Team Group 510: Gonzalo Rosales, Tatiana Carbajal, Martin Avila

Published April 24, 2017 © GPL3+

Vibrations VS C02

Made by Group 510 (Gonzalo Rosales, Tatiana Carbajal and Martin Avila)

IntermediateFull instructions provided6 hours720

Things used in this project

Hardware components

DHT22 Temperature Sensor

Particle Photon

SparkFun Solder-able Breadboard - Mini

Jumper wires (generic)

RGB Diffused Common Cathode

Andium MQ135

Resistor 10k ohm

Resistor 330 ohm

SparkFun Piezo Element

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Soldering iron (generic)

Laser cutter (generic)

Story

As part of the Lane of Things project, we were interested in creating a node that would be able to collect the varying levels of vibration, C02, temperature and humidity in a classroom.

What did we study and why?

We wanted to study if there is a relationship between the amount of movement caused by people in a room and the air quality of the room. We thought this was an interesting question because we have noticed that places with lots of movement, for example a gym, will have more people breathing and causing dust to move around the place. Adding the sweat released by people exercising may also have an affect on the overall air quality. The truth is that we had no idea to know if these would have an affect on the air quality of a place, which is why it was worth investigating.

Deciding where to deploy

What better place to deploy our node than the dance room! We were guaranteed to have periods of movement during dance classes and periods of rest where no class was active. This made it perfect for our group since this would allow us to compare the different vibration levels caused throughout the day and if they correlated at all to air quality.

Below are pictures of the locations in the dance room where we considered deploying. Things that we considered were proximity to an outlet for power, how easy it would be to collect vibrations, and safety from people stepping on the node.

1 / 4 • Another picture of dance room first floor.

Prototyping the Sensors

Fritzing diagram of wiring (in attachments)

Follow our fritzing diagram to wire your sensors on your breadboard. Make sure you make a particle.io account to be able to write and upload code to the photon. Code can be found in the "attachments" section. Make sure to double check the pins you have assigned your sensors, they may be different from ours so edit the code as you see fit. We used a google sheet to collect our data, but feel free to use anything else that works for you.

1 / 3 • DHT wired woo!

Enclosure Design and Construction

We began by measuring the size of each one of the components of our node. For this, we measured our prototype to approximate the dimensions we will need to to house all of the sensors in the enclosure.

1 / 3 • Sketch of enclosure with dimensions and sensor placements

Since none of us had prior experience using illustrator and laser cutters, we designed our enclosure the easy way, with makercase.com . All you have to do is input the length, width, and height, plus, you can even engrave onto your enclosure. We decided to engrave our names and our group #, feel free to be creative about yours.

Our enclosure design on case maker!

We used T-slot for connecting our enclosure since the screws would make it very easy to disassemble if needed. If you are more experienced feel free to use other methods and other materials. We used wood because it is cheap and we didn't need anything special.

1 / 3 • Look at it go!

Putting it all together

After the enclosure and breadboard prototype are finished and work properly, feel free to start soldering your photon and sensors onto the pcb.

For our enclosure, we decided to make 3 holes on top to leave room for the sensors to be outside of the enclosure. If you will be following a similar design, make sure to leave enough wire for the sensors to reach the openings.

The led you see will light up green if air quality is fine and red if it isn't. Here are pictures of our final node.

1 / 2 • Testing before final deployment

Deployment

For deployment, we chose to deploy in the second floor of the dance floor. The vibrations of people dancing could still be felt up there and it was out of people's way so there was no risk of it being stepped on by a dancer. Plus, it was close to a power outlet.

1 / 3

Data

Overall data is listed below

Challenges and Conclusion

While writing the code, everything was working except for the vibration sensor. It simply kept outputting the number 12 onto our Google Sheet. We each looked at the code and were unable to see any errors. Fortunately, when we spoke with a teacher, they were able to point out that we were printing the wrong variable to the Google Sheet. This was a lesson learned for all of us. Small mistakes can make the biggest problems when working too quickly. Take your time and triple check everything, and then check once more.

Thanks,

Group 510

Schematics

Code

Code

/ This #include statement was automatically added by the Particle IDE.


#include <MQ135.h>
#include <Adafruit_DHT.h>

#define DHTPIN 3    // the DHT pin
#define DHTTYPE DHT22		// DHT 22 (AM2302)
#define MQ135PIN A0  //the CO2 Sensor pin

MQ135 MQ135(MQ135PIN);

DHT dht(DHTPIN, DHTTYPE);

int vibe =  A2;


double hum = 0;
double temp = 0;
double ppm = 0;
 
int redPin = D1;
int greenPin = D2;
int bluePin = D0;
double sensorRead = 0;



void setup() {
    Serial.begin(9600);
    pinMode(vibe, INPUT) ;
    pinMode(DHTPIN, INPUT);
    Particle.variable("hum", hum);
    Particle.variable("temp", temp);
    Particle.variable("ppm", ppm);
    Particle.variable("sensorRead", sensorRead);
    pinMode(redPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(greenPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(bluePin, OUTPUT);  
}

void setColor(int red, int green, int blue)
{
  analogWrite(redPin, red);
  analogWrite(greenPin, green);
  analogWrite(bluePin, blue);  
}

void loop() {
    sensorRead = analogRead(vibe);
    
    temp = dht.getTempFarenheit();
    hum = dht.getHumidity();

    ppm = MQ135.getCorrectedPPM(temp, hum);
    
    if(ppm < 300){
        setColor(0, 255, 0);
    }else if (ppm < 500){
        setColor(0, 0, 255);
    }else{
        setColor(255, 0, 0);
    }
    
    Serial.println("temp: ");
    Serial.println(temp);
    Serial.println("hum: ");
    Serial.println(hum);
    Serial.println("ppm: ");
    Serial.println(ppm);
    Serial.println("sensorRead: ");
    Serial.println(sensorRead);
    delay(1000);
    
}

Vibrations VS C02

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Custom parts and enclosures

Case Maker file

Schematics

Schematic

Fritzing File

Code

Code

Credits

Gonzalo Rosales

Tatiana Carbajal

Martin Avila

Comments

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Vibrations VS C02

Vibrations VS C02

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Hand tools and fabrication machines

Story

Custom parts and enclosures

Case Maker file

Schematics

Schematic

Fritzing File

Code

Code

Credits

Gonzalo Rosales

Tatiana Carbajal

Martin Avila

Comments

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