Product

What does your proposed solution monitor?

How does it relate to our competition themes?

How will the data collected assist in understanding energy and/or resource flows and their consequences (key urban flows themes)?

According to the UK Environment Act 1995, there is a statutory duty in the UK to monitor and tackle air pollution. In 2008, the UK set the climate change act setting air pollution targets with countries across the world doing similar things.

The Keywish gas sensor will facilitate monitoring of chemicals in the air and assist implementation of Sheffield's air pollution strategies. It can also be used to detect gas leaks from mains gas pipeline distribution centres. This device will measure:

Q-2 = LPG, i-butane, propane, methane ,alcohol, hydrogen and smoke MQ-3 = Ethanol MQ-4 = Methane MQ-5 = H2, LPG, CH4, CO, Alcohol. MQ-6 = LPG, iso-butane, propane, LNG, avoid the noise of alcohol and cooking fumes and cigarette smoke MQ-7 = CO (Carbon Monoxide) MQ-8 = H2 MQ-9 = LPG, CO, CH4 MQ135 = NH3, NOx, alcohol, benzene, smoke and CO2.

Being able to remotely detect the humidity and air pressure variation of the urban environment as it changes throughout the season will help not only predict pollutant transportation but also on rainfall. Coupled with knowledge of the local waterways, this could provide advanced warning for flash floods. A rain sensor and rain gauge will confirm such predictions and allow improvements to the computational model at the Urban Flows Observatory.

Wind vector information is supplied with an anemometer and wind vane. Wind affects the free surface flows of open channel flows and an understanding of the wind intensity and direction will help other remote sensors (such as the Microsoft Kinect) which utilise free surface patterns to understand water flows. An ambient light sensor will also detect sunrise and sunset which could be used to change power modes in the event that the device was to be powered by a solar panel-battery setup, such as those used in satellites or the Mars Weather Station!

This can be later rolled out across the UK and overseas in developing economies such as China (where air pollution is being tackled).

How does your prototype work/capture data?

Figure one (above): the overall system architecture. The device's data capture can be split into several subsystems (green).

  • Air quality (chemical detector)

  • Air properties (humidity and pressure)

  • Wind vector (direction and intensity)

  • Light sensor (UV and optical)

  • Temperature

Figure two: wiring diagram of the electronics.

These sensors are plugged into the Arduino microcontroller (blue) which receives the data and writes it into a combined data file. An onboard real time clock module (purple) attaches a time stamp to the data collected before transmission. The microcontroller also has a local SD card for data storage in the event of a signal loss. This can be used to store up to 10 hours of data depending on the size of the SD card used. Before transmission, CRC checksum is implemented to verify data integrity and identify bitflips.

3D printing is utilized in this device to manufacture the custom enclosure and the wind vector system (wind vane and anemometer).