In the Public Lab community newsletter this week, check out all the exciting upcoming events happening in Castellón (Spain), Boston, New Orleans, London and Chicago. These in-person meet-ups are a great way to connect with other Public Lab folks in your area, so if you’re around, please consider attending. Enjoy!

Announcements

The Public Lab/IOBY featured project of the week is Mystic River Water Quality led by Don Blair. Please help this project come to fruition by considering a contribution.

On January 20th, students at UMass Amherst got together to start in on a portion of the Mystic River Water Quality project. The main idea was to develop a prototype system for storing and visualizing hydrology data. You can read more about the event here: http://publiclab.org/notes/donblair/01-22-2014/public-lab-open-water-hackathon-amherst-college.

Upcoming events

This upcoming week, January 31 through February 2, there will be a balloon mapping workshop in Castellón, Spain. More information (in spanish) can be found on the Basurama site or (in english) on the Public Lab site. You can also follow along on Twitter at #documentaterritorio.

On January 29th, MakerState New Orleans will be holding a Maker 101 meet-up at Propeller.

There will be a Toolshed Raising (Public Lab version of a local meet-up) in Boston (Somerville) on Sunday Feb 2 from 12-4pm.

At the Chicago “Uncommon Commons” event on Wednesday February 12 from 10am-1pm, Liz Barry will be facilitating a discussion on civic science. Please join if you’re in the area!

The Citizen Cyberscience Summit has released their program for the upcoming February conference. Public Lab Organizers, Cindy Regalado and Hagit Keysar will be giving presentations. Please let us know if you’ll be in attendance!

Save the date! Public Lab partner, Toxics Action Center will be hosting their annual conference March 3rd.

New and ongoing projects

Infragram.org -- our web-based processing software for Infragram plant analysis photos, has been relaunched with a new interface and more powerful tools.

Research Note highlights 1. Updated maps: construction site activities near Mocho Park (posted by patcoyle)

1. Testing PhotosynQ in a greenhouse (posted by gbarthree)

2. Thermal flashlight using MLX90614 IR evaluation board from SparkFun (posted by Code4Maine)

3. Report back from “Making A Difference” conference, Hong Kong (posted by liz)

4. Connecting with open source programmers and activists in Hong Kong and Singapore (posted by liz)

5. Pasture measurement using NIR camera (posted by drkatnz)

6. Public remote sensing (posted by dongjie)

7. Methods of estimating the volume and weight of waste piles through balloon mapping (posted by sara)

8. Thermal flashlight Visualight shield (posted by warren)

9. Thermal flashlight design (+ thermal fishing bob too?) (posted by donblair)

As always, if anything was missed, please post a research note or send a message to the list. Have a great week everyone! Shannon

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