Drones, journalism, and the peak of inflated expectations

It's a story that's been repeated time and time again with emergent technology. Researchers publish some new breakthrough, and the press grabs hold of the news release and begins extrapolating stories about how the new tech could revolutionize our lives. Expectations build as ideas bounce within the media echo chamber, pitchmen evangelize audiences at the trendy tech conferences, and venture capitalists make power plays in the market.

Everyone wants a piece because the sky is the limit, and the sky is the limit because everyone wants a piece.

Products finally hit the market, and eventually, reality sets in. Like the doomsayers who predict apocalypse time and time again, the prophesied miracles fail to materialize. The technology is immature. Deliverables fail to match objectives. Most importantly, the technology was overvalued, and an adjustment takes place.

This "hype curve" -- rising expectations, peak interest, and curbed enthusiasm -- doesn't happen to every piece of technology that comes around. But this bubble does happen with surprising regularity. Every year, Gartner, a tech research corporation, produces a report that attempts to identify where various technologies are riding on this bubble.

Gartner released its latest report, "2013 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies," last month. In it, the company prognosticates that drones and other unmanned technologies are coming up to that peak. At that point, the unmanned systems sector might be in for some pain.

Understanding air pollution with a simple dust sensor

Outdoor air pollution, in the most extreme cases, can be immediately identified even without any special training. It casts a haze over cities, collects on streets and buildings, and provides dramatic fodder for the news. Even when the air pollution isn't actually visible, we can smell when something isn't quite right.

I previously wrote about how difficult it can be to obtain basic environmental data, and how government budget cuts are threatening air monitoring networks in several states. It now appears that other countries are making hard decisions about which monitors to keep, and which monitors to shut down. The Guardian reported recently that up to 600 air quality monitors, including monitors for nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter (PM), could be shut down across the United Kingdom.

Yet for all the attention the media pays to outdoor pollution, people spend only about 1 to 2 hours outdoors (and that's only in the pleasant summer months) according to one University of Newcastle study. According to the EPA, we spend about 90 percent of our time indoors. We spend the vast majority of our time indoors, so it makes sense monitor pollution in the home.

Indoor Air Pollution (IAP) is an especially big problem in developing countries, where 60 to 90 percent of households still rely on coal and wood for heat and food preparation. About 36 percent of acute lower respiratory infections and about 22 percent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the developing world are caused by IAP (pdf). In one study of women in China, researchers found that a 10 μg/m³ (microgram per cubic meter) increase in PM₁ (ultrafine particles smaller than one micrometer) was associated with 45 percent increased risk of lung cancer.

IAP isn't just a concern in developing and BRIC nations, though. Similar problems exist for the rural poor in the US and Canada, where indoor pollution exceeds the World Health Organization air quality guidelines in up to 80% of homes. As in BRIC nations, these homes rely greatly on burning organic fuels.

Air quality at home can be an issue even for homes that don't burn wood or coal. Indoor air pollution can come from "molds, bacteria, viruses, pollen, animal dander and particles from dust mites and cockroaches," according to the American Lung Association.

Indoor air pollution ranks among the top five environmental risks to public health, the EPA says. Indoor pollution levels may be two to five, and sometimes 100, times higher than outdoor pollution.

All that makes the indoors a great place to put a dust sensor.

IEPA is silent on request for data, emails surrounding large tire fire

When a supply of one million tires caught fire in Hoopeston, IL, there were no environmental monitors to track pollution in the community.

IEPA responded to the event along with firefighters, and has been keeping tabs on pollution ever since. With the fire extinguished, IEPA's primary concern has been shifted to the tire dust kicked up during cleanup.

From university research, we know an uncontrolled tire burn releases cancer-causing chemicals and mutagens (pdf). But it's been 61 days since the fire began, and the public is still in the dark on pollution figures from this massive fire.

Even with a ton of drone regulations, there was a ton of innovation at the SUSB Expo

An MLB Company representative shows the company's Super BAT's camera gimbal system to an audience member during the SUSB Expo, in San Francisco, CA.

