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Pigeons to set up smog blog PDF Print E-mail
Written by Steve Dietz   
Feb 01, 2006 at 05:52 PM

New Scientist

04 February 2006
Magazine issue 2537

Twenty of the birds will soon take to the skies above San Jose, California, each carrying a GPS receiver, pollution sensors and cellphone technology

Got your own blog yet? If not you'd better hurry up if you don't want to be beaten to it by a flock of pigeons. Later this year 20 of the birds will take to the skies above San Jose, California, each carrying a GPS receiver, air pollution sensors and a basic cellphone. They will measure levels of pollutants they encounter, and beam back their findings as text messages to a blog in real time.

"We are combining an air pollution sensor with a home-made cellphone," says interdisciplinary artist and researcher Beatriz da Costa of the University of California, Irvine, who came up with the idea of the pigeon blog with her students Cina Hazegh and Kevin Ponto. The team has built a prototype of the pigeons' kit containing a cellphone circuit board with SIM card and communication chips, a GPS receiver and carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide sensors. They ... [NewScientist.com]

 


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