We’re incredibly excited to announce the launch of the Safecast iOS app available in the App Store now. Last year we reached out to Nick Dolezal, creator of the most amazing GeigerBot, with some questions and ideas about his app. It didn’t take long for us to realize he would be a fantastic addition to the Safecast team and he agreed. We started brainstorming on what a Safecast iOS app might look like and what it might offer. The results of those continued discussions are live now. We’re most excited about the “virtual geiger counter” aspect to this app – using the GPS on your iPhone or iPad you can quickly see readings that have been taken around you. We’ve got the full Safecast dataset on board, as well as a handful of other publicly available radiation measurement data sets which gives a comprehensive exposure map for the US and Japan, with other areas being filled in as we collect those readings. There’s also the ability to connect your own geiger counter and take readings which can be submitted back to the Safecast Database.
We feel like this will be an incredibly useful application for just about anyone to have, and hope to keep improving it’s functionality as well grow. Enjoy!
The JapanTimes called it "strangely addictive" -- Download the iOS app now
Also, Tokyo based filmmaker Adrian Storey made this fantastic 3 minute documentary about Safecast for the Focus Forward Films competition and it’s made it to the semifinals! We’re really excited because not only is Adrian is an all around awesome dude, but he made an excellent film that hopefully many people will be able to check out and if he wins this competition Safecast will get some of the cash to help continue our efforts. If you have a moment and can go vote that would be much appreciated!
It's been a busy few months for the Safecast hardware teams. Part of the process for collecting more data requires getting more devices into people's hands so we're constantly working on that end of things too.
Robin has been heading up design of the improved bGeigie design (bGeigie 2) - the old ones included off the shelf parts and took a good day to build each one by hand. This new version is based on a custom board we're having manufactured which will cut both the time to build and the cost in half. We're excited about how this will allow us to get more of these out on the road so much quicker than previously.
Lionel has been working on the bGeigie Nano, which is the guts of a bGeigie in a much smaller housing which is great for travel and easy use by basically anyone. With any luck our entire team will soon be outfitted with these to carry with them around the world. We're also working with Medcom to produce a kit version of this so anyone can build their own as well.
Speaking of Medcom, they are moving full speed on production of the device we designed and kickstarted earlier this year, expecting delivery before the end of the year for sure. Firmware tests are in progress as we speak.
We've brought in almost a million data points since the last update which is thrilling. Our new map displaying this data can be found at map.safecast.org.
We're pretty excited to have broken the 3 million data point marker recently. Starting at 0 just over a year ago, and only breaking a million in December - this is very exciting for us. We've recently finished up some agreements which, if all goes well, could put us on track to add a million new points ever month by the end of the year. This data is already being used by universities, doctors, communities and researchers all over the world.
We're actively working on base-lining the planet now. If we had the kind of data that we now have from prior to March of 2011 we'd know a lot more about what actually happened - as it stands we have to speculate a bit. Once we get things mapped all over, the next time something happens we'll be able to reference this data set and set the changes exactly as they happen which will be fantastic. We're hoping to cover some significant locations before the end of the year as well.
To see all this we'll be launching a whole new visualization platform any day now that will let you look at our data over time as well as compare it against other data sets (like earthquakes, reactor locations, census info, etc) which will tell an more robust story we hope.
Thanks for the continuing support!!
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