“ ARMOGAN ” The Mushroom-like Weather Station — See how it works and how we created it. -
Our team had delicately worked on this project for 1 year and 4 months by crafting and developing this new innovation, which we called “ARMOGAN”. Most people, who saw it during our roadshow, would call it directly by how it looks the “Weather-forecast Mushroom”, which is pretty catchy too.
Now is a good time to explain the background and concepts of how we came up with this innovation.
The origin of Baby Armogan Mushroom
Our innovation happened just because of a simple incident that our team faced. That day, we enjoyably worked in the office until late. I remembered it was 9 pm and we were getting hungry and tired. As soon as we were about to leave the room, we were surprised by the heavy rain and thunderstorm. There was a question among all of us, ‘why nobody knew that it is going to rain that night?’.
Curiosity leads to research
Whenever we are curious about something, what we always do is to research in depth. Firstly, we searched through the weather forecast’s websites for both in Thai and English to check the differences between them.
We discovered that there is, of course, information regarding the weather forecast but there is no alert indicator. Normally, we, Thai people, listen to the weather forecast on TV and check how much percentage the rain will be in the particular area (which is actually a very huge area). After researching, we discovered what the problems are and realized that it was about time to act and improve the current weather forecast to benefit to everyone such as farmers, urban people, and business.
When we decided to create this new invention, we named it ‘ARMOGAN’. However, many people said it was too difficult to call. Some called it ARMAGEDDON. Some called ARMOMO. The word ‘ARMOGAN’ is originally from the 19th century French naval slang for fine weather — in particular the perfect weather to start a journey. (ref.http://mentalfloss.com/article/65798/32-long-forgotten-weather-words)
What is ARMOGAN?
Basically, ARMOGAN is an invention which provides the system used for measuring the weather and environment holistically (which means it measures the surrounding weather as a whole) in order to understand the overall weather of one particular area such as around the office, university, or at home. When we collected all the data and studied how the weather evidently changes in one place, we will eventually be able to predict and forecast the overall weather more accurate than before. Moreover, we even thought about environment, public health, quality of life, and also the basic measurement of nature in order for us to resolve any agricultural difficulty. All of these are under the system of ARMOGAN.
The thinking process into ARMOGAN
After our initial discussion, we contacted the architecture team to discuss further regarding how to design the structure to be able to support the entire sensors as well as the factors relating to the weather information. Nevertheless, our team had asked the architect to design this weather station differently. We wanted nothing like the traditional squarish weather station that looks too scary and too scientific to children. We wanted something that the children will see and ask the parents or teachers what this mushroom is. By creating their curiosity, children will somehow learn from the adults about the weather. We did not only think of creating just an innovation, but we wanted to create innovation + society or a Social Innovation, which included Social Science as well.
The result was amazing. It was full of a combination between architecture, engineering, meteorology, and how to transfer the morality or experience from one to another.
Our architects created a bunch of innovative designs for our ‘Local Holistic Weather Station’, which we eventually called ARMOGAN.
The ideas were finalized into 3 structural designs;
1. The mangrove-like structure
2. The leaf-like structure
3. The mushroom-like structure
At last, our final vote went to ‘the mushroom-like structure’.
Biologically, mushroom, which is in the fungi kingdom, best represents the evolution between plants and animals. It symbolizes a cycle of life. Furthermore, fungus (mushroom) is sensitive to its surrounding and atmosphere, which primarily affects its growth. These funguses can expand their territory endlessly, which best fits our main purpose of creating ‘ARMOGAN’.
In the next chapter, we will talk about our journey to validate ARMOGAN or the Mushroom-like Weather Station with agriculturists.
Translated in English by Choltita Mukdahan
