[aprssig] APRS to the planet rescue? (update)

[Robert Bruninga]

That link was no good.  This one describes the Google car methane detection
project better:

https://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2017/03/google-street-view-cars-methane-leaks/520719/



And it shows the outstanding difference between Boston with old pipes
having leaks everywhere and a newer city with hardly any…



And we can add Methane to the Hazards symbol overlay set as.  “MH”.



Not only the greenhouse problem, but CH4 is not detectible by humans
senses… a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas.



*From:* Robert Bruninga [mailto:bruninga at usna.edu]
*Sent:* Monday, April 03, 2017 10:56 AM
*To:* TAPR APRS Mailing List
*Cc:* Robert Bruninga
*Subject:* APRS to the planet rescue?



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?

[bad <https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/15b2521854ccaa63> link was
here]


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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.tapr.org/pipermail/aprssig_lists.tapr.org/attachments/20170403/d6a79161/attachment.html>