This is a great example of just doing interesting things to see where they lead.
At the Over the Air hackathon at Bletchley Park a few years ago we built a smart phone app which connected to an air pollution monitor and uploaded air quality and location data as you cycled around.
It won a prize and got people interested in what more could be done. Our colleagues at the Internet of Things Academy took up the baton and managed to get a grant to develop things further - and so Buggy Air was born.
The first stage of the project involves developing a suitable hardware air pollution sensor that can measure the various gases we want to measure at a useful accuracy.
The sensor connects via bluetooth to a cross platform phone app we created in partnership with our friends at Virtual Techno. Trip data is then uploaded to the cloud.
The data can then be accessed by the user via a website dashboard to display a visual record of their trips to help them understand their environment and plan journeys.
On a wider scale we have also developed an API to allow access to the air quality data that can be used by academic institutions and government departments to help shape behavioural change and legislation to minimise the impact of poor air quality on the environment.
We're currently in negotiations to trial the sensors by having them attached to London's Boris Bikes.