Category: Running a community

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Who wants a LoRaWAN shield for the micro:bit?

Last year our friend Richard Ibbotson designed a LoRaWAN shield for the BBC micro:bit and they have been used in several experiments and projects since then, including a great project at the Museum of English Rural Life (the MERL) monitoring the impact of environmental conditions on the growth of sugar beet!

Richard’s shield is a popular conversation piece at various meetups and demonstrations. His write-up on hackaday has been read well over 11,000 times and has attracted interest from several organisations.

The shield features include: Continue reading “Who wants a LoRaWAN shield for the micro:bit?”

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Will Smart Cities lead us to Subtopia?

Why you must influence the Smart City agenda where you live

In 1955 critic Ian Nairn wrote a piece for Architecture Review called “Outrage”, in which he coined the term “Subtopia”:

Subtopia is the annihilation of the site, the steamrollering of all individuality of place to one uniform and mediocre pattern

Nairn was calling for the preservation of characteristic places, fearful that if things were allowed to continue then “…the end of Southampton will look like the beginning of Carlisle; the parts in between will look like the end of Carlisle or the beginning of Southampton.”

Over 60 years later the New Economics Foundation (NEF) has found that 41% of our town high streets are clones, full of national identikit chain stores and devoid of local character, with another 23% well on their way. Continue reading “Will Smart Cities lead us to Subtopia?”