Mobile air quality measurement platform

Introduction

Me and 3 other people came together to build a real-life usable device. We decided to build a platform for measuring air quality around Kaunas city. I was responsible for programming the ESP board and the server.

This project served as my team’s entry for Technorama 2024. You can find it here.

Functionality

The basis of the project was the Sensirion SPS30 air particulate matter sensor, and it evolved from there.

1. The Sensirion SPS30 sensor was the starting point.
2. We used an ESP8266 microcontroller to collect signals from it.
3. A basic external NMEA GPS sensor to also store location data. The idea was to place the whole device on top of a trolleybus and gradually measure the air quality of the whole city as it drives around.
4. The device was powered from a big cheap lead acid battery.
5. A metal frame was built to house everything safely and securely.
6. To charge the battery, a solar panel was attached to the frame.
7. I programmed the ESP to periodically send air quality and GPS data to a server using its inbuilt WiFi module.
8. I used my home server as the receiving point and built an API for uploading air quality data and a webpage for displaying the stored data.
9. The BME280 humidity sensor was added to also measure temperature, humidity (and pressure) of the inside of the device’s container for diagnostic purposes.

Result

We named the project Clair - which stands for clean air. The cover page of this page is the final web UI of Clair - with date, time picker and colored map view included. In the introduction section you can see the actual frame used on a bus and a nicer mockup of what it could like if properly implemented below.