It's not very often you get the chance to watch the birth of a multi-billion dollar industry firsthand. But if we are to believe the Association for Unmanned Vehicles and Systems International (AUVSI) economic report, which estimates the unmanned aviation industry should reach $82 billion by 2025, that's exactly what happened at the first-ever small business expo for unmanned aircraft, the SUSB Expo, in San Francisco.

"It's like being in Steve Job's garage," said Agriflight's Bruce Parks, as reported by Robohub's Andra Keay.

Hot spots linger during Hoopeston tire fire cleanup, FOIA filed

Firefighters attempt to extinguish the tire fire at J&R Used Tire Service in Hoopeston, Ill., on June 19. Photo by Dan Johnson.

State environmental officials are continuing to monitor the site where a massive tire fire broke out 43 days ago, citing new concerns about dust during the cleanup process.

According to the Champaign News-Gazette, officials from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) say the site has dried out since firefighters poured hundreds of thousands of gallons of water on the tire fire at J&R Used Tire Service in Hoopeston, Ill. on June 19. This is creating an issue for "tire dust," which can not be kept down with more water.

Michigan also faces cutbacks in air quality monitoring, risks violating federal requirments

Illinois isn't the only state facing cutbacks in environmental monitoring due to state and federal budgets. In its annual plan to monitor air quality, Michigan also revealed it is having difficulties keeping its network of air monitors intact.

Unlike Illinois, however, Michigan's cutbacks threaten the state's ability to meet federal laws for air monitoring.

"The MDEQ (Michigan Department of Environmental Quality) cannot implement all of the new monitoring requirements described above without new funding and a concomitant reduction in other monitoring requirements due to financial and staffing limitations," the state's environmental agency wrote in its 2014 ambient air monitoring network review (PDF).

UAVs Pros Cons in Toronto: safety and dialogue are keys to legitimacy

Ian Hannah of Avrobotics.ca displayed his professional hexcopter at the UAVs Pros Cons Symposium in Toronto.

One of the biggest drone-related stories to make the rounds is about a little Colorado town that is attempting to institute a $100 reward for anyone who shoots down an unmanned aircraft. I'll not post a link to this story, or name the actual town, since it appears this is little more than a stunt to attract media attention to the town.

The townspeople may or may not be "real" about their proposed law, given the likelihood of people being injured by gunfire or falling drones, but fear of unmanned aircraft systems (dronephobia?) is real. This fear is rooted in a disconnect between popular media, and the actual uses and potential for the technology.

UAVs Pros-Cons was an effort bring expert knowledge to the public, while at the same time providing a discussion of many of the legitimate concerns over drones and their uses.

A massive, toxic tire fire, and how citizen sensor journalism could have informed a community in crisis.

A fire at a tire disposal plant in the small town of Hoopeston, Ill., polluted the skies for hours. Photo by @JonathonLinares.

At 5:30 am on Wedneday, June 19, a spark generated by static electricity at J&R Used Tire Service started a fire that would black out the sky for miles around the small town of Hoopeston, Ill.

Initial reports from fire crews suggested the fire could burn for days. By the time it was extinguished the next day, more than 100 firefighters from two states had come to snuff the tire fire, about 500 homes had been evacuated, and rail service through the town was shut down.

According to the Champaign-Urbana NPR affiliate WILL, state environmental officials requested that the state's attorney general to issue a court order to stop the business until it's determined how the fire started, how safe the business is, and what kind of environmental impact this fire had on the community.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency seems primarily concerned with the air and water at the moment. A tremendous amount of water was used to extinguish the blaze, and that water has been contaminated with the byproducts of burning tires.

Obviously, there's a great deal of burning material that was sent into the air. IEPA has been monitoring the air in Hoopeston (pop. 5,321), but that data hasn't been made public on any sort of accessible website.

Illinois EPA looking to cut back on air monitoring

Facing the prospect of budget cuts, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has drafted plans to reduce the number of air quality sensors throughout the state.

The 2014 Ambient Air Monitoring Plan, drafted in May by the IEPA, recommends that the agency discontinue one sulfur monitoring site, one particulate matter monitor, and three lead monitoring sites.

