At Public Lab, we've grown the Grassroots Mapping community into a broader effort to enable communities to understand and respond to environmental threats with DIY techniques.
Parts & Crafts campers worked with me to produce this guide to sample preparation of oil or tar contaminated soil. This covers just the sample prep and how to see fluorescence in samples with a green laser. You'll need to construct a spectrometer to measure the samples' colors and try to identify the contaminant:
Here is a prototype rig that performed well on its maiden flight. The design might be appropriate for matched visible/IR cameras for vertical photography, like the Canon A495s from the Balloon Mapping Kickstarter project. For such a use, it would require the addition of an intervalometer to trigger both cameras simultaneously. I am not yet sure how to add that function.
A Picavet rig is a very common type of KAP/BAP rig, I've added it to the juice bottle in a fairly simple way, using 1/2" key rings.
I've made an instructional video on efficient image sorting with Preview and Finder, for quickly winnowing down big groups of images to small sets, ready for MapKnitter:
This is for use with the PET Bottle Rig
Instead of using a balled up piece of tape, a pebble, or some other thing to hold down my camera's shutter, I've gone to using a knot. This makes it easy to hold in place, and makes setting it easier. I prefer a rubber band, but tape also holds it down. tape may be more useful for bulging, non rectangular cameras.
Are you embroiled in an cartographic dispute? Do you disagree with the official version of your geography? Contact us through the public mailing list.
Grassroots Mapping is part of the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science, founded by a group of activists, educators, technologists, and community organizers interested in new ways to promote action, intervention, and awareness through a participatory research model.
We're now trying to learn from our balloon mapping experiences to develop new DIY tools with a variety of local communities. This is an open community and you are welcome to join, and encouraged to contribute!
Purchase the Grassroots Mapping Forum, our new community research journal/archive/zine/map, where we hope to share ideas, techniques, and stories from the Grassroots Mapping community. It is printed on a single 22.75x35" newsprint sheet, folded down to just over letter size, and includes a full color reproduction of a grassroots map along with essays, illustrated guides, and interviews on the reverse.
You can find out more, and purchase the first issue here for $17 shipped.
We're helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming yeas.We believe in complete open access to spill imagery and are releasing all imagery into the public domain.
You can see all of our data here: http://publiclab.org/archive/.
Browse some of our best imagery on Flickr.
Techniques and tools for people who want to make maps, on the Public Laboratory wiki. Includes readings and case studies on grassroots mapping projects.
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Instructions on how to use cameras on weather balloons to create high-resolution maps.
Want to start mapping? See the Balloon Mapping Materials List to get started.
