Another new paper, written with a number of colleagues from The Bartlett School of Planning –
The paper is based on the experience of creating and piloting a functioning ‘Incubator’ crowdsourcing platform for designing public spaces in an estate regeneration project in South London. The paper uses a cybernetics framework to analyse and present the way the platform itself was created and how issues of effectiveness, efficiency and equity were dealt with. It explores the generic qualities of interface and reviews applications of variety reduction in established crowdsourcing CS) models. It briefly presents the legal and socio-spatial parameters (like property rights) associated with the creation of the Incubators platform as well as the generic rules applicable to human-spatial relationships, based on studies exploring human-spatial interactions. Practical constraints including costs, catchments, life-span and meaningful feedback are looked into, followed by a discussion on social and political limitations associated with this form of public participation.
The Open Gauges project aims to allow open-source data gauges to be built, modified, and viewed as both physical (3d printed) and digital gauges. Depending on the user’s preference the models can be made to run from any online data source with a data feed – from Weather Data with Air Pressure, Temperature, Wind Speed etc though to Air Quality Gauges, Noise Meters, Energy etc.
Part of the initial release, from the Connected Environments Team at The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London, and alongside the more traditional ‘dial style’ gauges, is our new Neopixel Barometer, updated for Open Weather Map. Back in October we published the Weather Flow version, this new, open source version is specifically designed to use the free Open Weather Map API, making it easier to use.
Designed to be as simple as possible it is powered by a Raspberry Pi and uses the data feed from the Open Weather Map Single Call API, making it open to anyone with data available world world, according to your choice of location. So you could chose to display local Barometric Pressure or have a series of them on display showing locations around the world. Each gauges updates every 5 minutes with a Green Pixel to note successful data collection and Red for unsuccessful
The barometer uses the One Call API from Open Weather Map, provided as JSON.
Data displayed
The Neopixel Barometer displays current sea level air pressure (Mb) and the current pressure trend – Rising, Steady, Falling.
The data updates every five minutes with a sweep of blue/yellow neopixels on power up. The pressure trend is calculated in the Python script, as its not part of the API. As such it takes 3 hours to calibrate – with ‘Rising’ shown initially and then changing to the current trend after 3 hours of data has been downloaded.
3D printed model
The main barometer markers – ie STORM, FAIR, CHANGE, as well as the numbers – 950, 960 etc are provided as separate .stl files to 3D print. This is to allow easy alignment with the Neopixel strip with the correct pixel.
The conditions come in a single section, again to be aligned once the Neopixel strip is mounted, the Trend titles are also provided. We also provide the end caps for the Acrylic Tube (optional, see below).
Wood
The Neopixel strip is can be mounted either onto a thin strip of wood approx 125 centimetres long by 4.5 cm wide using the fixings that come with the Neopixel Strip, or with a wider block. The Text/Numbers are 3D printed and glued on the wood. It is a standard wood strip that most DIY/Hardware stores stock. The use of wood/mounting is to allow flexibility – ie mount it however you like.
As an update to this post (June 22nd, 2022) we now include mounting ‘Feet’ for a table top horizontal display – as illustrated below, angled at 30 degrees to provide a clear viewing angle of the air pressue.
Acrylic Tube
For this updated version we adapted the model to allow the additional use of an 1m x 28mm Acrylic Tube, widely available it allows the LED strip to be mounted into the tube (we used a piece of conduit to straighten the led strip). This give the barometer a more ‘finished look’ and provides more of a nod towards the mercury barometers of old.
Hardware
The hardware has been selected to be as low cost as possible –
This article presents a practice-led investigation by a cross-disciplinary team of artists and computer scientists into the potential for mobile and digital communications technologies to engage visitors to London’s Hampstead Heath with the histories of its veteran urban trees. Focusing on the application of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies within the arboreal environment for the digital poetic walk, The Listening Wood, it considers the reciprocal impact of “tree time” on the development of “slow tech.”