"The proposed 2014 network plan provides select discontinuations from the plan approved by US EPA and operated in 2013," the plan reads (PDF). "The design of the monitoring network for 2014 has also been based upon the assumption that funding to support the monitoring program is likely to be reduced in fiscal year 2014 and that all efforts would be made to keep as much of the network intact as possible."

The particulate matter monitor is located atop Washington High School in the South Side of Chicago, one of the more polluted parts of the city. It specifically measures the amount of particles under 10 micrometers in diameter, known as PM 10, which can damage lung tissue, cause cancer, and lead to death.

According to the IEPA's 2011 annual air report (2012 and 2013 reports are not available from the website), this was the same monitoring station that observed the highest annual average concentration of airborne cadmium and sulfur in the state for that year.

Why the word "drone" is scaring neighbors, creating bad legislation, and blocking an economic boom.

Sensationalist coverage and fabricated illustrations have cemented the word "drone" as a weapon in the public psyche. But it may not be too late to change public opinion about the technology behind the word.

A few years ago, a colleague and her husband, an ex-helicopter pilot, realized a tectonic shift was disrupting industries in which they had devoted entire careers.

This disruption had a passing resemblance to what happened to other American industries. The hard work once done by skilled, human hands was now being automated by the calculating actuators of a machine.

Automation had long since dominated the appliance, automotive, and electronics industries. But this was a brand new territory – aviation.

The reduced price and size, and the increased reliability and capability of processors, sensors and batteries meant unmanned aviation had been unleashed. A nouveau DIY revolution meant that basements and garages were once again incubating nascent technology, just as they did in the 1970s when the personal computer was being developed.

The silver lining is that the cost of search and rescue, disaster relief, monitoring wildlife, guarding endangered animals from being poached, and even medication delivery to underserved populations all could be slashed.

Like many other small startups in the unmanned aviation industry, my friend and her husband saw an opportunity. And despite criticism of slow progress on regulations, the Federal Aviation Administration also sees it. The FAA estimates that the market for commercial unmanned aerial systems will eventually reach $90 billion.

The Association for Unmanned Vehicles and Systems International (AUVSI) believes there will be an economic impact of $13.6 billion within 3 years that unmanned aircraft are integrated into the national airspace.

Where to start? What better way to get acquainted to the industry than attend one of the premier industry conference in the nation, hosted by AUVSI?

She learned about new applications for unmanned aircraft. She listened to a UAV operator who used his homemade robotic aircraft to assess flood damage in Thailand. The information gathered from the aerial vehicle allowed the government to make decisions that mitigated flooding in the country’s capital.

This was great. But when it came to talk shop, things became awkward when she used a five-letter word that began with the letter “d.”

“The conversation would just stop,” she said. “Just completely stop dead.”

Finding a definition and purpose for sensor journalism at the Tow Center

#Towsense presentation on mapping mangroves
by Aaron Huslage, photo by Moshin Ali (@moshin)

Before I left for the Tow Center's sensor journalism workshop at Columbia University last weekend, my wife and I hosted some friends for a spinach lasagna dinner. On the stack of books my wife was researching for her dissertation on toxins in science fiction, sat my latest obsession, the DustDuino sensor node.

While we ate, the node's tiny LED lights blinked away as it took particulate matter readings every 30 seconds. A friend pointed out the interesting juxtaposition of the pollution monitor siting on a copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Our friend's husband, an entomologist, asked what it was all about.

"Part of the idea is to have people make these all over the country, especially places with bad air," I said.

"Interesting," he said. "You know... that doesn't sound much like journalism," he said. "It sounds like research."

I thought about it for a moment, and took a sip of the lemon-and-bourbon cocktail my wife prepared. I didn't have a good answer.

"Journalists are kind of unemployed at the moment, so we're looking for other things to do," I replied.

For me at least, the Tow Center's workshop helped find an answer to that question, and provide a deffinition and goal for sensor journalism. About 50 folks with backgrounds in journalism, science, architecture, community informatics, and computer technology came to the Tow Center's first sensor journalism workshop on June 1-2.

