LENSS

Lakeshore Environmental and Night Sky Sensor Project (LENSS)

The goal of the Lakeshore Environmental and Night Sky Sensor (LENSS) Project is to contribute to the environmental health of Geneva Lake and increase the level of community involvement with environmental issues through a community-based environmental action project to design, test, build and deploy remote-monitoring stations that can accommodate a variety of sensors.

The Lakeshore Environmental and Night Sky Sensor (LENSS) Project will design, test, and build remote-monitoring stations around the lake that can accommodate a variety of sensors for testing sky quality and relevant environmental quality indicators. LENSS will contribute to the environmental health of Geneva Lake and increase the level of community involvement by linking professionals, mentors, and students to community-based environmental action. In addition, LENSS will provide sky quality measurement needed as part of the KNC’s application to be an International Dark Sky Association dark sky park.

High school students from the Greater Geneva Lake area will be recruited to participate in the project. Students will work in teams in the areas of engineering design, programming, data management, marketing, public outreach, graphic design, and advertising. After a kick-off event at George Williams College, teams will work at various locations in the area to put their skills and interest to work toward project goals.

LENSS will employ the model of nested mentorship that was central to the success of former Yerkes programs, specifically the McQuown Scholars. In this model, students are mentored over multiple years by STEM professionals and increasingly more experienced peers. Dr. Marc Berthoud, former NASA engineer based at Yerkes Observatory, has been working with our McQuown Scholars program and summer tech camps for almost ten years. He will be rejoining GLAS Education for this project. The ability to re-engage with him on GLAS programs represents a vital link in our effort to sustain the institutional knowledge that is at the heart of former Yerkes programs.

LENSS Google Drive Folder

Asana Task Management is used by the project.

Groups

Sky Quality Meter

• This is the group that builds and / or purchases the meter that can be read out electronically.
• They need to get information from the Dark Skies Group: What are the requirements? Are there DIY designs?
• They need to provide information on size, weight to the EM Group, provide power requirements to Electronics Group.
• http://unihedron.com/projects/sqm-lu/
• https://www.darksky.org/light-pollution/measuring-light-pollution/
  • TSL 237 Datasheet - https://www.jameco.com/Jameco/Products/ProdDS/2151435.pdf

Enclosure and Mounting (EM)

• How could the meter attach to something solids?
• Where should it attach?
• How do we keep it safe from the elements?

Electronics Group

• Build and or buy the electronics to collect and send the data.
• What data will be collected? How often will it be collected? How do we get each type of data from the sensors?
• How is the data transmitted? What options do we have to do that?
• Work with the software group to make sure the system functions properly.

Software Design Group

• Program the data collection system.
• What will it be programmed on? Do we need additional electronics?
• Software Cheatsheet: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iX-DiZJo-o-mhZU_J68_SNK8cEEoiFUTMxMAHPnjlcA/edit?usp=sharing

Data Storage Group

• Organize a way to store the data for initial tests and for permanent storage.
• Do we use one of our own servers or are there web services to cloud store sensor data? How will the data be stored (files or database? text or binary fomat?)
• How much data will it be (kilobytes or terrabytes over 10 years)?

Data Distribution Group

• Who wants to see the data?
• How do they want to access or see the data?
• What options can we give people to access the data?
• Give feedback to the data storage group to help them set up storage.

Dark Skies Education Group

• Designs a campaign to raise awareness for dark skies issues in the community.

Marketing group

• Where do we want to put the meters
• Get information from the other groups: What are the capabilities (what is stored, how often and where can I look at it)? What are the requirements (power? wifi?)
• What do the property owner want in exchange? What are their needs/expectations?
• Make design recommendations to all groups.

Data Analysis Group

• What other data do we need to combine with the sky quality measurements? What analysis can be done automatically / what must be done by hand?
• How do we measure the quality of the data we are getting?