Today it Snowed
Today it snowed, yesterday it did not.
Yesterday on my pre-dawn walk.the shimobashira and frozen earth glimmered under torch light. Somewhat reminiscent of a star field, stars blinking in and out of existence.
As I walked, the earth made a distinctive kari-kari crunching sound under foot as the earth ejected by frozen surface water collapsed.
Today it snowed.
Snow collapsing under foot makes a very different sound:
As I walked, I wondered what a machine learning model might make of all this information. Integrating the surface reflection, audible frequency differences, the amount of light diffused in the air by moisture. I guessed such a model could probably provide a pretty good estimate of the current temperature maybe down to a few degrees.
Or you could just use a f**king temperature sensor. Here’s one from a recent teardown:
I’ve not dug deep enough to figure out exactly what temperature sensor this is, but it’s clearly a silicon device. TI have thermal diode based sensors with an accuracy down to 0.05 C and this was in a system where they’re looking for solid temperature stability so this could make sense.
Of course there are many other temperature sensors available. RTD sensors are also pretty common in much of the scientific equipment I pull apart. And thermocouples have been around for hundreds of years.
Temperature sensors can work over a ranges of hundreds of degrees, in some providing temperature estimates likely near the thermal limits, costing almost nothing.
So, in this case a better sensor is clearly a more effective option than machine learning. Of course, nobody would use AI for measuring atmospheric temperature. But in my other work machine learning algorithms are starting to get integrated into sensing platforms. This is likely not always a great idea, and in some cases can mask the need to just get a better sensor.
It will be interesting to see how far machine learning gets integrated into our sensing platforms. Clearly phone manufacturers (if you look closely there are clear artifacts in the image above) have decided that the trade off is worth it. But in other cases, I think it’s less clear…
Anyway, today it snowed. So perhaps winter is coming after all.