The Android app uses a phone camera to measure air pollution.

If it seems to you that there is something wrong with the surrounding air, now you can find out for sure by pointing the phone at the sky.

An Android app called Visibility, developed by researchers from the University of Southern California, allows users to take a picture of the sky and get air quality data.
The free program is currently available for phones based on the Android 2.1 1.6-2.2 operating system.

“Airborne particles of matter are a real threat to health and the environment,” say the researchers in their blog . "We are working on an optical technique for measuring visibility in the air, using cameras and other sensors found in smartphones."

This is a fresh idea and it will be interesting to see how smartphones create the trend of symbiosis of civil science and remote data processing.
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As smartphones become more powerful and spread more and more, researchers are increasingly using these devices for complex calculations and remote data collection. For example, in an Intel research lab project called Common Sense, sensors were developed that can be attached to GPS phones and measure ambient air quality. The collected data from these sensors will be returned to the researchers and processed to determine contamination levels.

The Visibility application hopes to offer something similar, but to make the process more user-friendly. With it, each sky photo taken by the user is tagged with location, orientation and time. The data is sent to the server where the calculations are made. The level of air quality is estimated by calibrating the image sent and comparing them with the intensity of the existing brightness model in the sky, the researchers say.

The result is returned to the user, and the data obtained are used to create a map of air pollution in the region. The version of the application for the iPhone is in development.

via Wired