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Jun Yamadera

The start of the project for YR-Design was an extension of building bGiegies in Aizu Wakamatsu. By being in Aizu, having build a few bGeigies for SAFECAST and being exposed to the GreenSmile project from Jun Yamadera (Eyes-Japan), it was a logical step to enter the project. Jun Yamadera first came to YR-Design with his, at that time current version, sensor, a big box behind a bicycle. The box contained a custom build Geiger counter and other sensors. It also contained a big battery to power the WiFi access router. Jun asked us to looking possibilities for modifying the design to make it smaller. At that time YR-Design could not commit enough resources and time to help out.

In November 2012 we could commit more time to the project and at the same time Pieter Franken asked us to help with building bGiegeNanoKit prototypes. We made two prototypes (breadboard and wired by hand).

Routing

Sensor bGeigieNano and bGeigieNanoKit

One bGiegieNano as a reverence and another one, with rearranged components, with lots of space for additional sensors .

At the Safecast Hakathon in January, 2013, Naim Busek taught me how to program the Xbee’s (modules that extend wireless communications for Arduino). Although we did not get an Ad Hoc network going at that time, I knew it would not be too hard to do.

Bike sensor mounting

At the Hackathon I mounted temperature and humidity sensors on one of the bGiegieNano, but did not test/develop the software (see picture). Also I mounted the modified bGiegieNano, with sensors, on a nice modern bike that could display data or advertisements on the wheel with Money Electric Videopro8 .

Clif logo

Back in Hikone, YR-Design made the software for interfacing the wheel and sensors with the bGeigie. Temporally using the existing data string as a base. And extending the data string with temperature and humidity fields. We made the interface working on WiFi (Xbee WiFi in AdHoc mode) with an Iphone, so Jun Yamadera could use it on a trade show for Carbon Credits. Also the bike with sensors was used for the introduction of Clif bars in an event organized by Duco delgore with the logo displayed on the wheel.

A second bGeigieNano with sensors was made for another bike. The sensors for that bGiegeiNano were mounted with the expositor of the sensor at the bottom to prevent water entering the sensors. The bike was also showed at TV News of Fukushima TV

Future development:

At SXSW in Austin, Jun Yamadera will show the bike with wireless updateable data (Xbee 15.4) and the bGiegies. Future development will be including CO and NOX sensors and Bluetooth Low Energy interfaces directly from the wheel and the bGeigieNano to iPhone. YR-Design will be posting on this later on.

More pictures of safecast and other bGeigie projects can be found at:

https://www.facebook.com/safecast/photos_stream

For contact: rob@yr-design.biz (or Google me here)

Hikone 2012-12-19

From One Spike to 45 Blinking LED’s.

From one Spike on a Software Scope in a Brazil Bar in Tokyo to 45 Blinking LEDs, the Sound of Fake Digital Crickets in a Science Room in Aizu. (A short summery of part of the flow of the radiation recorded from Cesium in Japan to SAFECAST webpage).

Introduction:

It all started with a short Skype call after having tried the satellite phone. Pieter Franken and others from the “block hoofden” group (a Dutch embassy initiative for organizing Dutch citizen abroad) trying to connect with each other and collecting information how bad the damage of the earthquake was. The next day EenVandaag (Dutch TV channel) called us (Yuka Hayashi and me) to ask if we were willing to go with a reporter and cameraman to Tohoku.

After some doubts we accepted the project. On 2011-03-12 we went to Sendai to visit the family of Pieter in Ishinomaki to make a story for EenVandaag. On the way we were constantly updated with information from Pieter. Sometimes, nearly hourly, he reported to us about the situation of the Daiichi nuclear plant. It became clear that we could not take the road on the east side of Japan and we decided to take the west side, though Nagano-ken.

After 4 days in Tohoku the Dutch TV crew was called back and they offered us the flight with them to Holland. We decided to go with them and see how the situation would develop. In Holland we were often in contact with Pieter to take about ideas how to get a simple measurement for radiation going. Pieter was working on his Iphone bGeigie and at that time I was researching the possibilities to have the same software running on an Android phone. Continue reading »