I owe a big debt to the organizers of this event: Emily Bell, the Tow Center director; Fergus Pitt, Tow research fellow; Taylor Owen, Tow research director; along with Laura Kurgan, director of the spatial design lab at Columbia; and Chris Van Der Walt and Sara Jayne Farmer of Change Assembly, Inc.

Step-by-step guide to programming the RN-XV WiFi module for Arduino

The Arduino prototyping standard has been around for about 6 years now, and has proven to be immensely useful for sensing devices. It's the heart of the DustDuino and many other sensor nodes.

But for all the flexibility that the Arduino provides for collecting data about the environment, there still isn't a reasonably-priced, reliable shield to send data via WiFi.

The official Arduino WiFi shield, while well-supported, costs around $85. That's a pretty high price to connect a $4.50 chip to a network. Cheaper options such as the WiFly shield do exist, but some of the libraries supporting these devices are difficult to decipher or unstable, if they exist at all.

I spent a long time myself looking for a cheap, effective WiFi solution for the Arduino platform, and I've been very pleased with the $35 RN-XV module.

DustDuino: A plan to crowdsource environmental reporting with low-cost dust sensors

A before and after photo of Shanghai inundated with smog, by Flickr's morgennebel.

There's some good news in the air. Or, well, about the air.

Last month, the American Lung Association released its 2013 report on the quality of the nation's air. The Lung Association's "State of the Air" report shows the country's air is continuing to improve.

The Lung Association attributes healthier air as a "direct result of emissions reductions from the transition to cleaner diesel fuels and engines and coal-fired power plants, especially in the eastern United States."

That much is good. But there's much room for improvement.

According to the report, "Of the 25 cities with the worst problem with spikes in particle pollution, fourteen had more days or worse problems in 2009-2011 than in the previous report." Six cities included in the report had their worst year ever (over the 14 years the report has been made) for short-term spikes in particulates.

Chicago, home to some of the dirtiest coal-fired power plants in the nation, continued to flunk both daily and annual levels of particulate pollution. This was where I did my own environmental investigation on how the Fisk coal-fired power plant threatened the health of the Pilsen neighborhood (see: "Battle in the Barrio").

The Fisk station dumped 755 tons of particulates into the air on an annual basis, according to a pollution report from the Environmental Protection Agency. The Clean Air Task Force found that the plant contributed to 15 deaths and 23 heart attacks annually, a figure based on EPA data.

The residents of Pilsen eventually won their battle, and the Fisk station was closed. EPA tests after the plant closure showed the particulate and radiation levels had returned to city-wide norms. Interestingly, one of the EPA air quality monitors was mounted in a baby stroller to measure levels around the perimeter of the plant.

Pilsen didn't have air quality monitors to begin with, though. Its residents had to lobby the Illinois EPA before the state placed an air monitor atop an elementary school in the neighborhood. The readings from the monitor led the IEPA to declare Pilsen a "nonattainment" zone for lead, a particulate which impairs the IQ, learning capabilities, and memory of children.

Columbia's Tow Center is brainstorming sensor journalism prospects in workshop

In a little over a week, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University will be organizing experts across multiple disciplines, from around the country, to come up with low-cost, widely-distributable solutions for sensor journalism.

For their Sensor Journalism Weekend (June 1-2), the Tow Center will host discussions on the "pre-history, current practice and opportunities for sensors in journalism," in anticipation of a pilot sensor journalism project to be conducted over the summer.

According to Tow's calendar, there will be "technical, ethical, theoretical and practical resources available, demonstrations of current sensing equipment and opportunities to expand links throughout the community of people working in the field." Folks from the Spatial Information Design Laboratory in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University will be in attendance.

Making mental munition: from bits to atoms to understanding

The author and his wife in front of the augmented reality Alma Mater statue at UIUC. Some of the digital statue's production was led by community fab lab organizers, which has been instrumental in producing "bits-to-atoms" outreach.

When the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign needed to remove its 13-foot, 10,000 pound statute in August, 2012, due to a botched waterproofing treatment, the administration was under the impression that the statute would be back in time for the 2013 commencement.

