Sensors.social: an open air-quality network on Polkadot is growing across the EU

Ecosystem
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Hi all — EnsRationis from Robonomics.

Sensors.social is an open environmental data network I designed, and it is now growing across the EU. Everything is open source: the Altruist sensors that feed it, the software that collects the readings, and the map.

Web3 does one job here, the one it is good at: it settles the data as a common good anyone can check, not a vendor’s database.

How it works on Robonomics

  • Owners who choose to share their Altruist’s data join the network; each sensor has its own key and signs every measurement it sends.
  • A connectivity node checks the signature and that the sensor has an active subscription on Robonomics, a parachain on Polkadot, then passes the reading to the live map.
  • The node collects readings into batches, stores each batch on IPFS and writes its hash to Robonomics. Anyone can fetch a batch and check it against the chain.
  • The network is federated: a city or a lab can run its own connectivity node, and its sensors still show up on the common map.
  • Next, with Robonomics 5.0: the reading the sensor signed goes on chain itself, so there is no need to trust the node at all.

Try the map: https://sensors.social

sensors-social-europe

Happy to hear from anyone who wants to run a sensor in their city or build on the data.

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