This week’s newsletter is a fairly short one. We are slowly redistributing sensors from volunteers who have been collecting data for the last months. We are also working on the next batch (we ran out of screws and had to order again). And we are finishing a grant application while the deadline keeps coming closer every day. In the meantime, we finally edited and cut the recording of our presentation and the Q&A from Sensors Day 2018. So if you missed it, now is your chance to watch it at youtu.be/JFJYKrzMm38.
A quick comment on humidity
The weather in the last days (or weeks) has not been the best. The very nature of particulate matter means that it clumps together when the relative humidity is higher than about 70 percent. On days like today, this means that the sensors give unusually high readings. So don’t worry if you see the data. When analyzing it, we take the humidity in Cambridge into account, but the current version of the sensor sadly doesn’t have its own humidity sensor (we have plans to change that, but that means we have to change the PCB - tedious work, but it will be done). Even the council PM sensors have the same problem. We are looking into a way to correct for humidity, but we don’t want to falsify the data.
Distribution
The newest boxes are cut and mostly glued (waiting for varnish to cope with the humidity). As soon as we know when everything will be finished and tested, we will let you know.
Boxes waiting for screws, sensors and varnish
What’s next?
The promised update of the database is not quite finished yet, so we will work on that. The team will also visit AlphaSense (www.alpha-sense.com) next week to get more information on their gas sensors. We would like to expand the current sensor hub to measure different gases (while still keeping the price low) and we will keep you updated.