As these things sometimes go, the effort is taking longer than expected, and is costing much more money. The previous effort at waterproofing the statute had trapped moisture inside the statute and caused much more damage. The budget has swelled from $100,000 to $360,000, with the Alma Mater now scheduled to return to its granite plinth sometime in the 2013-2014 academic year.

Posing in front of the Alma for pictures has been a longtime tradition of UIUC newly-grads. A multi-department collaboration brought back the statute in the nick of time for graduation, which drew expertise and equipment from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science (I-CHASS).

Instrumental to the restoration effort were two members from the Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab (CUCFL), Robert McGrath and Andrew Knight. McGrath, a retired computer scientist from NCSA, provided software integration, while Knight fabbed up a custom computer mounting solution. More on their lab in a minute.

Life-saving rescue could be game changer for drone adoption

Search and rescue often is touted as one of the areas where unmanned aircraft, commonly called drones, can do the most good with existing technology.

SAR, as it's called in the business, will only make up a small part of the economic pie for the unmanned aircraft industry, according to an economic report by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). But out of all of the potential applications, due to the personal impact and high news visibility of missing persons, it has the potential to be the greatest asset in public acceptance of drones.

If a positive public perception translates into acceptance, history might show that Thursday was a game-changer in terms of domestic drone adoption.

You can't always get the the drone you want, but if you try a laser you'll get what you need

 The "perfect" small unmanned aircraft, commonly called a drone, might still be several generations away. But like Moore's law, those generational cycles are getting shorter and shorter.

Chris Anderson of 3DRobotics suspects we're closing in on the drone equivalent of the Mac: a relatively affordable, accessible, and most importantly, practical piece of technology that can be deployed every day.

Tremendous headway has been made with multirotor technology (the heicopters, quadrotors, hexcopters, octocopters, and what have you). The market is quickly becoming flush with a variety of these aircraft, to the point where several options are available for each price bracket.

There's everything from $300 hobbyist rigs from big-name RC and electronics manufacturers, to $1,000 semipro setups from DJI and 3DRobotics, to $10,000 rigs that can loft, pan and tilt a DSLR or DV camera. The differences between each step may be as simple as stronger frames, larger motors and higher-capacity batteries.

A drone of your very own, from novice to pro. Sometimes no assembly required.

For the time being, however, it's still useful to have the technical know-how to put one together. It's even more useful to know how to fabricate a drone, or fabricate parts to suit your specific application.

Using social network analysis to find the impact of teacher turnover

This painting from a Washington D.C. tapas restaurant is not social network analysis, but social network analysis can help us unwind some mysteries about how the world is arranged.

Much has been made about the fact that America is coming up short when teaching children core concepts in STEM, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

How does America perform, exactly? In 2009, the country's students came in 23rd place in science the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). That's below Belgium and Hungary. The top three performers, from first to third, were China, Finland and Hong Kong (tested separately than the rest of China).

When the results came out, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan called it "an absolute wake-up call for America." The only country to land people on the moon was now in the middle of the pack for teaching children about science.

It made the news. Town hall meetings sprung up. Companies like Exxon Mobil developed marketing and outreach campaigns. And so the public became aware of the STEM crisis.

There's another crisis schools are faced with, and it's much less publicized: the turnover crisis. To some degree, these two problems are related.

On engaging the public on privacy, journalism, and drones.

Journalists might be familiar with the quote by US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who once wrote "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants."

Journalists seeking to use unmanned aircraft would be wise not to just apply that concept of uncovering the truth about others, but also to make the public aware of how they intend to use "drones."

While the response journalists get from the public might be unexpected, the answer is not to become defensive or rely on ad-hominem arguments. Whatever your station in journalism, you are as much a servant to the public as any of the officials you interview.

The following is copied from the post I wrote for sUASNews.com.

Seven more reasons why journalists should learn to fly unmanned aircraft

Felix Gillette at Bloomberg Businessweek has come up with a list of seven reasons why journalists, and not just "cubs reporters," should be learning to use unmanned aircraft systems -- usually called "drones" in the media.

