

Noise Visualization in the Tenderloin by Movity (YC W10) - ericwu01
http://tendernoise.movity.com

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ericwu01
We built out a quick visualization of the noise data we've been collecting in
the city. Again, the link is here: <http://tendernoise.movity.com>.

Our goal for this noise project is to show the affect of noise (from muni,
cable cars, bars, people) on the quality of life. We're going to collect and
scale the data to other neighborhoods shortly.

It's v.1, so let us know what you think.

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revorad
What do the lengths of the coloured bars in the bottom panel represent?

Edit: Oh and I forgot to say this is awesome. How did you make this?

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ericwu01
The range between the highest and lowest db reading at that given moment. The
measurements were taking by us, analyzed by Arup (Arup.com), and visualized by
Sha Hwang. He literally built it in 2 days and one of the few folks who
specialize in data visualization.

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revorad
Very cool. Are you considering releasing the data? It would be interesting to
see the same data explored and visualised in other ways.

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tlrobinson
Cool. I did a traffic visualization from my apartment on Haight Street on New
Years Eve and the first week of January this year. I just had a webcam with
some software to detect movement in the middle of the intersection.

<http://tlrobinson.net/projects/haightcam/traffic.png>

(My R skills aren't great, sorry it's not pretty. The camera also got blocked
for awhile around day 5 so it's not exactly scientific)

That first cycle starts mid day on New Years Eve. You can see a big drop in
traffic leading up to midnight, then a big increase soon after. Not
surprising, but it's always a little gratifying to confirm a hypothesis.

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util
Neat! Do you have the data posted anywhere? I'm not sure my code produces much
of an improvement on yours, but you can get some nice results with ggplot2:

library(ggplot2) x <\- Sys.time() + 60 * (1:2400) y <\- rpois(2400, 50 *
(sin(seq(-4 * pi, 4 * pi, len=2400)) + 1.1)) qplot(as.POSIXct(x), y,
geom=c("point", "smooth"), xlab="time", ylab="count")

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alex_h
Perhaps you could find people that are willing to install these sensors
outside their windows. You could run them from a power adapter to get more
than 3 days worth of data collection + less hassle from cops. If you are
moving this project into the Tendernob and need a place to put equipment on
Pine St, I'd be happy to help out.

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ericwu01
Great idea Alex. Crowdsourcing the data collection might be a great route...
we'd have to account for calibration and consistency of devices, but I think
that could all be overcome.

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stellar678
This is really cool! Having lived in the Tenderloin, I can testify to the
impact of its noise on my quality of life.

How is the project being funded? What does it take to install the data
capturing equipment? How do the interactions with the city or property owners
go?

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zain
We try to be inconspicuous when installing our noise capturing equipment.
We're frequently questioned by cops but usually they're just curious after
they establish we're not stealing traffic lights. One time, some bums asked us
what we were doing, and after we told them we were collecting noise data, they
started screaming into our noise recorders :(

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dasil003
"Booby traps for tourists. If we catch one you can have the money, but leave
the body for us."

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thunk
I'm wondering if there's a way to crowdsource this with cellphones. I realize
it's a little out there, but there _are_ thousands and thousands of
microphones already blanketing every urban area ...

edit: Google informs me of <http://www.noisetube.net/>

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chaosmachine
Just a couple days ago, I was thinking it'd be cool to have a "noise" layer on
Google Maps, but I figured it would be too hard to get good resolution over a
large area.

~~~
ericwu01
We're working on modeling out the data we're collecting to be able to do a
noise layer for the entire city (weekend vs. weekday and the time of day as a
slider). We're hoping to have a demo up and running in a few weeks.

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btilly
I would suggest that the data is more useful when combined with information on
the negative effects of noisy environments. For instance see
[http://www.designshare.com/research/lmaxwell/noisechildren.h...](http://www.designshare.com/research/lmaxwell/noisechildren.htm)
for some information on impacts of noisy environments on children's ability to
learn.

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myth_drannon
wow , just today I was thinking about similar idea. Crowd sourcing air
pollution. Adding some small device to your smartphone(andruino with android)
that sniffs the air and analyzes the pollutants ,etc. Then sends it back to
the server and can visualize it. About a thousand users in a big city would be
enough . Not only just to see it on the web, but for example city traffic
lights can divert cars depending on the polluted area,deciding where to
buy/rent a house

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jim-greer
Very cool project. It seems like getting every other intersection might be
overkill? I'd be more interested in something sparser that covers more of the
city.

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vrode
Tenderloin?

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saikat
It's a neighborhood in San Francisco -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenderloin,_San_Francisco> .

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d_c
Could this data be gathered by google's streetview cars? :)

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czhiddy
I'd be curious to see how many cameras are left on those cars after leaving
them overnight in the Tenderloin.

