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The arduino component of the project
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The software (Website) component of the project
Inspiration
Approximately 3 million miles of pipelines transport roughly 27.6 trillion (with a “t”) cubic feet of natural gas1 all across the United States. The U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Environment America Research & Policy Center and Frontier Group released a report which detailed no decrease in leaks of hazardous gas pipelines. According to the report over 2,600 hazardous gas pipeline leaks in the United States caused more than $4 billion in damages and emergency services, killed 122 people, and released 26.6 billion cubic feet of fuel as methane or carbon dioxide2
What it does
We aimed to produce a portable, wireless device that would measure the presence of hazardous gases, especially hydrocarbons transported by pipelines across the United States. We also created a website to track and visualize the measurements.
How we built it
We used an arduino nano and used MQ-2, MQ-6, MQ-7, MQ-135 to detect analog voltage values of particular gases. The arduino uses port COM3 and serialport library in node.js to transmit live values to the website which then updates graphs and bar charts.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge that we faced in the process of building our project was ensuring that the data is appropriately transferred from the sensors to a form that can be displayed on a website. We also experimented with adding wireless data transmission capabilities. However, as the data transmission was far too unreliable we ended up scrapping it for the current iteration. Another challenge that we faced early on was the manual tuning of sensitivity of the sensors. As we did not have the capabilities to accurately measure ppm and calibrate sensors we ended up using relative values to indicate danger levels.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We successfully made an air quality detector and sent the data across to a website in real time with minimal latency. The Arduino uno and grove sensors were used to output signals that would be read by the website and compiled into a line graph and bar graph. We added a login page that is able to authenticate users.
What we learned
We learned how to form a connection between arduino and websites using Node.js and also learned how gas sensors use analog values to report data in real time.
What's next for Aero Check
According to the team’s goal of creating an accurate, precise, and comprehensive gas monitor that can be remotely used over a large area, we wish to add numerous sensors that would be sensitive only to one specific gas.
We also hope to accurately calibrate sensors to provide data in ppm and use it to output a comprehensive Air Quality Index. However, the required equipment is highly specialized and expensive.
We would also like to add long term radio/satellite communication capabilities to ensure that the product could be deployed in a commercial setting.
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