Check out this great blog post by Chanun, one of our TASC Force youth volunteers, about his experience participating in a “youth civic hackathon” at TechShop San Francisco this past weekend. Chanun writes eloquently about what he and two other Academy youth did and learned over the course of the weekend.
“My teammates and I decided that we wanted to tackle the issue about greenhouse gas emissions and inefficient garbage dumping.” [Academy youth Claire] said. “To tackle the two problems, we decided that we wanted garbage pick-ups to be need-based, not time-based like San Francisco’s current system. Thus, we created a garbage can with a pressure sensor at the bottom that can alert recology personnel to come pick up the full garbage can, and also programmed a system that can optimize the route to different communal garbage cans and back to the waste management headquarters.”
Read more on the Academy Adventures tumblr.
Mark, another Academy youth, shared his experiences at the hackathon, working on "peace pods" for the SF public transportation system. Sounds like a really cool idea! I would totally use those to peace out while waiting for the train.
In a similar vein, the Cal Academy's first Digital Playshop in 2015 is on arduino-hacking to monitor natural phenomena on February 7. Limited seats are available, so sign up quickly!