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Blog RoadTest - Amphenol Air Quality Kit - Quick First Impressions
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  • Author Author: vannystick
  • Date Created: 19 Jul 2017 9:55 PM Date Created
  • Views 1612 views
  • Likes 7 likes
  • Comments 10 comments
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Recommended
  • air quality
  • amphenol
  • dust sensor
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  • arduino
  • co2 sensor

RoadTest - Amphenol Air Quality Kit - Quick First Impressions

vannystick
vannystick
19 Jul 2017

The kit has arrived!

image

As I have just unboxed the dev kit, I wanted to scratch down my initial thoughts.

 

I had expected something of a retail box with glamorous pictures of the future emblazoned on the outer and on reflection I have no idea why. This is a dev kit and aimed at industrial development. In my work I've ordered a lot of industry specific kit over the years and it has always been plain boxed.

I even prefer a simple plain box that is suitably engineered to protect the contents.

 

I'll save the full break down of the box and contents for a later post, but I am surprised at the manner of packaging inside the box. There is some damage to one of the pin sets, and getting the arduino/shield/screen assembly out of the bag was quite a fiddle!

image

 

Inside the box, the components are as expected. Following assembly of the sensors onto the shield, I can see a couple of potential issues.

The connector for the humidity probe can be readily inserted the wrong way around as can the CO2 sensor. For the CO2 sensor there is a silk screen on the shield identifying the pin outs but nothing on the daughter board.

 

Am I being too picky?

 

imageimageimage

 

Possibly the best thing about the board is that it was pre programmed with the evaluation board software. Plugging the USB into the computer and it sprung straight to life. I should note that the display is far better quality than these pictures suggest. It is displaying values that I would expect and I gather from initial reading of the technical data that some time may be required for self calibration.

 

image

 

 

So whats next?

I didn't expect to get into this road test and so I'd already started something similar, shown above. I currently have a basic dust sensor and humidity/temp sensor hooked into an arduino and logging to an SD card. The project will be to monitor cabin air quality in my car, I have a good long commute in some slow traffic.

 

After setting a baseline, I'll look to making some changes in the cabin air filtration (pollen rather than dust filter) and see if improvements are realised. I'm also aware of the impacts of CO2 on concentration and irritability while driving so it will be interesting to see day to day changes.

Ultimately this will feed into the work my company does in automotive research and I suspect some of the learning can be directly applied.

 

 

PS

I'm really struggling to get decent pictures. I'm using a Lumix GF3 and most of my troubles seem to step from non natural light. I'd love any pointers!

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Top Comments

  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 8 years ago in reply to ninjatrent +5
    Actually even better than that is laminate some A4 sheets of paper. They bend and have great reflection. You are correct about using sunlight, but you need to be very careful about the shadows. I'm fortunate…
  • dougw
    dougw over 8 years ago +4
    When shooting light emitting displays you need to put a lot of light on the subject so the rest of it is not too dim compared to the display, having lots of white reflective surfaces around helps minimize…
  • ninjatrent
    ninjatrent over 8 years ago +4
    OLED displays can be tricky to photograph. As dougw has mentioned, if you don't have enough light, the display will look fuzzy. With direct illumination, the clarity of the OLED display can be captured…
  • kas.lewis
    kas.lewis over 7 years ago in reply to mcb1

    Sounds like a good idea, maybe someone can look into starting such a group and when we come across questions and solutions such as these we can add them, I think this would go  long way to helping others as well as increase the quality of the content on the site.

     

    Kas

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  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 8 years ago in reply to Workshopshed

    I wonder if a HDR setting would work for bright displays

    My understanding of HDR is that the camera will process the raw sensor data in two or more ways to improve the contrast, and therefore expand the Dynamic Range.

     

    HDR is available on some cameras (not on my Nikon D3100 or D3200, but is on my sons D5100).

    If you take two images with different settings, there are software options to join the two into a better image.

    I've had to do this with a normal backlight LCD.

     

    So yes without trying it, HDR might work.

    I tend to shoot in RAW (the camera records the sensor data and doesn't process it), so HDR is not available under those situations.

     

     

    Many of the HDR images I see are more 'sureal' and don;t look natural.

    Obviously we don't want that in these images.

     

     

    I've been giving Kas's comment some thought and it could involve a few posts to cover most of the bases.

     

    Mark

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  • Workshopshed
    Workshopshed over 8 years ago in reply to mcb1

    I wonder if a HDR setting would work for bright displays

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  • mcb1
    mcb1 over 8 years ago in reply to kas.lewis

    I wonder if we shouldn't start something under here.

    image

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  • kas.lewis
    kas.lewis over 8 years ago in reply to mcb1

    Someone should start a group "Picture Perfect and Video Voodoo" that collects all these types of tips from around the site to help others like myself get better pictures and videos for our posts.

     

    Kas

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