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Is this even possible? Wouldn’t that require sophisticated and expensive equipment? I tried to order one of these about a year ago but the seller was inactive. Maybe something like this could work.
Sensors are in general ridiculously cheap. I have a PM 2.5 sensors lying around at home. Believe it was around 10 RMB. Looked up which sensor some commercial air quality measuring product was using and bought the same one. Haven’t started using it yet. If you’re willing to put something together yourself with some sensors, Arduino/Raspberry Pi/similar and some coding then my guess is it would be cheap.
I think AQI is calculated from 3 different measured values? So need 3 different sensors. Guess the other two sensors are also quite affordable.
The product you linked to seems cool. I’ve been trying to buy an Air Quality Egg in the past. http://airqualityegg.com
Air Quality Egg don’t show AQI though. I think AQI is the best measurement as lots of people are familiar with it, and then it can easily be compared to the official stations’ values.Since around a week ago the US embassy in Beijing haven’t shown any numbers. The latest update info for the Air Quality app says “Changelog for this version was redacted due to some reasons”. And in the app is now the mentioned text.
It’s ridiculous. I thought about this when the numbers suddenly disappeared a week ago, but thought it can’t be that the government is censoring it because of the visit. But seems like that’s the case. Hope it’ll start functioning again.
In my opinion this shows we can’t even rely on the US embassies readings. China needs a crowd-sourced underground AQI measuring network.
DropBox is quite pricy and people speculate that it might be difficult for them to keep up with the competitors. Microsoft recently announced that their OneDrive plans now all have unlimited storage. A OneDrive plan is $6.99 per month I believe. Not sure whether OneDrive is blocked or not in China.
Personally I use iCloud, since I trust Apple more than many of the other providers out there and I think it’s less likely to be blocked in China compared to other services similar to DropBox. The iCloud plans are also very affordable these days.
I do backups to an external hard drive and also to iCloud. If you want your data to be safe then do redundant backups. If your home burns down or is robbed then you might lose backups you keep there. Similarly cloud services can be hacked etc. I do backups to an external drive and also backup to iCloud – the kind of data I don’t mind too much if someone else get his/her hands on.
There’s another related thread here: https://www.chengduliving.com/forums/topic/free-cloud-storage/
not sure which media player you’re using.
if you need subtitle for your downloads, try splayer from splayer.org
It will automatically match and download the subs for you. and it even has a “international version”.Ah right. I’m usually using VLC, but wouldn’t mind using some other one. I’ll try SPlayer and see if there’s some other good alternatives too. Thanks for the advice!
edit: beat me to it Ben. I agree with your point about downloading being preferable anyway. Chinese video streaming sites are low quality and heavy-handed with advertisements.
I disagree. I’d say some Chinese streaming services are really good. I’ve been using the sohu and PPTV iPhone and iPad apps and stream it’s video to my Apple TV. They used to have lots of western movies and TV shows in 1080p. I don’t mind the occasional 60 second advertisements before a movie/episode starts playing. Sure some of these services have horrible websites, but the mobile apps are usually really good.
Streaming from Chinese services is especially convenient when watching with Chinese friends who want to watch with subtitles. When downloading I have to get subtitles manually.
Youku? They have Gotham which just started. I download everything; better quality and you don’t have to put up with adverts. If you have a PC that you can leave on then you can use utorrent/transmission + rss to grab stuff automatically. Flexget is particular good with rss feeds as it can link to imdb to automatically download movies from your watchlist when they become available.
Thanks. Seems like all Chinese streaming services including Youku have removed most western movies and TV shows though. I’m familiar with downloading torrents via RSS feeds etc but prefer streaming if there’s a good alternative. Seems like there isn’t though.
sinaapp.co
It’s a mirror of google HK. I don’t know how exactly, but it is hosted on the Amazon cloud, so the only way for it to be blocked is if amazon.com is blocked.
Nice one, works very well. For the full Google mirror experience http://elgoog.im is another good alternative.
Check this thread out: https://www.chengduliving.com/forum/topic/free-cloud-storage/
We will set out from Chunxi Road（Xiangbin square）in the afternoon (around 5pm) and ride along a routine whick looks like a figure “5” in the map. The whole tour will take about 90 minutes.
What kind of cycling is it? A race, or slow ride in a big group? Will there be any other activities before/after the ride?
What time should participants get there?