You can read the paper via – Lovett, Leah & Hay, Duncan & Hudson-Smith, Andy & Jode, Martin. (2020). Mobile Communications Technologies in Tree Time: The Listening Wood. Leonardo. 54. 1-2. 10.1162/leon_a_02006.
AllSky is an outstanding package for the Raspberry Pi, allowing the capture of long exposures using either the Raspberry Pi HQ camera with a fish eye lens or the more specialised ZWO astronomy cameras. All it needs is a casing and while there are options to use drainpipes etc there did not seem to be a 3D printed option, so while laid up with Covid we fired up Fusion 360 and made a solution with the aim to be as simple as possible to make. In addition we have linked the output of AllSky to IPTimelapse on Windows, for additional image staking and data overlays from Weather Underground which are then additionally merged into all day Timelapses’, and then fed into Home Assistant, opening up the option of both day and night captures of the sky.
Our 3D printed case is rendered below:
AllSky Case – Fusion 360 Render
Using the system it is easy to produce the output below – an all night image of 40 second exposures using the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera.
3D Printer (we use a Prusa Mk3 but any 3D printer will do)
The case consists of two parts, the Top – holding the Pi Camera, Fisheye Lens and the 4 inch Dome and the Bottom, holding the Raspberry Pi. The top simply slots into the bottom, a tight fit with a ridge to place a run of sealant around the edge.
AllSky Camera Case Parts
The dome also slots in with sealant applied to waterproof the fit – giving the final case, pictured right.
AllSky Camera 3D Printed Case
The STL files, to 3D print the case can be freely download from the Prusa Printable site.
Software Set Up
The set up and install of AllSky is well covered at its corresponding Wiki and Github pages – with the odd gotcha we found on running through the instructions for the current version using the Pi HQ Camera. The main parts are to install the Raspberry Pi Operating system, install the main AllSky Package via the command line, install the Graphical Interface and then the Web Server set up.
The whole things takes around 30 minutes, providing you with arguably the best and most configurable option to photograph and timelapse the sky out there. Currently on version 8.0.3, the software is under active development so as ever there are always a few moments of trial and error to get the correct settings. The main takeaway is to go with the default options for the Raspberry Pi HQ Camera set up and in the ‘Editor section’ include the line – CAPTURE_EXTRA_PARAMETERS=”-daymean 0.7 -nightmean 0.3″. This is highlighted in the wiki but can be easily missed, without it our system would not produce any usable images.
Timelapse’s
While AllSky is primary designed for capturing the night sky and producing startrails and a nightly time-lapse, it will also capture images during the day which can be sent to additional software to produce daytime Timelapse’s. There are many options at this point, but over the years we have found that IPTimelapse (Windows) is one of the best options of there for long term, reliable Timelapse production.
It also includes the ability to overlay weather data from Weather Underground and in additional to stack images, producing brighter star images than AllSky currently offers. The addition of IPTimelapse is not required and indeed adding in a Windows machine can complicate matters, but it does offer enough extra to make the steps worthwhile if you can. Allsky can capture a live image every set number of seconds and output it to a local file – http://allsky.local/current/tmp/image.jpg – this runs day and night – IPTimelapse simply listens for an update to this file and overlays data, image stacks and overlays weather data while then at the end of the day outputting its own Timelapse to save locally or FTP to a website.
Allsky to IPtimelapse
The two images above show the output of AllSky vs AllSky and IPTimelapse with its Star Image Stacking, in this case 4 images. It produces notably brighter images, although with each exposure at 40 seconds and then stacked there is a slight movement in the image. Note also the timestamp and weather data overlay added at the bottom of the image.
We sprayed the dome with RainX – allowing water to bead and run off. The Timelapse below shows an all day Timelapse with a mix of rain, snow and clearing at the last part of the video to show the stars.
As a final step, we then feed all of this into Home Assistant – our current dashboard is pictured below, allowing the sky image to be viewed in context to local environmental data.
Home Assistant with AllSky
The 3D files take approximately 8 hours in total to print, using 0.3mm draft mode, do let us know any thoughts in the comments and we look forward to seeing any AllSky images you produce.
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