DIY Raspberry Pi Air Quality Monitor: Helping Leonidas Breathe Better

The Project

Our project is a DIY indoor air quality monitoring station. Using a Raspberry Pi and the Fermion ENS160 sensor, we built a device that measures volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and CO2 levels in real-time. We programmed the system in Python and conducted a 4-month experiment to see how common household items affect the air we breathe. The inspiration for this project was very personal. Leonidas has allergic asthma, and we wanted to find out if there are "invisible" triggers inside our own home that make his breathing more difficult. We wanted to use technology to create a healthier environment for him. The most challenging part was the hardware assembly and the calibration. We had to solder the pin headers to the sensor ourselves to connect it to the Raspberry Pi, which required a lot of precision. Additionally, analyzing the data over 4 months was a big task—we had to correlate spikes in pollution (reaching over 1200 ppb) with specific activities like using perfumes, cleaning products, or even the dryer. Our experiment revealed that perfumes and cleaning products are the biggest indoor pollutants, causing VOC levels to skyrocket above 1200 ppb. However, we also found a simple solution: opening the windows for ventilation almost immediately zeroed out the pollution levels. This project proved that data can help us make better decisions for our health.

View this project on YouTube