BENGALURU: Do you wonder how much worse the city air is after Diwali? You can measure it with a cheap sensor. On Citizenry Day, you could learn how to assemble one.
On November 5, a meet will bring together people who are working to make Bengaluru a better place. There is a cherry on the top, these people have even come up with tech to make such jobs simpler.
Organised by the Random Hacks of Kindness (RoHK), Citizenry Day is where people can share DIY (Do It Yourself), app and website ideas.
RoHK organises hackathons to fix civic roadblocks and the last was done to make the city’s layout more accessible. “We realised there is a lot of tech being made by various citizen groups and others don’t know of it,” says Chinmayi SK, founder of RoHK. “Therefore this event and we plan to hold one once every six months”.
The cheap sensor is just one such tech that will be explained, by Thejesh GN of Data Meet. Their objective is introduce “citizen hackers” to cheap hardware sensors that they can deploy in their neighbourhoods. At the meet, you will be introduced to its electronics and learn how to build the sensor that could be used to measure temperature, pressure or air-quality.
Often we witness sexual harassment on the streets and are not sure how to react. At the citizenry event, Durga India will coach you on the appropriate and helpful response. This group otherwise teaches women self-defence techniques, and have trained a few hundred ‘Durgas’, and even came up with the alarm on few buses on one or two routes. Chinmayi says, “At this event, they will teach what they call ‘bystander intervention’. This will also be the first step towards building a volunteer network.”
Bengalureans fume when they speak of badly regulated traffic and poorly disposed garbage. Instead, they can start mapping trash sites. Citizen Matters will guide the interested how to do this. “They will also talk on how to crowd source data and use it for advocacy,” says Chinmayi.
Gubbi Labs, which tracks biodiversity in Bengaluru, holds frogs very dear. These amphibians are great indicators of land and water-systems’ health. “With their app, you can identify a frog and report the spot of sighting. This way, when their population increases or decreases, we will know the health of the surrounding ecosystem,” says Chinmayi.
Here’s a list of materials you will need to make the air quality sensor for yourself - Arduino Uno R3 Compatible Development Board ATmega328P, USB cable for Arduino Uno R3, AC to USB power, DHT22 / AM2302 digital temperature and humidity sensor, breadboard, breadboard wires (M2M, M2F), led, 10K potentiometer, a few resistors 10K, 1K, 230, a multimeter, sensor and a laptop with Arduino Software (IDE) installed.