Track your Emissions with Internet of Farts

Just when you thought you had seen it all and didn’t think you could be surprised by the things people come up with – the Internet of Farts arrives. Yes, you read that right, a system to keep track of your personal emissions and push them to the cloud. All mammals on this planet fart, that’s part of our digestive systems, and humans are mammals too. Most people try to do it when they are alone and one of those places are while you’re driving your car. But how much and is there a pattern behind it? That must have been what went through the creator’s mind when he came up with this.

So Michel from Quebec, Canada created a device to geolocalize those farts and log a few more things about them such as heading and speed. While Michel speculates how it could affect the resale value of the car, I don’t think there is any law that will require you to tell so.

“Would it be interesting when selling the car, hand to the new owner a report of the number of farts released in the car and a map of those farts? Well not really but it was a fun project to build! [sic]”

The device is quite simple in itself as it contains a microcontroller (PIC18F25K22), an ESP8266, a GPS module, a little LCD, and a keypad to enter your fart information. In normal operation, the display shows the speed, total fart count, heading, number of satellites used, and HDOP. Each Friday, the data is then manually uploaded to the cloud.

He took the display case from a cheap solar light and modified it for this usage. It houses the GPS module (GY NEO6MV2) together with its antenna and it also got a battery upgrade on the GPS module. The LCD itself is monochrome and used with “reverse video” setting to minimize glare at night and better visibility in full sunlight.

For now, the whole thing is manual, but the creator is thinking about automated use through both acoustic and gas sensors. When a fart is released, a simple press on the star key will log the coordinates, speed, and heading after which a simple survey is displayed on the screen. From that menu, it’s possible to describe the fart (Silent, Small, Like a Man) and what he was thinking about while farting (Boss, Job, Projects, Nothing).

The insides of the keypad are also quite simple. It is a DirtyPCB designed as a universal IoT platform and it can handle an ESP8266 ESP-01 or an ESP-07 on a breakout board. The microcontroller is a PIC18F25K22 running PicBASIC code. The whole thing is then powered by the car’s infotainment system USB port.

All the data collected is imported to an MS Access database for some computing and file generation. From that file, the information can be plotted onto Google Maps using GPS Visualiser.

As far as the initial testing goes, I won’t spoil the fun from reading Michel’s own data analysis and conclusion to the project:

OK, I think I’m in big trouble. First let’s look at some numbers. I do fart a lot in my car. At the time I’m writing this I own my car for 70 days and farted 219 times over a distance of 3067km.

That’s 1 fart every 14km, 3.13 farts a day! I do fart at an average speed of 39km/h and the maximum farting speed is 104km/h. That’s good for me because the speed limit here is 100km/h.

The problem is the heading: the average fart heading is 180.86 degrees. So in average I fart turning my back to the north pole: that could be the cause of polar ice caps melting faster. But worse than that: I fart turning my back to Santa Clauss… and I’m uploading those farts to the cloud… and he is flying in the sky on Christmas eve… I’m in big big big trouble!

OK given the “cloud” is a metaphor, so do Santa flying is a metaphor too. Do those metaphor cancel each other and then Santa is going to really get my farts in the face on Christmas eve? Internet please help me on this!