CO2 and PM2.5 Distributed IOT Sensor

Background

Pollution and CO2 levels are growing across the world, and have a huge impact on health outcomes for disadvantaged communities. In addition, Climate Change is increasing the prevalence of wildfires and the high degrees of particulate matter they produce.Outdoor activity and exercise must be curtailed if particulate levels get high. Finally, Indoor CO2 levels can dramatically impact mental performance.

Features

• Monitor levels of CO2, PM2.5, Temperature, and Humidity

• Connected to the cloud via LORA, 4G, Thread, BLE, or WIFI. Publicly accessible data could allow identification and monitoring of pollution hotspots

• Connect to Air Conditioners/Air Purifiers. That might allow schools, businesses, or individuals to monitor pollution levels and run air conditioners more intelligently.

• Business sales could bankroll deployment of sensors to diverse communities

• Can be programmed in Embedded Rust

Challenges

• Requires capital to build prototypes and startup money to produce at scale

• Current chip storage may limited ability to mass produce sensors

• CO2 and Particulate sensors are fairly expensive at around 40 dollars each

Prior Art/Competitors

• CO2 and PM2.5 Sensors exist as discrete units. https://www.amazon.com/CO2Meter-AZ-0004-Temperature-Relative-Humidity/dp/B001PDGFR8 https://www.amazon.com/Airmon-Palm-PM2-5-Quality-monitor/dp/B00SY34B64/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=pm2.5+sensor&qid=1619813969&s=home-garden&sr=1-3

Conclusion

I think there's a viable market for an all in one air quality sensor, that can be configured to share data and trigger devices/users to perform corrective actions.I feel like it would not be too expensive to develop a few test units, build a backend, and then launch an IndieGogo or CrowdSupply to do a small manufacturing run. Building and programming the hardware, and the web backend, should provide an interesting challenge. There are also opportunities in mechanical design and marketing, to make it approachable and elegant.