DIY: Air Quality Balloons
I found this post not too long ago and have been wanting to make one of these ever since. What’s making these balloons glow is the pollutants in the air around them, with colours ranging from green (signifying excellent air quality) to red (poor air quality).
In 2007, Paris launched a few hot air balloons above the city to show citizens the quality of their air that they were breathing in. Eric Paulos from Carnegie Mellon University and a few of his students created these step-by-step instructions on how to craft one of these balloons for under $40. A small tri-colour LED and tiny air quality sensors are what allow the balloon to run. Of course a few tweaks can be made to improve its function, such as adding a transistor to make the balloon brighter. It is a very interesting and fun way to grab the attention of the locals and in-still a sense of awareness. We could even stencil Broken City Lab on the balloons and use them as some sort of installation piece. Pretty cool !
![Undocumented: A workshop for those without papers in Windsor and Detroit FRIDAY MARCH 15: 3 – 5 PM Art Gallery of Windsor, Border Bookmobile Public Archive and Reading Room, Gallery C, 2nd floor While it is often presumed that the Windsor-Detroit border is relatively easy to cross, many residents have been unable to visit their [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/IMG_2412-150x150.jpg "March 15th: Undocumented: A workshop for those without papers in Windsor and Detroit")
![The start of the week brought two new residents to the Storefronts: Sara Jane French and Jodi Green. There was some crazy changes in the exterior landscape due to construction today as well. Sara was only present at the start and end of the day. For the bulk of it we were joined by Norman [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0828-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 4: Working 9-5")
![Josh and I spent some of the day in the heat collecting some interesting flowers and plants to transplant for our magnetic planters project. Overall, it was fairly successful, as we did learn quite a lot about transplanting, but we’re still going to be looking for some more plants to finish up this stage of [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_46142-150x150.jpg "Learning to Transplant")
![Monday night was another huge brainstorming session with some new and old friends. We spent most of the evening trying to figure out the potentials in doing something like a floating sculpture in the Detroit River. We’ve discussed this before, and it seems that the space between what we’d really like to do and reality [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_5441-150x150.jpg "Earlier This Week In the Basement of BCL HQ")
![Over three days this week, we got a lot done. And, as I write this, stuff is still getting done. This is why collaboration is such a valuable model for art practice. But, it’s not just about getting stuff done, it’s the challenges, the insights, the novel perspectives that can be brought up around a [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/IMG_9628-150x150.jpg "BCL Report: End of April, 2011 (the Art of Planning & Collaboration)")
![First decisions of the day to be made — whether to commit or not to painting the letters black or white. Somehow this has been one of the longest ongoing discussions we’ve had for a while. The next step though is to paint and test in the wild. The letters from the table view. Notes [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/IMG_9260-4-150x150.jpg "First Decisions of the Day … and notes from breakfast")
![We’re doing some field tests of our magnetic planters with some plants in them. Basically, we want to test to make sure the soil isn’t drying out too quickly and we’re also checking to see how well some plants respond to transplants. Above, you can see there’s a wire around the planter that helps it [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/IMG_4829-150x150.jpg "Field Tests!")
![I went out to the site for our proposed community garden to take some photos yesterday. It’s looking fairly likely that this will be the site for our community garden starting this summer. This park is located at Russell and Mill near the Sandwich windmill. We’re still working out all the details, but everything has [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/img_4065-150x150.jpg "Community Garden Site")
![Monday saw the last new residents move in to the SRSI spaces; Lee Rodney’s Bookmobile Reading Room and Emily Colombo’s friendly services. To get footage for the SRSI documentary, Daragh followed Norman around, who was on his A game all day. Norman’s logs present a personal perspective on his security guard experiences. Lee Rodney arrived [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_1470-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 25: Bookmobile & Friendly Services")
![I haven’t posted for a while, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the ongoing Arduino + LCD project, which is moving along towards connecting external data to be displayed on the LCD screen. The last bit of time I’ve put into the project has been focused on printing text to the LCD [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/IMG_8060-150x150.jpg "Working on the PHP Backend of the Arduino + LCD Project")
![We’re in North Bay on a residency as we prepare for an exhibition this fall at the White Water Gallery. After spending Monday getting acquainted with the downtown, we ventured further out. Of course, we had to stop at the North Bay arch. Getting a sense of these kinds of structural parts of the city [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/wpid18911-IMG_0446-150x150.jpg "Learning About the Emerging Emergencies of North Bay")
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![300′ of bright orange flagging tape, $5.97 + tax. It’s fairly thin, but should be really easy to work with. We might have to double it up to make it visible on the fence, that is, double the width of each letter. We should test at Lebel later this week, or maybe on Monday before [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/img_1697-150x150.jpg "Flagging Tape")
![My work on this ongoing LCD Arduino project has been continuing over the last couple of weeks, I just haven’t had the time to update appropriately. So, I switched over my plan of attack from Processing to PHP. I figured this made sense for a couple reasons: first, I’m already very well-acquainted with PHP, I’ve [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/IMG_7140-150x150.jpg "More Arduino + LCD + PHP fun")
![Lea Bucknell arrived from British Columbia to take over the window display of 424 Pelissier, Andrea Carvalho sent pictures of her last tactics in Windsor from Montreal, and SRSI participants get a surprise gift from a local fan. During the last few days of Andrea’s residency, she performed public interventions at bus stops and inside [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/DSC_0660-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 12 &13: Tactics, Presents and Garden Party Plans")
![Wednesday was a big day in the SRSI spaces. Lea Bucknell held her Garden Party in 424 unveiling the portraits and stories that she made of Windsor residents, ProClick Factory arrives from Toronto, Thom Provost and Josh Babcock work on some hand-drawn diagrams. Robin Fitzsimons has been training hard every day in the window spaces [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_0906-150x150.jpg "SRSI, Day 20: Garden Party!!!")
![For one of my last projects with Sigi Torinus as part of my BFA degree I made an iphone App. I was able to speed up a usually lengthy process by skipping over the coding portion of creating the app. This was made possible by using Buzztouch, a web-based content management software (CMS) out of Montery California [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/citynoisepresents_blog-150x150.jpg "I made an iPhone App and so can you !!!")
![The new model for our Magnetic Planters—basically just using a paper mache technique. Darren figured this one out, and after some testing, it looks like this is the strongest and easiest planter we can make! We did more research last Friday to get to this point, but we’re happy to have come up with a really [...]](http://d1ugx41kvdwavn.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/img_4303-150x150.jpg "New Design for the Planters")
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This is such a cool concept! Having a physical representation of our air quality and something to show our progress as we change it is an awesome way to get people on board to make a cleaner city.
Nice find, Karlyn. We’ve posted some stuff in the past on data visualization design and art projects, it’s a really powerful way to “make the invisible visible“… there’s something about the idea of being able to act on information better once it’s presented to us in a novel way. Air quality statistics on paper = alarming, but difficult to incite a response towards understanding; air quality statistics through light-up balloons = curious and inviting for further exploration and analysis. Conversation starters can start change, I think.