The Air Quality Egg came about when Ed Borden (http://twitter.com/edborden), Evangelist and Business Dev at Pachube (http://pachube.com) was looking for a project which leveraged the power of the Internet of Things and also organically built a community around a common goal. Citizen Sensor (http://citizensensor.cc) was my thesis project in MFA DT in 2010. I met Ed in mid-2011 and we started talking about possible collaborations. As community engagement was a priority, meetups (http://meetup.com/iotnewyork), a google group (link), and a wiki (link) were initiated in order to harness and facilitate group collaboration on a DIY air quality project.

It is a collaboration among many people from diverse communities of makers, scientists, developers, designers, educators and more; however foremost it is Pachube, WickedDevice (http://wickeddevice.com), and Citizen Sensor helping to push the project through to realization.

Ed Borden and Joe Saavedra are also co-teaching Collab: Internet of Things this semester, in which students have conceptualized, prototyped, and are now preparing to deploy Internet of Things projects. This includes connected objects, embedded sensor networks, smart cities, and more in both mobile and stationary dispostions. Several students from the class and even some from outside have participated in meetups and production aspects of making the kickstarter happen.

They officially got funded about 4.5 days into the kickstarter (link) and have about 25 days to look forward to. They’re really looking to make the most efficient and accurate stationary air quality sensors at a $100 price-point. As the community of users grows, so will the applications for using this data. After all, *what* we do with data is equally – or perhaps more – important as *how* we collect it.

List of students who have particpated

Eulani Labay (TransDisc)
Mani Nilchiani (1-yr MFA DT)
Jenn Kaye (1-yr MFA DT)
Leif Percifield (2-yr MFA DT)
Chris Piuggi (2-yr MFA DT)

Kickstarter Page:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/680121538/air-quality-egg

Press:
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-03/29/pachube-air-egg