Since August the Pacco-test knows where it is!
Its GPS-data-logging-key picks up signals from satellites, calculates its location and stores this in its memory. From there we later retrieve these data, and put them online with help of Open Street Map.
The Pacco-test can now also show data on its own 2,8 touch screen [think large smartphone].
And it's got power: A 79mm long, 56mm wide, 98mm heigh battery weighing 1 kg, providing us with 12V at 2.9 Ah.

After that, we realised that we had reached the limits of the 32KB flash memory of our Arduino, and we hadn't even connected up all the bits.

Fortunately last week, Matthieu Melcot whizzed by our office with his Raspberry Pi [a credit-card sized computer] and showed that this machine can do all we want to do, and more!
Plenty of space for connecting peripherals, no need for supplementing flash memory so the Pacco-test can remember what it measured where, its own WiFi link AND still plenty of space to write checks and balances in the code that make our results scientifically more acceptable.

So what's next?
Because Code is the new Punk, City Mine(d)ers are learning Python [the programming language in which our Pacco-test will think and talk to itself, just like Google Apps, ArcGis and parts of MAC OS X do].

Care to join?
If you don't know Python, take the course on http://www.codecademy.com and/or contact us to tell us you would like to join / contribute / follow / know more. We will be purchasing our Raspberry Pi's soon, and then start hooking and coding everything up.

Then.
We're thinking of organising a Pacco-Fest, let's say on Saturday 15 February (this is a Save the Date!!!),
a series of workshops to share what we have learned, as well as our bottle necks, with computer geeks, community activists and common people.
Careful, there might be drinks and some noise at the end!
More about this soon...

All the Pacco-best!