SensorGrid is an open-source network of air quality sensors built at Northwestern University's Knight Lab, for communities, journalists, and citizen scientists who want to measure the air where they live.
Official monitoring is sparse. The EPA's stations sit far apart, and readings for everywhere in between are estimated, while pollutant concentrations vary block by block with traffic, construction, factories, and power plants. Many cities have no monitoring at all, because of the cost of the equipment and its upkeep. SensorGrid measures at the resolution pollution varies at, from a single street to a whole city.
- Low cost — about $200 per device
- Solar powered — no mains connection at the site
- Wireless — readings transmitted over radio
- Open source — the technology and architecture are free to use
- Dense coverage — the networking is designed for many nodes close together
A node is a stack of Adafruit Feather boards with a LoRa radio, a particulate sensor for PM2.5 and PM10, a solar panel, and a weather shield, and the nodes send their readings to a collector over the LoRa network. A web API and dashboard take in the readings and chart them.
I was the senior engineer on it, with Zach Wise
Zach WiseEmmy-winning interactive producer, associate professor at Northwestern's Medill school and a Knight Lab faculty lead; formerly of The New York Times. Creator of TimelineJS and StoryMapJS.LinkedIn ↗ as faculty lead. Kelly Calagna
Kelly CalagnaManaged the research and development of SensorGrid as a Knight Lab fellow. Master's from Medill, where she was a Comer Climate Science Scholar and received the 2018 Harrington Award in Interactive Storytelling.LinkedIn ↗ managed its research and development, and Jordan Friedman
Jordan FriedmanKnight Lab student fellow at Northwestern, 2016 to 2018, in the lab's Device Lab and on virtual reality projects.LinkedIn ↗ worked on it as a Knight Lab fellow. Students in the Knight Lab Studio contributed to the project: Holly Kane, Victoria Cabales
Victoria CabalesSoftware engineer at Apple. B.S. in computer science and journalism from Northwestern, 2019, where she was a Knight Lab fellow; formerly a Quartz AI Studio fellow.LinkedIn ↗, David WallachDWDavid WallachForward deployed engineer at Palantir, formerly a software engineer at Qualtrics. B.S. in computer science and economics from Northwestern, 2018.LinkedIn ↗, and Rachel InderheesRIRachel InderheesDeveloper at Rightpoint in Chicago, on back-end and cloud work. B.A. in earth and planetary sciences from Northwestern, 2017.LinkedIn ↗ built the first dust sensor nodes in spring 2017, and Michael Cahana
Michael CahanaTechnologist and designer in Brooklyn, working on reporting infrastructure, data visualization, and data journalism. Northwestern 2018, in economics, computer science, and environmental policy; formerly a pre-doctoral fellow at the University of Chicago's EPIC.Personal site ↗, Alex Cohen, Michael Martinez
Michael MartinezStudent fellow at Northwestern's Knight Lab.Knight Lab ↗, Yingliao WangYWYingliao WangSenior software engineer at Chime, formerly at Meta. B.S. from Northwestern.LinkedIn ↗, and Maxine Whitely
Maxine WhitelySoftware engineer, entrepreneur, and technical consultant in New York, on the founding team of a healthcare AI startup; formerly at Apple Health and Levels Health. Computer science at Northwestern, where she was a Knight Lab fellow.Personal site ↗ built out the API and dashboard in winter 2018. Kelly and Jordan presented the project at Northwestern's TEACHx conference in May 2018.
The project site is sensorgrid.knightlab.com.
Prototype photograph by Kelly CalagnaKelly CalagnaManaged the research and development of SensorGrid as a Knight Lab fellow. Master's from Medill, where she was a Comer Climate Science Scholar and received the 2018 Harrington Award in Interactive Storytelling.LinkedIn ↗, Northwestern University Knight Lab.