This week in the Public Lab community newsletter take a look at images from the Barnraising last weekend, read updates on the final Barataria Bay mapping trip and work being done around dust sensing and check out posts on community science and storytelling such as “exploring the space unseen”. Enjoy!

Announcements

The Public Lab nonprofit is excited to Welcome Natalie Mayorga to the staff. Natalie is joining us as the Civic Kits Manager and will be working from our Portland, OR office. Read more about Natalie here and get get in contact with Natalie by emailing Natalie@publiclab.org.

The Infragram Point and Shoot camera, is now available for pre-order! Order yours today by visiting the Public Lab store: http://store.publiclab.org/collections/diy-infrared-photography/products/infragram-point-shoot-plant-cam

Last weekend, around thirty people got together for the first Spring tool-focused Barnraising and the first Organizers Summit. This year, the gathering was held in Plymouth, MA. Keep an eye out for more Barnraising notes to come, but here’s a couple from Chris Fastie: http://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/06-11-2014/ne-barnraising-2014 and http://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/06-10-2014/ne-organizers-summit. Eymund Diegel also shared a series of photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/11001189@N07/sets/72157645114965494/

Save the Date for the Annual Fall Barnraising in Cocodrie, Louisiana. We’ll be convening this year from November 14-16.

Interested in using the IRC chat feature on Public Lab to communicate with staff, organizers and other community members? Here’s a note on how to jump into the conversation: http://publiclab.org/notes/anishshah101/06-05-2014/how-to-access-the-public-lab-internet-relay-chat

The shiny new Infragram interface has been ported to the faster, WebGL version of the site which can do plant analysis NDVI on live video: http://infragram.org/sandbox/?webgl=true

New and ongoing projects

The Barataria Bay, Louisiana project is wrapping up the mapping phase. Check out a note from Scott Eustis, with additional comments by Dan Beavers, on the work they’ve been doing: http://publiclab.org/notes/eustatic/06-13-2014/barataria-2014-vii-june-12th

Updates and progress on the thermal fishing bob from a test at a power plant and from the Barnraising last week.

Hagit Keysar shares her proposal for the (accepted) talk that she will be giving at the Open Hardware Summit in Rome this year on open sourcing the architect’s model: http://publiclab.org/notes/hagitkeysar/06-12-2014/civil-architecture-and-open-hardware

Mathew Lippincott has shared a great series of research notes on the work that he has been doing around dust monitoring over the last two weeks. This work is in preparation for a project on sand frac mining in Wisconsin. Check out the notes by looking under the “Open Air” tag: http://publiclab.org/tag/openair.

Anishshah101 provided two research notes updating on the progress of Google Summer of code work. Read more about working on image distortion in MapKnitter and non-affine/projective transformations of images.

Eymund Diegel discusses how historic resources, such as maps, can help guide future storytelling in his note on “exploring the space unseen”: http://publiclab.org/notes/eymund/06-10-2014/exploring-the-space-unseen-historic-resources-for-guiding-future-story-telling

Public Labber, kanarinka, provides a walk through of an unnamed neighborhood creek and thoughts on how nearby residents set out to learn more about this body of water: http://publiclab.org/notes/kanarinka/06-09-2014/the-neighborhood-creek-expedition

Website tips: pages can now have "parent pages" which lead back to a top-level wiki page. See an example: http://publiclab.org/wiki/infragram-convertible-cameras

Research Note highlights

• Jamaica Bay marsh planting (posted by gwirth)
• WebGL flavored Infragram.org (posted by pfoltyn)
• Oblique aerials from GoPro and Public Lab balloon mapping kit (posted by gonzoearth)
• Tips on sorting on windows, including re-naming filenames (posted by eustatic)
• Idea for <$5 analog thermal fishing bob (posted by warren)
• Super redstone (posted by cfastie)
• Questions about DIY spectrometer and e-liquid ingredients (posted by nickha. This note presents a question about spectrometry. Can you help answer it?)
• ARAMANI: advanced decision support tool for selecting optimal participatory mapping method (posted by JirkaPanek)
• Halo: red vs. blue (posted by cfastie)

Barnstars

Do you read Public Lab emails and/or research notes and think, “what a great contribution”? Or know of someone doing great community work around a particular issue? If so, consider awarding a Barnstar. Find more information on the Public Lab Barnstar wiki page. Awarded this week:

• Basic Barnstar to Pfoltyn
• Photo Documentation Barnstar to cfastie
• Basic Barnstar to donblair

Public Lab in the media

DIY Drones posted about the Public Lab Infragram Point and Shoot camera.

Don Blair wrote a summary of the UMass Amherst Science for the People conference, providing links to media from the event: http://publiclab.org/notes/donblair/06-13-2014/science-for-the-people

Thanks everyone for a great couple of weeks. If anything was missed, please email the list or post a research note. Have a great upcoming week! Shannon

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