Final Project Documentation
1. Project Idea, Research and Time Management
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "The Wisdom of the Sands"
On this page, I would like to show some sketches in order to explain my motivation for this final project. Furter on I would like to show what do to solve the problem and also some first visualizations of this idea.
My idea was to build an assistant device to measure the indoor air quality. To navigate people to an efficient heating and ventilating behaviour and at the same time to clean indoor air. This leads to the name of the device "naviGAirE" which means "navigation to good air (quality) and efficiency".
It was important for me to make th einformation easy readable throught coloured lights and changing shapes of the device.
Market Research
I did some some market research to find out which similar products are available.There are many products available for measuring of indoor air quality: Netatmo, Foobot, Awair, .... None of them combine the indoor air quality with the topic of energy efficiency. Onother important point of my final procect is not considered by other products which is usability for elderly and disabled person. I would like to design a product which would signalize on many different ways if the air quality changes.
Netatmo
Netatmo weatherstation needs 5 minutes to show the measured value which is very long time concerning heat energy losses. My idea was to build up a bluetooth communication which is independant from internet connection or server communication and which is much faster.
Foobot
Awair
In difference to the mentioned products I did not want to use CO2 sensor because the price for this sensor is to high and this mesaurements data does not give us informations about other important pollutants. In addition I decided to use the VOC (volatile organic compounds) sensor which can give the information about the concentration of Formaldehyde, Benzene,Toluene,Alcohol in the air.
Project Plan and Time Management
At the beginning of the design process of naviGAirE I had to develop a plan of the electronic architecture including the sensors, actors I wanted to use, motor driver, main MCU and conection device. I planed to test each sensor and to proof the reaction time of the sensor and to calibrate them. I also wanted to program the sensors one by one.At the same time I changed the design Idea of the casing from the sun shape over air foil to the final shape of surf board.
Afterwards I wanted to start to develop the 3D design and mechanichs of naviGAirE. Then I wanted to programm the whole network and graphical user interface with data logging charts.
Interims Outcomes
1. Interims outcome
When the sensors and electronics architecture are working then I am ready to develop the casing.
2. Interims outcome
When the assembling of elctronics and mechanic components is working then I am ready for programming the interaction of the whole system. If not either I have to change the electronics architecure or to change the design.
Thanks to Aleksandra, Christoph, Lena, Lana and Jonas for their helping tips using 3D printer and milling machine and also for tips about the documentation.