Pigeons with Rucksacks Measure London's Air Quality

[tomjhill]

http://www.pigeonairpatrol.com

[J-dawg]

In Lima they have vultures looking out for illegal rubbish dumps. [1]

Is the use of animal "volunteers" the natural next step for the sharing economy?

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/jan/29/drowning-rubbi...

[andor → J-dawg]

It's a great workaround for bans on quadrocopters.

[coldcode]

Pigeons With Rucksacks would make an awesome band name.

[alva]

Yes, they do tweet you the results

[tkinom → alva]

Optionally via Carrier Pigeons or Owl Post for the few without internet access.

[fredley → tkinom]

IP over Avian Carriers: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt

[TrevorJ → fredley]

As I recall, packet loss was the main issue, as the packet size was enormous.

[Piskvorrr → tkinom]

Owls are way better at routing than IP, especially with roaming users ;)

[tkinom → Piskvorrr]

You mean there are non-wizard who also use Owl Post? :-)

[brokentone]

Cutesy copy written from pigeon perspective: "So don’t worry, we love flying, we’re pigeons after all." But serious copy about needing bicyclists as beta testers -- is the pigeon deal a publicity stunt, or a real situation?

[Fizzadar]

Super interesting, shame both my home and work are engulfed in moderate pollution :/

Also a possible major UI fail (unless it's just me): I can't move the map.

[michaelmior → Fizzadar]

Not just you. I'm guessing the map wasn't intended to be moved, but if that's the case, hovering shouldn't show the hand cursor.

[hughperkins]

They cant spell dioxide, and theyre not measuring pm2.5 theres a site at heathrow that does measure pm2.5 http://www.heathrowairwatch.org.uk/data/graphs

[Piskvorrr → hughperkins]

Particulates are usually at larger concentration at ground level; not sure if using variable-height sampling would make sense there.

[sktrdie]

Damn couldn't they be used for mesh internet in cities?

[capote]

Tiny pigeon backpacks! Cute!

[brink]

Get your website in check. Using that much of my CPU on idle is ridiculous. https://s3.amazonaws.com/coda-files/2016-03-14_12-33-55.png

[bduerst → brink]

Same here. AFAIK the page seems to be constantly updating itself even when idle.

[scholia → bduerst]

Not much impact on my CPU in Firefox (+5% or so), but it's using 60% of my GPU/graphics card....