Meet Boomer! We love taking Boomer on a daily walk through his favorite park in East Sacramento, California. Since many of us started working from home in a hybrid environment, we've started taking him for walks during lunchtime or in the early evenings.

During the summer of 2022, Northern California experienced some record-high temperatures. As a result, we often wondered if the sidewalk was cool enough for Boomer to walk on. The team purchased some surface temperature sensors and was surprised to see that the sidewalk and pavement surfaces could reach more than 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

As you can imagine, this was an eye-opening moment for us, and we asked if we could do more to help. Although Sacramento had a cooler summer in 2023, there were still days that we would have liked to be able to check to see if the sidewalk was safe for Boomer's paws.

Hence, Project Walkable was started. This project aims to develop a system that can accurately measure the temperature of sidewalks and pavements in real-time. The data collected from this system will be shared with other dog owners in the near future so that they can make informed decisions about when and where to walk their dogs.

We are excited to build and share the data with other dog owners so that they can also benefit from this information. By working together, we can help to ensure that all dogs have a safe and enjoyable place to walk.