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PacoTaco321 t1_jcgmdfa wrote

Reply to comment by Tactically_Fat in Open-source tool from MIT’s Senseable City Lab lets people check air quality, cheaply. by chrisdh79

So does the default weather app on my phone. I'm not sure why someone would need their own meter when there's so many ways to do so already. If you are in a situation that you have to worry about checking air quality in a highly localized area, you should probably just avoid being there altogether.

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UnderGrownGreenRoad t1_jcgno3w wrote

I would assume it's like a rain gauge. It's nice to see exactly what you have instead of what the weather app/channel says. Even though they are normally close

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iRhcp182 t1_jchf5ki wrote

What you see in your weather app is very different from what the city scanner shows. How air quality is usually measured is by using 5-6 fixed research grade sensors. The measurements from these stations are used plus some meteorological variables (wind speed+direction, relative humidity, temperature) to model air quality over a larger area. The city scanners however show that air quality can differ a factor 10 on a micro scale. Meaning that these models can wildly over or under estimate air quality at specific locations. These scanners are thus used to create a higher resolution air quality map.

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