By the way, I recently published a review of the SamoAir pm2.5 measuring device: SamoAir Review. This is a 200rmb device which measures pm2.5 levels inside your house or anywhere, which is a really economical way to test the effectiveness of air filters in your home.
Looks like a neat kit. Another alternative is to buy the sensor for around 25-30RMB and hook it up to a Raspberry Pi/Arduino/similar device. Pretty neat if you anyways got one at home running 24/7. http://s.taobao.com/search?q=GP2Y1010AU0F
This is probably the sensor SamoAir is using, but I’m not 100% sure.
That’s true but you have that problem wherever you take measurements or in whatever way you present data. The US Consulate reports AQI from a single location but the local Chengdu government has 8 testing sites within 3rd ring road (which you can see here by clicking on the map icon). You can see how the pollution varies by location depending on proximity to major roads, etc.
Wonder if either of those stations’ values could make a significant drop if the sensor was to be moved to a higher or lower floor. I’m not sure, maybe it wouldn’t differ that much. Seems like more stations have popped up in recent months. Would love to have my own sensor to experiment with to get a better idea of how the values can be affected by different variables.
I don’t think this is true – judging the air quality by the appearance of the sky would be worthless. AQI is a legitimate way to simplify and communicate the complexities of air quality to laypeople. It’s factored by collecting ground-level ozone, particulates, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.
There’s just so many variables that can make the AQI value diff such as which part of the city a sensor is located in, how high above ground it’s located, if there are big roads or construction nearby etc.
Maybe they’ve thought about this when installing the sensors so that all sensors are doing the measurement under similar conditions. Anyone know?
I got a NAS for local backups and am considering Amazon Glacier for off-site archival. One of the cool things about a NAS is that you can run your own Dropbox-like service with BT Sync with unlimited storage capacity and bandwidth.
Amazon Glacier is cool, but with these end user services(Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud soon probably) now being so cheap there’s not much point in using Amazon Glacier I guess. Amazon Glaciers’s prices start at $0.01 per gigabyte per month which for 1tb would be $10.24. I guess Amazon Glacier won’t drop their prices, because they’re targeting a different market it seems.
I’ve always been messing with external hard drives for backups. A NAS would be nice for local redundancy. I think I’m just gonna trust my files are fairly safe at iCloud though, keep doing local backups on the stuff I really must not lose, and store all the stuff that isn’t important on iCloud only.
Would be cool if there’s some software that pull files from iCloud so that a NAS could always keep itself updated as a backup of what’s on iCloud(or other similar services).
SATURDAY JUNE 29. 2PM to 7AM
Sounds awesome. Saturday 28th though, right?
Microsoft OneDrive just got cheap. https://blog.onedrive.com/new-onedrive-storage-plans/
I’m looking forward to iCloud’s 1tb storage plan which the price of haven’t been announced yet. http://9to5mac.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/screen-shot-2014-06-02-at-2-21-34-pm.png?w=1358&h=596
OneDrive’s 200gb plan is $3.99 a month, so is iCloud’s 200gb plan. OneDrive 1tb for $6.99 so iCloud’s 1tb should also be affordable then. Will be in effect “soon”.
Not so likely that these services will be blocked like Google Drive and Dropbox I guess.
I’d be in on this. Got my eye on Scooby Doo (page 5 men’s tees)…and anything with cats….
Forgot to reply during the day. How about you send me over links to the one’s you want, tell me size and whether you want T-shirt or tank. And then I’ll place an order tomorrow before the sale ends.
Leave me a message here, or email me on [email protected]
If anyone else is interested you can do the same. Will place the order some time tomorrow Thursday.Raspberry Pi 2? That doesn’t exist, does it?
He is referring to Raspberry Pi revision 2. Not sure whether it can be called “Raspberry Pi 2” or not.
Cool. Are they model A or B?
http://www.raspberrypi.org/products/Niubeishan seems amazing. Personally I haven’t heard of it before, but stumbled upon some pics from there last night.
http://www.60niandai.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/niubeishan-01-04.jpg
http://fcdn.mtbr.com/attachments/passion/551506d1277213302-riding-niubeishan-img_74911.jpg
http://www.60niandai.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/niubeishan-01-10.jpgAnyone know anything about the swimming pool by 新希望路? I’ve only seen it from map and satellite images. It’s in the community behind the Essence of Europe there.
https://www.google.com.hk/maps/@30.6174014,104.0723965,19z
