Blog One – In the Air Tonight Project Start
Hey, Christophe here. Let me introduce you to my project entry for Summer of Sensors - In the Air Tonight challenge design competition sponsored by E14 and Renesas (thank you for picking my entry!)
It seems today that everyone has a small IOT air quality doodah of some sort which will tell you the air is green, the air is amber or even red (Daily Air Quality Index DAQI). You can spent $10’s to $100’s+ on some sort of monitor for your home, your workplace, or even for use, for example in roadside emissions monitoring. They are everywhere, and just as wide as the range available, is the quality of what you are buying.
Does your AQ sensor give you an absolute measurement or is it a bit more qualitative, with a relative measurement? What does that even more, what do you do with that information? Why are you talking about all this stuff? Explain yourself.
Use case:
We live on the edge of a medium sized urban area, the kind of place where the houses start to space out, it’s a bit more open, greener, more trees, compared to the higher density of the sub and core urban areas. The road past the house is well trafficked which turns into heavily trafficked where there has been an incident or closure on the motorway and traffic is being diverted.
I am fortunate enough to have a separate working space from the house, my office which is on the end of the garage. Since covid, I have worked from home and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. In addition to being my day job workspace, I have a small home lab cabinet, a couple of 3D printers (filament and resin), gas heater, fridge, robotics / electronics work bench, artwork bench and all the books which don’t fit in the house. There is a growing collection of chemicals and stuff which live in a small chemical cabinet at present.
When you spend the summer with the door open the amount of dust which is carried in is quite noticeable. During the late autumn and winter, the office door is closed, dehumidifier is on, eventually the gas heater comes on (propane). The only sensing in here now is for fire and for carbon monoxide. If I am doing something chemistry, I will tend to do this in the garage or outside, so I have a well-ventilated area or wear a suitable respirator, this is less practical in the colder / wetter months.
If I am doing a top up on resin, usually that will involve the door open, a fan on and some PPE as it is quite strong-smelling stuff. Likewise, when using the 3D filament printer, depending on the material being used, some can have quite a smell to it. The chemical data sheets on this are a little ambiguous as to what is the volatile smells, so … what can I measure?
Given the relative proximity to the road, the amount of dust carried in and then a range of chemicals in use I would like to know how much:
- Temp, Humidity, all going to have an impact on air quality
- NOx – Nitrogen Oxide
- O3 – Ozone
- PM – 2.5, 5, 10 – Particulate Matter
- More?
And if I know what these are, what do I do with that information?
Well should my:
- carbon monoxide alarm ever go off, I will be exiting my office promptly and opening windows.
- smoke alarm ever go off, I will be finding out what is smoking and or on fire and then making it safe.
So its reasonable to think that if I am 3D printing and:
- VOCs measure as increasing (bad for you) or
- I’ve split something without knowing (Iso propyl alcohol -IPA, or air brush thinners)
- Or there is a massive change in anything I measure
I would like to know. I would like to know as if I know, I can do something about it.
So we have monitor – measure – do something about it.
The do something about it might be I actually make up a filtered extraction for I don’t know, lets say solder fumes, or to hook up to my 3d printer cabinet, or to actually air hood when using the resin printer. If I know, I can do something about it.
Concept sketch:
