Breathe Deeply

What's the Breathe Deeply?

I would like to suggest a device based on the latest studies and knowledge about how air quality can affect our well – being. We spend much more time indoor nowadays in comparison to either our parents or grandparents due to civilization improvements (we can do the work from home, we drive to work by car, we can watch a movie without moving outside the house etc.). In some cases, it could even reach the extremes like in this COVID-19 pandemic time. But we also know that because of this we can be exposed to a chemical pollution which exists in indoor environment and could easily affecting our way how do we feel.

Secondly, a lot of studies show that maintaining the optimum balance of humidity and temperature also significantly could improve our well-being.

Lastly if you deal with Yoga or at least read some information on how to reduce the stress, you most probably notice that deep and slow breathing is one of the simplest and most effective ways to reach mental and stress level under control.

I would like to propose following idea: we can equip women, who deals with this difficult and stressful time – menopause, with an affordable gadget allowing to understand that environment around is safe and clean. Thanks to that it will help keeping the mood as well as the sleeping habits simply better. I consider it also from a Yoga practitioner perspective. I know that breathing a clean and not polluted air makes me feel good and I am sure that my body receives what I exactly need.

Topic related to Air Quality became a very important problem and nowadays because more studies shows that bad quality of the breathing air have great effect on mood, concentration, effectiveness, which is directly is connected to effectiveness of the employee.

OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) in 2012 define that for the 8h workday the maximum exposure to the CO2 is 5000 ppm for the indoor activity. But if you compare it with the typical CO2 concentration outdoor which is around 380ppm / 500 ppm we can realized how big this difference is. Study which I included shows that contraction of the CO2 have an impact of a lot of mental behavior [1].

Since the technology progressing rapidly we can keep up with the transferring the latest science knowledge into our lifes and simply improve it.

We also very well know nowadays that temperature and humidity levels are also critical to what we are calling "comfort zone" [2].

How does it work?

The design could be very simple and affordable electronic gadget build around SCD30 sensor module from Sensirion.

This component contains all necessary sensing elements which are needed to perform air quality check mentioned earlier. We can supply it from any USB port using any smartphone charger or PC USB port. This make device ready to operate monetarily, and by driving specific LED allow us right away understand what air condition is around us. We can get details using smartphone connecting via BLE to device and get more information like:

• Statistics
• Exact numbers of ppm of CO2, current temperature , current humidity
• Time exposure
• Life update of the conditions
• Suggestion what to do , like in. take a walk, open window etc.
• Best practices

Hardware

The design is simple since we would like to keep the cost of the overall design as low as possible in order to create a solution to be affordable to purchase by larger group of clients. Sensors module from Sensirion SCD30 allow to simply design and move to application quick. I have decided to use them since they are very reliable component + they support a development by providing a lot of useful software libraries allowing you to rapidly see the progress of you work.

See the details:

https://www.sensirion.com/en/download-center/humidity-sensors/digital-humidity-sensors-for-various-applications/

https://www.sensirion.com/en/download-center/carbon-dioxide-sensors-co2/co2-sensor/

All the data could be accessible via BLE connection between sensors and a smartphone. RSL10 SiP BLE could work as bridge between between sensor and outside world.

Summary

I think that this proposal could help customer to feel more comfortable and safer which is important if you deal with stress and uncertainty. This will also help to improve the sleeping problems as well as feeling of tiredness and lack of energy.

From the other hand you can also monitor condition in work environment which also crucial to keep you away from the unhealthy conditions ( i.e long meetings in badly ventilated rooms etc.. )

Potential improvements / next steps ...

• Get multipoint sensing capability in order to cover more places at home/office
• Drive some specific items at home to keep the condition automated (for example: turn on the HVAC system or open the window to ventilate house interior)
• Provide an information based on the collected statistic when is the best time to practice Yoga
• Education about what could be the sources of the air pollution during day by day home/office activities.
• Use Zigbee or Thread protocol to be a part of the smart home IoT node.
• Design nice and sleek housing in the form of key chain or pen-drive look , or maybe even combine pen-drive with the sensing possibility.

References

[1]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231176310_Is_CO2_an_Indoor_Pollutant_Direct_Effects_of_Low-to-Moderate_CO2_Concentrations_on_Human_Decision-Making_Performance

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_comfort

[3] https://hackingmenopause.com