Air and noise monitors to be placed throughout Buenos Aires

Smart. These poles have gear mounted on them to detect pollutants and humidity, and they detect noise as well. They’ll be scattered throughout Buenos Aires as part of an ongoing push towards being eco-friendly down there in Argentina. There are only 42 sensor-poles at the moment so the data won’t be too rich, but it’s enough to get some rough gradients and identify problem areas.

I think this is a great idea: taking ubiquitous and simple tech (light fixtures, telephone poles and so on) and embedding more sophisticated things inside like microphones, ambient light sensors, and particle detectors. It becomes a bit Big Brother-ish after a point (telescreens!) but there’s a lot of room for improving our cities and homes by simply making the technology we already have a bit more aware.