CONA - Community Observation Networks for Air

Just got back from our project launch day at Alexandra Primary School. And what great fun we had. The wonderful staff there basically let us take over the whole day for year 5 and 6 (children aged 9 to 11). We had 8 activities for them around the themes of air quality and weather.  The NIWA team introduce the project to yrs 5 and 6 at Alexandra Primary School. Credit: Stu Mackay, NIWA But more than just fun and games, the activities and the whole project do have a greater purpose. This project was driven by the concept of 'Citizen Science' - that the practice of science need not be remote and inaccessible to the public. Anyone who spends time amongst younger children knows that they are all natural born scientists - curious experimenters. At some point in their later childhood, though, some start to find science more difficult and that initial excitement and wonder seems to fade away. It is in late childhood that many children often decide that science isn't for them. Thro...

This week we at the CONA team at NIWA achieved a small but very significant milestone. Real-time data has started coming in from our first wirelessly networked ODINs. Until now the ODINs have stored all of their data onto an onboard SD card which was manually downloaded by a technician. Clearly, this introduced a delay between the data been recorded and us getting our hands on it (and subsequently making charts or maps. This delay could be months in some cases. Although it has been technically possible to telemeter the data wirelessly, we opted to concentrate on proving the value of the ODIN data first, before implementing this. By the end of last year we were totally convinced that the ODIN data was valid and highly valuable, so over the summer ODIN's creator Gustavo re-designed the ODIN for remote data download, using a mobile phone modem in each device. This increased the power demands of the ODIN so it also required a larger battery and solar panel. However, after some tests in...