Overcoming Winter Challenges with an Air Quality Monitor Using the Arduino® Portenta C33 and Nicla Sense Env Boards.
Introduction
Poor air quality can lead to health problems, including respiratory infections, reduced lung function, asthma, and cardiac problems. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), air pollution is a major environmental health risk that claims more than 8.1 million lives every year. To address these problems, this article will discuss some consequences of the winter season and how to counter them using solutions from Arduino®. It also discusses a simple, outdoor air quality monitoring solution based on the Arduino® Portenta and Nicla Sense Env boards.
Challenges Encountered During Winters
Winter weather brings unique challenges to human existence. The most common challenges faced during winter include:
- Poor air quality: According to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) research, winter is the most polluted season of the year. The underlying reason behind this is the low ambient temperature. We burn fossil fuels to heat our buildings and use personal transportation more frequently. The use of private transportation triggers spikes in common air pollutants, such as particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and ammonia. These air pollutants significantly impact our health in various ways. Short-term exposure can lead to breathing difficulties, coughing, wheezing, eye irritation, and allergies. Long-term exposure increases the risk of chronic illnesses such as pneumonia, bronchial asthma, influenza, swine flu (H1N1), lung cancer, and cardiovascular disease. The situation is even worse for indoor air quality, which is often five times more polluted than outdoor air. Polluted indoor air quality affects your health, productivity, and comfort. During winter, we seal our homes to conserve heat. We also use indoor heaters, trapping pollutants such as mould, dust, particulate matter, and volatile organic compounds. Poor ventilation, high temperatures, and humidity can further increase pollutant concentrations. These indoor pollutants can irritate the eyes, cause headaches, dizziness, and fatigue and, in severe cases, lead to asphyxiation.
- Rooftop Snow and Ice Accumulation: Extreme winter conditions also affect the safety and integrity of buildings due to excess accumulation of snow on roofs and window ledges. In addition to structural damage and associated repair costs, severe injury to the occupants is also possible. The excess weight of the accumulated ice on the roof places significant stress on buildings, potentially leading to damage or collapse. Excess snow can block the proper ventilation of the attic space. As a result, high moisture may form, affecting the shingles, roof deck, and insulation. The freeze-thaw cycle (FTC) during winter can affect the integrity of roofing materials. As water penetrates small cracks and freezes, it expands, causing the cracks to widen.
Join the forum discussion or comment below
Smart Environmental Monitoring with the Arduino Portenta
The Arduino® Portenta family are high-performance, industry-rated boards featuring a versatile microcontroller board designed for advanced industrial applications. The dual-core architecture of these boards (e.g., Arm Cortex-M7 and Cortex-M4 in the Portenta H7) helps in the simultaneous handling of high-performance tasks and real-time operations. Arduino® Portenta board supports diverse connectivity options, including WiFi, Bluetooth, LTE-M, and NB-IoT (Portenta X8). Their versatile operating system support allows programming in Python, JavaScript, and C/C++ or running Linux-based systems with Docker compatibility. Its powerful edge computing capabilities help professionals and enterprises deploy AI and ML applications like predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, and environmental monitoring. Also, the Portenta Vision Shield add-on board, with computer vision capabilities and additional connectivity, allows professionals and enterprises to meet the requirements of industrial automation.
Air Quality Monitoring with the Arduino® Portenta C33 and Nicla Sense Env Boards
Arduino's open-source platform helps developers deploy innovative solutions for air quality, water pollution monitoring, and other environmental challenges. The following is an example of a basic outdoor air quality monitor using the Arduino® Portenta C33 and the Nicla Sense Env board. This application provides real-time data on temperature, humidity concentrations of NO₂ and O₃, and outdoor AQI. It is suitable for deployment in urban areas, industrial zones, and environmental research.
Figure 1: The hardware setup for outdoor air quality monitor (Source: Arduino®)
Figure 1 depicts the hardware setup for an outdoor air quality monitor. It consists of the Portenta C33 as the primary controller and the Nicla Sense Env board for collecting temperature, humidity, and outdoor air quality data. The Nicla Sense Env board is not intended as a standalone device but as a shield of another Portenta, MKR, or Nano family board. This board connects to the Portenta C33 board using the ESLOV interface. This setup uses NO₂ and O₃ sensors to obtain accurate, real-time measurements of various pollutants. Data is captured every 10 seconds and sent to the Arduino® IDE Serial Monitor for immediate analysis. Using the RGB LED on the Nicla Sense Env board, the outdoor AQI levels are indicated using different colors: green for good, yellow for moderate, and red for unhealthy. For real-time remote data monitoring, the collected data can be sent to platforms like Arduino® Cloud. A web-based dashboard or mobile app can be used for further long-term trend analysis.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed winter challenges related to poor air quality and rooftop ice accumulation. Using Arduino®-based modules such as the Portenta and Nicla Sense Env, hardware expansion boards such as the Portenta Vision Shield, and AI tools/models, poor AQI and rooftop ice accumulation can be monitored precisely and in real-time. This approach also helps decision-makers to respond to environmental changes in a timely manner and contributes to improving living conditions and sustainability efforts.
Featured Product
 |
Arduino ABX00074 Kit Contents: Portenta C33 Module R7FA6M5BH2CBG, WiFi W.FL Antenna |
Related Products
Portenta H7 |
Portenta Vision Shield Ethernet |
Arduino MKR WiFi 1010
|
For more development and prototyping kits from Arduino Shop Now
About the sponsor
Arduino designs, manufactures, and supports electronic devices and software, allowing people around the world to easily access advanced technologies that interact with the physical world. Our products are straightforward, simple, and powerful, ready to satisfy users’ needs from students to makers and all the way to professional developers.
