I said the same below but it applies here too: Google already drives around a fleet of vehicles to collect this data. Wouldn't it be better for them to give all that money to the postal service to subsidize mail delivery while also getting cars off the road?
And I'm talking about truly hyperlocal data. When I load up Weather Underground or Purple Air, there are a bunch of sensors near me, but the closest is one mile away. I know the route of my postal carrier. He starts his day less than one mile and stays within one mile of my house his entire day. I'd love to have daily temp and air pollution readings from sensors that are near my house all day.
There aren't that many cars that it would get off the road and it's not on mission and outside the realm of their expertise, so no, it's not a good way for them to make money which they shouldn't be doing anyways.
This weather data wouldn't be as useful as you think it would be. You'd be getting data only taken once per day more or less at the same time. You're much better using the airstrip a mile away that has a sensor that takes readings every 10 minutes or whatever.
There are 190,000 mail trucks delivering mail every day. I’ll bet NOAA would find 190,000 mobile sensors collecting data eight hours a day, most within a very small radius, quite a compelling dataset. There aren’t that many airstrips. Not even close.
And who cares if it’s not on mission? We can change the mission.
That's a fair point, NOAA might have a use for it, I don't know.
However, selling data to Google still seems like a bad idea. Things that are off mission and the point is to make money are just a distraction with no good purpose that's going to make the post office be greedy instead of just focusing on delivering the mail.
I could maybe agree that there was some value in having a public set of streetview like images (which is the more likely thing they'd do, not sell it to Google or whomever which would just be terrible), but it also seems deeply creepy. Then again, Google is already doing it so I suppose there's an argument that at least this way it's public domain.
Why don't you buy a personal weather station and connect it to wu? This seems more sustainable than lugging around that equipment on a truck, which increases the fuel cost. Plus, what are the chances of having a USPS vehicle within a mile of you at any given time? It's 6am on a Sunday and I want to know the weather.
And I'm talking about truly hyperlocal data. When I load up Weather Underground or Purple Air, there are a bunch of sensors near me, but the closest is one mile away. I know the route of my postal carrier. He starts his day less than one mile and stays within one mile of my house his entire day. I'd love to have daily temp and air pollution readings from sensors that are near my house all day.