The application of an air pollution measuring system built for home living

Abstract

Air pollution in recent years has become alarmingly a part of our everyday life. One out of nine deaths worldwide are caused by this type of pollution. The first step towards solving this problem, is being able to measure the air particles in the air we breathe and not only outdoors, but indoors as well. Having in mind the uprising of Internet of Things (IoT) and voice interaction with devices, this paper presents a future-proof solution to this problem. It consists of a cheap and compact outdoor station and an indoor station with an ability to be connected with an Alexa enabled device and accessed using voice. These stations were made using a Raspberry Pi 3, a Wi-Fi - enabled micro controller and three different types of sensors, which can also measure the smallest standardized air pollutants - PM1, particles with less than 1µm in size. This creates an opportunity for a detailed analysis of the available data from the indoor and the cheap outdoor air pollution measuring system spread across a city.