Living at home with my parents during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was one thing that started annoying me after a while.
I’d be sitting in my room happily, then my mum comes in, and the first thing she says is “the air in here is awful, open the window”. But… the air feels fine to me, it’s nice and warm, and it’s cold outside… but there’s no point in arguing, I have no way to prove that.
After a while, that annoyance turned into a project idea: What if I build a device to objectively measure the air quality in my room? That way, I would always know when I really need to open a window, and at the same time, have a convincing argument against any potential nagging. 😉
Of course, as with any project, I wanted to get more out of it than just the finished item – I wanted to learn lots of new things while building it.
After some research into existing solutions, I came up with the following project goals:
- Use an actual CO2 sensor (no “CO2-equivalent” estimations)
- Measure temperature too, optionally humidity
- Display the measurement values in a clear and visually pleasing way
- Powered by a small rechargeable battery
- Maximise battery runtime between charges
- Compact form factor
The next step was, of course, choosing components and designing a fitting solution.
Check out the full story, starting here.
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