Here's seven more reasons why journalists should consider UAS.

1) They give all news outlets and journalists the freedom to cover important events from the sky.

Traffic snarls? Done. Spot news? Got it. Weather reports? Sure thing. Aerial view of Nasa’s latest space telescope at South By Southwest? Absolutely.

These are all events that could be covered before by large, expensive news helicopters. Of course, only stations in the largest of markets could afford such a luxury. But thanks to inexpensive, small unmanned aircraft, that is no longer the case.

Ted Pretty, a meteorologist for a Fox station in Las Vegas, was one of our first members at DroneJournalism.org. While his station couldn't buy a helicopter, it did have the wherewithal and foresight to send him to an online UAV school. He's now experimenting with a multirotor system, and uploaded some of the results on YouTube.

Capturing the blizzard of March 2013 with time lapse video

A storm that came late in the season, the March 2013 blizzard (dubbed "Virgil" by the folks at the Weather Channel) caught many off guard in central Illinois.

In the Champaign-Urbana area, local schools cancelled class first. Then, the community college.

And at about 9 pm, the University sent out a mass email, warning UIUC spring breakers not to attempt the drive back to campus. Finally, at about 1:30 am, Illinois officially cancelled classes.

When it finished here in Urbana, Ill., the storm dropped more than 11 inches, breaking the previous March 24 snow record. In my hometown of Springfield, it dropped 18.5", beating a single-storm record that persisted for 113 years.

Snow began falling at about 2:30 pm on March 24. As soon as the snow began to fall, I started building a time-lapse setup, and took my first pictures at 2:38.

While I've detailed here before how to make a time-lapse camera, those previous designs were battery-powered, and had a life span of 12 hours. Like the previous build, this used a camera presupposed from an unmanned aircraft system.  But the forecast called for a snow that could last up to 20 hours, so I designed this setup to run on AC power instead.

As it turns out, it's much less complicated to run a time lapse camera on AC power. No battery calculations are necessary. All that's required is the camera, the camera housing, an AC extension cord, a USB cable, and an AC to USB adapter.

Time-lapse weather camera at 2:39 pm on Sunday, March 24.

"Drone" over SXSW provides aerial view of NASA's shiny new space telescope

Unmanned aircraft made their South By Southwest debut this year, and prominently so. A session with Chris Anderson, former Wired EIC turned full-time head of 3D Robotics, and Ryan Calo of The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School, among others, included a discussion on the many commercial uses for UA.

On the same day, at the Palmer Events Center, near a full-scale replica of NASA's James Web Space Telescope, another panel was being held that featured a live demonstration of an unmanned system.

A map of all the drone laws in the United States.

The ACLU recently published on its technology blog a list of 28 states that are pursuing regulations for unmanned aircraft systems, or UAS. They're more commonly referred to as "drones," and in fact many of the proposed laws use that exact word.

I dug further to find out what lawmakers are actually proposing. You may click on individual states in the above map to learn more about specific legislation.

Out of the 28 states, 14 are proposing limitations only to law enforcement. In most cases, proposed legislation would make it illegal for law enforcement to use an unmanned aircraft without a warrant.

Some also call for evidence obtained from a "drone" to be destroyed after a specified period. A few ban any government entities from using the technology altogether.

Making a home for a sensor node - with a laser.

Sensor nodes need a good home if they're to last any considerable amount of time. And if they're to be deployed outdoors, they need an especially robust home.

This can be complicated. Most sensors need to be exposed to the elements to obtain good readings. But expose these electronics to the elements too much, and you'll break them.

In a pursuit of finding the right balance between price and accuracy for a sensor node for professional and community journalists, I'm fabricating a prototype using open-source hardware and software, 3D printers, and now, lasers. Fortunately the "maker" revolution makes this process more accessible than ever.

Previously I wrote about working with Arduinos and temperature sensors. Continuing on the theme of sensor nodes for journalism, here are some details on the next step in the prototyping process.

