)

~~~
bduerst
Same here. AFAIK the page seems to be constantly updating itself even when
idle.

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scholia
Not much impact on my CPU in Firefox (+5% or so), but it's using 60% of my
GPU/graphics card....

