This week in the Public Lab community newsletter, read an update on petroleum waste mapping and measuring in Chicago, check out the creation of an oil testing station and join Public Lab during Google Summer of Code as a participant or mentor. Enjoy!

Announcements

Public Lab has been accepted to Google Summer of Code 2014! Now’s the time to brainstorm some new projects: http://publiclab.org/wiki/gsoc-ideas -- join the discussion on the plots-gsoc list, which you can join on that page. We are also looking for mentors for GSoC; please email jeff@publiclab.org if you're interested or would like to learn more.

Public Lab is looking for a contract based Layout Editor to work on projects such as the Grassroots Mapping Forum. For more information, please visit: http://publiclab.org/wiki/public-lab-jobs

There are a few beta oil testing kits available for sale. If you’re interested in joining the pilot testing team, grab yours today!

Upcoming events

The Gulf Coast Public Lab Chapter will be hosting a get together on Tuesday evening, March 18th to discuss plans and upcoming projects for 2014 in the Gulf Coast region. Please RSVP to shannon@publiclab.org.

New and ongoing projects

An updated note on mapping and measuring weight and volume of petroleum waste piles in Southeast Chicago.

Creating an oil testing station out of a spectrometer box as part of the new oil testing kit.

An update on documenting restoration at Bayou St. John in New Orleans.

Research Note highlights

• Free SFM tools for scaled measurements and volume calculations (posted by patcoyle)
• Cheap single camera system for NDVI (posted by Albertazzi)
• Food grade oil samples (posted by liz)
• Raspberry Pi camera rig (posted by SeanKMcGinnis)
• Floating camera rig (posted by eustatic)
• Trying to make a kite design work (posted by Ecta64)
• Quantifying airborne Hydrogen Sulfide (posted by JSummers)
• Color quality control (posted by RauAutowood)

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

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