Engineering periodical profiles emerging field of drone journalism

The Technograph, a student-run publication at the University of Illinois and one of the oldest engineering periodicals in the world, profiled drone journalism in its 128th volume (spring 2013). Includes an interview with Matt Waite, journalism professor and head of Nebraska's Drone Journalism Lab:

Thanks to modern news media conditioning, whenever one hears the word “drone,” one invariably associates the word with military-operated wraiths of the night, waging covert warfare against terrorist groups. However, not all drones are weapons of war. The emerging field of drone journalism aims to use remote-controlled and autonomous robots to aid journalists in collecting information and in reporting the news...

The main advantage of using drones, for Schroyer, is “a more evidence-based approach to journalism. Getting beyond interviews and hearsay and actually getting to some data and evidence that journalists can use.”

Read the story on Technograph's website.

World's most popular consumer drone gains autonomous flight

Since it was introduced in 2010, the AR.Drone has been a success among hobbyists, hackers, engineering students, drone journalists, activists, and aspiring UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) operators. Produced by the French wireless products manufacturer Parrot, this camera-enabled quadrotor can be controlled over WiFi via iOS or Android-enabled phones and tablets.

This has been the go-to item for many news organizations trying to understand the new world of UAS without a tremendous investment. The Sydney Herald recently used one to help bring context to their story about privacy concerns amidst the proliferation of "drones."

A news crew in Florida also tried using an AR.Drone to get a better view of a live event, but they were chased out of the sky by angry bees.

Since launch, it has sold over 300,000 units. That's ten times the number of UAS that the FAA anticipated would by flying in American airspace... by 2020.

A selling point of the RC aircraft from the beginning has been augmented reality dogfights with other AR.Drones, facilitated by on-board image recognition. Parrot recently unveiled another addition to the drone's list of AR abilities -- a GPS receiver.

Building a Wifi Temperature Node for Journalism

Wireless sensor nodes can help monitor conditions the community, in the next state over, or across the globe. These sensors don't have to be complex or expensive to be useful -- even a simple wireless temperature node can be helpful in tracking heat waves, monitoring the heat-island effect in cities, and serving as a warning system for asthma sufferers.

Previously, I've chosen a prototyping platform and 3D printed useful parts to make a sensor node. This post covers planning, assembling, programming, and testing a wireless temperature sensor node for journalism.

Heat island effect and asthma: an argument for temperature nodes for journalists

Meteorologists shouldn’t be the only people in the news ecosystem concerned with temperature. Extreme temperatures can exacerbate food shortages, hurt the economy, affect energy prices, provoke health crises, cancel public events and disrupt public services.

At the moment, Australia is undergoing the worst heat wave it’s ever recorded. Pavement has melted, and gasoline evaporates right out of the fuel pump, making refueling a car a challenge. Fires are burning out of control in coastal regions. People have died.

It’s gotten so hot (all together now: how hot is it?) that the Australian weather service has added a new color to its heat map which denotes temperatures above 122 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s 50 degrees Celsius, or half the boiling point of water.

This also doesn’t seem like a problem that will disappear in the near future. Climate scientists believe extreme temperatures are only going to be more prevalent. Due to climate change, many parts of the world could experience more extreme high temperatures and fewer extreme low temperatures, with climate models predicting higher maximum temperatures and more heat waves in the future (Easterling et al, 2000).

By some estimates, these heat waves will increase by a factor of 5 to 10 in the next four decades (Barriopedro et al, 2011). Without countermeasures, these high temps could cause “increased adverse health impacts from heat-related mortality, pollution, storm-related fatalities and injuries, and infectious diseases” (Field et all, 2007).

Some might point out that we have a national service that tells us what the temperature is. Election forecasting virtuoso Nate Silver pointed out in his book “The Signal and the Noise” that it’s such a valuable service, in fact, that a multi-billion dollar service industry in weather forecasting has sprung up from the National Weather Service freely sharing its weather data (it should be noted that these services are providing independent forecasts, not simply repackaging NWS data).

In an age where many phones come pre-loaded with weather apps, does it make sense for a publication to have a network of temperature sensors?

