[aprssig] APRS to the planet rescue?

[Earl Needham]

With the number of feed yards out here, you might as well just go ahead and
mark all my area as COVERED with methane!  LOL!

Earl
KD5XB
Clovis, New Mexico USA


On Apr 3, 2017 8:56 AM, "Robert Bruninga" <bruninga at usna.edu> wrote:

> Here's a project.  Add a $4 Methane detector to your APRS mobile and help
> us find the bad methane leaks.  Google is adding it to their maping cars.
> Maybe Amateur Radio and APRS could help?
>
> https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15b2521854ccaa63
>
>
> Apparently the 2:1 advantage of replacing the high carbon emissions of
> coal with natural gas, overlooks the fact that the methane released with
> natural gas extraction methods is 84 times worse than carbon as a green
> house gas and may more than offset any advantages.
>
> Just one methane leak a few years ago did more damage than about a million
> cars a day before it was plugged months later
>
> .http://www.businessinsider.com/methane-gas-leak-porter-
> ranch-los-angeles-disaster-largest-in-history-2016-1
>
> Anyway, a $4 sensor and a tiny processor could add a flag to our mobile
> packets somehow  when levels exceeded some background level
>
>
>
> Though I am not sure if the sensitivity of these $4 sensors is good enough
> to find the outdoor area low level leaks, or only detects high
> concentrations...
>
> I wish I had the time to make one and experiment with the concept.  It
> would make a great fun project. I used to thing a cheap radiation detector
> would let APRS contribute to plotting radiation hot spots, but I fear the
> natural gas leaks and fracking damage is going to kill us first.
>
> My thoughts on adding this to APRS is to simply have a processor send out
> a modified STATUS text when a detection is made.  Since APRS was designed
> around the status being merged-on-receipt with the most recent posit, this
> is a way of nailing down the location of high methane levels or leaks.
>
> Status could simply be >CH4=XXX where XXX is the reading.  Format of XXX
> will be determined to  give reasonable scale over expected detections.
> Then the APRS map could selectively plot any detections.
>
> Anyone have more experience with these sensors and the levels of
> detections expected?
>
> Bob, wb4apr
>
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