ChimneyGuard

Inspiration - It's very important for us because EVERY four days ONE Estonian family suffers from chimney fire because the chimney wasn't cleaned on time.

What it does - is a sensor that measures the dangerous flemmable soot in the chimneys by giving a timely warning before the critical limit is exceeded. It works with sound waves and when the chimney is dirty it mutes the sound. It our first idea and solution but there can be some other ways how to make it work even better.

How I built it - We figured out that we can measure the soot with sound waves. So, we used Arduino, built the sound amplifier and this takes the data like once a month and if the situation in the chimney is more critical it going to measure more often.

Challenges I ran into - In the chimneys are very unfavorable environment, like very high temperature, different soots etc. So, it's hard to work out the solutsion which works with all different types of chimneys. It's our biggest challenge.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of - We won two prices last week at Estonian Tehnohack and also we got our first test prototype.

What I learned - It's very important to ask help if needed and also ask others opinion. Testing different solutions helps to figure out the best solution.

What's next for ChimneyGuard - Testing, testing, testing, testing!!!