Team 06: AirQ

Inspiration

Nearly 50,000 people in the United States are hospitalized from carbon monoxide poisoning every year. Traditional air conditioning only processes recycled air rather than integrating new air into the system itself, so pollutants like dust particles and carcinogens that are often brought into the home are never pushed out.

What it does

AirQ is an air quality, temperature, and humidity-based smart window opener for homeowners. It effectively removes indoor air pollutants and mitigates the financial and health costs incurred by a traditional AC system by reducing AC runtime. The accessory connects to an app called myAirQ. In the app, users can input their desired temperature and humidity preferences while monitoring air quality. myAirQ streamlines incoming sensor data into user-friendly graphs that display temperature and humidity trends outside the user’s house overtime over the span of a week.

How we built it

We used Adafruit ESP32 Feather to connect the humidity and temperature, PM 2.5 dust, and VOC index sensors to our IoT platform on Microsoft Azure, which read and visualized the live sensor data. For the prototype, we built the window using SolidWorks and a laser cutter and used the linear actuator connected to the ESP32 to move the sliding pane back and forth.

Further development for AirQ

In addition to the main window opening accessory, we will develop a smart mirror, MirrorQ, to go along with it. MirrorQ ensures that those with auditory disabilities are able to enjoy fresh and clean air without worrying about harmful particles. More than 10 million people in the United States have auditory disabilities, so MirrorQ indicates the air quality inside the user’s home through color: varying shades of green, yellow, or red. It serves as an accessible substitute for traditional sound-based carbon monoxide alarms. Together with the automatic opening of the window, the system offers safety through an integrated visual and physical mechanism.