getO2 - Space Apps Challenge

getO2| Purify the Air Supply

Purify the Air Supply

Has your time spent indoors increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies worldwide? Your challenge is to use the International Space Station (ISS) as inspiration and develop a system to monitor and/or purify indoor air. It is entirely up to you whether the system you design is able to be used on Earth (for example in homes, businesses, transportation, etc.) and/or in space.

Interactive air quality monitoring system „getO2“

Summary

Our project is interactive air quality monitoring system that is based on indoor sensor data and open weather data from NASA and local weather stations. It consists of modern looking portable box with sensors in it and app that provides guidelines and recommendations as well as indoor and outdoor air quality and pollution parameters in user friendly manner. As mentioned above system is interactive and can suggest you to buy an air cleaning plant, to turn on humidifier, close windows, etc.

How We Addressed This Challenge

During COVID-19 pandemic, many people spend a lot of time at their home. We used ISS environment monitoring systems as example, and we created new interactive system. This system monitors air quality at home, takes NASA open and local air quality monitoring station data, gives recommendations how to improve air conditions in home or when to spend/not spend time outdoors. 7 million people a year die prematurely from illness attributable to outdoors and indoors air pollution. Many people do not understand the components of air pollution and their effects on human health. Moreover, some do not know how to improve air quality in home. The data collected by the home sensor and the open NASA and local air quality monitoring station database would be processed, then program would make conclusions and would give recommendations.

How We Developed This Project

We had an amazing experience, as our team formed one day before hackathon. Moreover, it was the first hackathon for two of our team members. Speaking about challenges, it just happened… We started brainstorming, and 2 minutes into the discussions we chose ,,Purify the air supply” challenge. Three of us are engineers and one geologist, and we all are inspired by the ISS’s complexity and the team that works there, so we wanted to dive deeper into the systems of ISS and examine how air is filtered, purified and maintained to be healthy. Then we tried to implement that data to come up with idea, that would be suitable for use on earth. We used several NASA online data examination tools for checking up the air pollution and air quality monitoring, then our program system engineer started making app and system, one team member made 3D model with Fusion360 for 3D printing the prototype of final product. Then there were some soldering and programming with arduino to try air quality sensors, other two members were working on some other tasks with analyzing and collecting data and as well as making presentation almost from the start. Overall it was amazing experience for all of us, because when you are working with such data you feel like you are a part of that global community and a small part of NASA.