Polytechnic students develop hand-held environmental monitoring instruments

Harmful gases such as formaldehyde and carbon monoxide threaten people's health. The instruments for monitoring them are owned by the environmental monitoring department. Can you design an environmental monitoring instrument that is portable and suitable for ordinary people? At the second Shanghai University Student Innovation Forum held recently, the “Handheld Environmental Monitoring Instrument” developed by 5 undergraduates of East China University of Science and Technology was awarded the title of “My Favorite Project” and is applying for a patent. He hopes to push it in the future. market.

According to Xiang Sitong, an East China Institute of Technology Engineer, he and his classmates were aware of the importance of environmental monitoring in the study of environmental pollution and initiated the idea of ​​designing a home air quality monitor. Under the guidance of a teacher, they used a smartphone platform to develop a handheld terminal that can collect, display, and wirelessly transmit carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde gas.

The reporter saw that the device is almost the same size as a smart phone and has a fully touchable electronic screen that can be opened and operated as easily as a touchscreen phone. Just press the three buttons labeled “Formaldehyde”, “Carbon Monoxide” and “Carbon Dioxide” on the interface. Click once to display the concentration of the gas in the current environment. If the carbon monoxide concentration shows "10PPM", it means that the carbon monoxide content in the air is 10 parts per million.

Xiang Sitong said that they set "prewarning values" for each type of gas. As long as the specific concentration is exceeded, they will promptly remind the user. This portable device allows people to understand the air quality in their homes, offices and places.

According to reports, to develop this small instrument, it is necessary to master scientific and technological knowledge in various fields such as single-chip microcomputers, embedded systems, and GPRS modules. Xiang Sitong said that they encountered problems in the research and development process, such as not knowing the choice of sensors and errors in the process of compiling the program. However, they consulted the books, consulted the instructors, and digested the relevant knowledge and skills one by one, and finally harvested the results. . This hand-held environmental monitoring instrument combined with people's daily use of mobile GPRS capabilities, so that the instrument can be the same as mobile Internet access, wireless transmission of the collected data to a remote base station, further analysis of the data, reflecting the characteristics of smart devices wireless connection .

Nowadays, they are applying for a patent and they hope to bring it to market in the future. This will provide a more convenient, easy, and reliable method for environmental monitoring so that residents can monitor whether there is harmful gas in their homes. It can be used to monitor the air quality of the office. The small items indicate that in addition to monitoring environmental gases, this handheld environmental monitoring instrument can also realize monitoring of soil, water quality, industrial pollution sources, road traffic noise, and other environmental quality, if the program is simply modified. Based on this, an automatic detection and transmission function is developed to enable unattended monitoring.