We spend most of our time in closed environments such as our home and office. With the COVID-19 outbreak, it has been made clear how the treatment and the quality of the air are important to our lives, especially while indoors. That is why by using NASA and associated data we found the levels of gas in the air that make up good quality air and used that to create an air monitoring and also purifying station focused on the air quality in closed spaces.
We developed the project with the goal to make a product that would improve air quality indoors while preventing the spread of the COVID-19 and fitting it all into a compact and affordable form factor. We started by deciding that we would use seaweed to make a primary filtering and an electrostatic filter to make the secondary filtering. After that, we choose the Raspberry Pi Zero W to be our controller board and selected the necessary complementary hardware and the gas sensor to be the MQ-135.
To calibrate the sensors we studied NASA's archives to see the concentration of gases in the atmosphere and the concentration permitted in the ISS. We also had to study the datasheet of the sensor and of the raspberry pi to find a proper way for them to communicate.
For the online integration, we mostly went for the resources that were made available for the challenge, IoT Core, DynamoDB, Amazon Web Service, EC2. Researches were made to make sure our integration of the Raspberry Pi and our online system would work.
As for the filters themselves we based of existing studies on the matter and the ISS air purification system. After having our bases for the viability of the project we started thinking about the form factor and mechanics of it. We settled with a cylindrical reservoir where the seaweeds and water would be in and a micro air pump and fans to force the air into the device.
All the project was then documented and carefully reviewed to then make the thirty-second video and submission to the platform.
video: https://youtu.be/vbaiy0_8kfI
website: https://taurusox.us/