3D Printing Buildings

Will 3D printing become widely adopted? WinSun believes it will. They have just finished a 5 story 3D printed building at the Suzhou Industrial Park in China. Their printer uses a patented “ink” of recycled building material and quick setting concrete. Although 3D printed buildings have been proposed by a number of different groups, WinSun is perhaps the most advanced. They say the Egyptian government has already ordered 20,000 of the single-story houses.

Many 3D printing concepts for buildings have focused on printing the structure of the building. But for residential buildings, this can be as low as 20% of the entire cost of the building. The greatest efficiency gains from 3D printing will occur when the plumbing, wiring, appliances and finishes can be printed along with the structure. The size of buildings built by WinSun are impressive, but the coarse layers used by their printer show they are a long way from printing the whole building.

http://www.citylab.com/housing/2015/01/china-built-giant-apartment-with-3d-printer/384948/

Smart Infrastructure and Privacy: Should Waze allows users to track police?

Waze, a smartphone app providing traffic information, has begun to draw criticism from the police. The app’s primary purpose is to allow users to share information about traffic flow, given its moto “Outsmarting Traffic, Together.” But the app also allows users to tag speed traps, red light cameras, and police patrol cars. Police fear that the app could become a mechanism for “Outsmarting Police, Together.” In addition, many police worry that locating police vehicles on the map could help those wishing to harm policemen. Ismaaiyl Brinsely, who killed two Police Officers in New York City on Dec 20^th, 2014, was a Waze user, although it’s unclear if he used the app in the killings (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/01/26/law-enforcement-wants-police-tracking-app-waze-disabled). The National Sheriffs’ Association issued a statement criticizing Google, the parent company of Waze; they want Google to prohibit users from tagging the location of Police Vehicles.

While Waze empowers its users with information, it could hurt Police attempts to ensure safety. As we collect more information on the state of our infrastructure, we will have to balance privacy versus empowerment.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/01/28/us/politics/ap-us-police-tracking-app.html

FLiR’s hot new sensor

Longwave infrared (LWIR) imagers are able to provide heat maps that are great for a variety of purposes.  A home inspector might use a hand-held version to find air leaks in a building.  The Predator uses this same technology when chasing Arnold across the swamps of Central America.  Up until recently, this technology was extremely expensive and hard to source for lower-cost sensing applications.  The company FLiR has now released the Lepton sensor series that is easy to interface over SPI (common on most micro-controllers).  You can even order a development kit from spark fun.  At $350 it is not super low-cost, but this opens a fantastic new potential for embedded sensing systems.