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In the Air Design Challenge
Blog In the Air Design Challenge - Pollen & Allergen Sensing – Post 1 (Pollen Sensor)
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  • Author Author: tomaja
  • Date Created: 3 Nov 2014 11:18 PM Date Created
  • Views 4112 views
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In the Air Design Challenge - Pollen & Allergen Sensing – Post 1 (Pollen Sensor)

tomaja
tomaja
3 Nov 2014

Previous posts:

In the Air Design Challenge - Pollen & Allergen Sensing

 

image

Figure 1. Bad guy (Ambrosia pollen grain)

 

As I’m still waiting for my challenge kit I’m using the time to consider pollen sensing since that might be the weakest point of my project.

 

Possibilities

At this moment I have two alternatives for pollen sensor: Homemade and commercial one.

Using commercial one would make my project much easier and the focus would be on making some nice apps for desktop and mobile but with homemade sensor most efforts would be on making the sensor do its thing...

 

1) Homemade pollen sensor

As my plan is to detect pollen, I did some research and discovered a paper on pollen sensing that proposes an idea which seems feasible (Shigeto Kawashima et al. - An algorithm and a device for counting airborne pollen automatically using laser optics).

This task would require very much hard work and could easily turn out to be a failure but I can still try. Some optics would be required - hopefully I will be able to obtain all the necessary parts to build the prototype.

image

Figure 2. Pollen sensor

 

Authors propose that red laser should be used but I think that maybe green or yellow laser would be more appropriate because pollen colour is usually the same (i.e. it reflects green or yellow). I bought the green (532nm) one locally to be used for this purpose.

In order to observe the photodiode sensor signals an oscilloscope is required so I decided to order one that fits in the budget (PicoScope 2204A). It arrived in just two days(!) and as I last used the oscilloscope ~15 years ago (at university) I spend some time testing it – It turned out it’s like riding a bike image

 

2) Commercial sensor

Now some bad news regarding the commercial pollen sensor… The one that I found (http://www.shinyei.co.jp/stc/optical/poln/main_poln_e.html) is not suitable for my location.

It only detects Japanese Cedar and Cypress but these pollen particles are bigger than those of Ragweed (which is the most common allergen in this part of Europe). This is not completely bad news as someone in Japan might find this project useful even with this sensor but for me that's probably not good enough.

Ragweed pollen presence in Europe:

image

Figure 3. Ragweed pollen presence in Europe (August 2014)

 

Conclusion

In short, I will most probably focus my work on homemade pollen detection. image

 

 

I will update as soon as my challenge kit arrives (at this moment it’s being held at the local customs)

Comments and suggestions are always welcome.

 

Dragan

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Top Comments

  • dougw
    dougw over 10 years ago +1
    Interesting project Dragan, Maybe it would be useful to investigate commercial sensors. I would be interested in knowing how well inexpensive airborne particle sensors can detect ragweed pollen, if this…
  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 10 years ago in reply to dougw +1
    Nice links Douglas. Presumably you would filter in order to capture what you want, but it might be hard targeting specific types of pollen. It would certainly be an interesting exercise to filter out just…
  • fvan
    fvan over 10 years ago in reply to dougw +1
    I purchased a pair of those SHARP sensors for my application last week. Will post my findings as soon as I get to experiment with them.
  • michaelwylie
    michaelwylie over 10 years ago in reply to tomaja

    You are correct. You could use them for the luminescence part though.

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  • tomaja
    tomaja over 10 years ago

    Well I already ordered a pair of these glasses, so I will give it a shot image

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  • tomaja
    tomaja over 10 years ago in reply to michaelwylie

    Yes, I already did that and edited my previous comment.

    They don't provide the curve but give the frequency range from 190nm to 540nm. Unfortunately, these would filter out the green colour too, not just the blue image

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  • michaelwylie
    michaelwylie over 10 years ago in reply to tomaja

    You'd need to know what the filter curve for the glasses look like, but it's a really good/inexpensive idea.

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  • tomaja
    tomaja over 10 years ago in reply to DAB

    Thanks, DAB!

    I will try the simpler PD way for this. (I never used an imaging sensor, I'm not sure how easy is that for me - I'm not a pro)

     

    Dragan

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