Making a sensor node for journalism: picking components and 3D printing useful bits

Open-source microcontrollers can be very handy for journalists: they can fly a data-gathering drone and control a data-gathering sensor node, among other uses. Previously I wrote how sensor nodes could be useful in a journalism investigation. Now it's time to leave the theory behind, and actually prototype one of these sensor nodes.

Nodes for journalists: a primer on bringing sensor data to the reporter

Drones are pretty cool, and could be pretty useful for journalists. They allow journalists to film hard-to-reach spots, such as partially-sunken cruise liners. These unmanned systems also can be used to collect geospatial data and photomaps, both of which can come in handy for a journalism investigation.

As I’ve written before, though, drones simply are remotely piloted aircraft (or watercraft). By themselves, they are not very useful tools. What actually makes them useful is that they are mobile platforms for sensors, which can collect data to guide reportage. Cameras are just one of a multitude of sensors that drones can carry into the sky.

What kind of additional sensors could you use on a drone? It’s probably easier to ask what exactly you want to measure in the environment, and then find a sensor to fit the application.

Droneveillance, and blogging for the International Symposium on Technology and Society

Lately I've found myself blogging for the International Symposium on Technology and Society, or ISTAS. It's an annual conference sponsored by IEEE (the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineers), which as its name suggests, focuses on the impact that evolving technologies have on everyday life. This year's conference will pay special consideration to the future of the smart infrastructure and surveillance:

In a world of smart things like smart lights, smart toilets, smart grids, smart meters, smart roads, and the like, what happens when you have "smart people" (i.e. put sensors on people)? What do we make of the growing numbers of businesses like department stores and restaurants that prohibit cameras, yet display QR codes that require cameras to read and understand?

It's not just about surveillance, either. Surveillance has a specific meaning, which refers to observing people or objects from an elevated position.That means surveillance is conducted by law enforcements and governments. Sousveillance, on the other hand, means observing or recording from below. When average citizens, as opposed to the government, do the recording, that's sousveillance.

How about droneveillance? Unlike fixed cameras, drones are highly mobile platforms for a variety of remote sensing devices. They're agile, relatively silent (depending on the altitude), and can even fly indoors. They've gotten especially smart at negotiating obstacles and mapping unfamiliar terrain, and they can work as a team to provide comprehensive monitoring.

Time-lapse photography with drone parts

Let’s say you’re a journalist and you want to record an important event taking place over an extended period, say 12 to 72 hours. Or even a week, or longer. If you want to record the event with video, that’s far too long to expect anyone to watch it in its entirety.

You can, however, record the whole thing and use some kind of time compression in post-production software. But if you’re recording on high definition video, you can only expect to record about four hours on a 32 gigabyte SD card. Even if you manage to capture 12 or 72 hours of high-definition video using a hard drive, it’s going to be hard to work with such a big file.

The solution is time-lapse photography, which simply means taking photos at regular intervals and turning them into individual frames on a video. During hurricane Sandy, a number of news sites and tech-savvy citizens used a time-lapse photography to document the storm's impact on New York City (below). If you’re not in a hurricane-prone area, you can find other weather-related applications for this technique, such as recording a flood-prone area during a storm.



Of course, you could just as easily record important non-weather events, such as big construction projects, or traffic on a bottlenecked road. Compressing these large-scale but slow-moving events into a one or two-minute clip makes for dramatic video.

At its most basic, you only need two things to pull off a time-lapse video. You’ll at least need a camera equipped with an intervalmeter (a fancy way of saying it can be programmed to take photos at regular intervals), and software to turn the photos into videos.

A camera battery will only last so long, though. If you’re hoping to capture an event longer than three hours, you’ll probably have to rig up an external power supply. This power supply can be as simple as a motorcycle battery hooked up to a voltage regulator, or it can be a sophisticated, computer-controlled lithium polymer setup with photovoltaic (solar) cells. Then there’s the matter of finding a memory card of sufficient size, and a mounting solution with sufficient stability.

Simple is better. If you’ve got drone journalism equipment lying around as I do, you likely already have all the requisite components to make a great time-lapse video. The following is a breakdown of my own experiment in time-lapse photography, which you can replicate or modify to suit your own needs.