Mobile Phone Air Pollution Monitor

I like this one - another example of converging the use of mobile phones for environmental monitoring:

Squirrel is a Bluetooth-enabled gadget that monitors pollution, being developed by Shannon Spanhake and colleagues at the University of California San Diego and Calit2. MedGadget reports.

"Squirrel fits in the palm of your hand and can be clasped to a belt or purse. The small, battery-powered mobile device can sample pollutants with its on-chip sensor.

Using a Bluetooth wireless transmitter, the device connects to the user's cell phone. A software program called Acorn allows the user to see the current pollution alerts through a screensaver on the cell phone's display.

...The phone also periodically transmits the environmental data to a public database on the Internet operated by Calit2."

Via Smartmobs