Smart Classroom Environment Management system

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela

Creating a safe, positive classroom environment is key to effective teaching and learning.

Problem Tobe Solved -

• Most schools worldwide have basic natural ventilation systems; typically, inadequate for meeting the needs of pupils.
• Exposure to various air pollutants in school buildings risks severe damage to pupils health.
• Pupils tend to feel comfortable in indoor climates that are cooler than environments where adults feel thermally neutral.

• Studies show that reduced classroom air quality will cause a reduction in cognitive performance of pupils.
• In some universities/Schools there are crowded classrooms and lecture Halls with no proper ventilation and thermal profile management systems

Several research studies have ranked indoor pollution among the top environmental risks to public health in recent years. Good indoor air quality is an essential component of a healthy indoor environment and significantly affects human health and well-being. Poor air quality in such environments may cause respiratory disease for millions of pupils around the globe and, in the current pandemic-dominated era, require ever more urgent actions to tackle the burden of its impacts.

The poor indoor quality in such environments could result from poor management, operation, maintenance, and cleaning. Pupils are a different segment of the population from adults in many ways, and they are more exposed to the poor indoor environment: They breathe in more air per unit weight and are more sensitive to heat/cold and moisture. Thus, their vulnerability is higher than adults, and poor conditions may affect proper development.

If classes are conducted inside a confined space and is difficult to attend a lecture if the environment is too hot or too cold. To achieve effective learning, the right physical environment inside the classroom should be maintained. Also, a healthy learning environment can reduce the absence rate, improves test scores, and enhances pupil/teacher learning/teaching productivity.

What I'm going to build to solve this problem -

I want to develop a system which will be placed in classroom. It will collect data of different environmental parameters like, temperature, Humidity, Atmospheric Pressure, Air Quality, Illuminance, Ultraviolet and Noise level. Then System will use that data to keep classroom environment Healthy and pleasant. Means, the system will automatize the Thermal profile management and ventilation system. Also there will be display/notification facility to give the feedback to teachers and students. I'll also add IoT based/remote monitoring facility in this proposed system. Hence, teachers and authorities can monitor classroom environment from anywhere in the School/College Campus.

So in order to achieve above tasks, we need to build hardware which have following facilities -

1. Good quality Environment sensors - Temperature and Humidity, Atmospheric Pressure, Air Quality, Illuminance, Ultraviolet etc.

2. Controller (MCU Board) with capabilities like -

• Sufficient Digital and Analog I/O ports/Pins to connect the multiple sensors
• Wireless Connectivity Feature - It should be Wi-Fi enabled. with which System can connect to the Internet and subsequently to any IoT cloud.

3. Facility to connect Actuators like - Fan, AC, Cooler, Exhaust fans, Light bulbs

All above required features are comes with or included in Hackster & DFRobot EEDU Environmental Sensor Kit. Which was one of the recommended hardware for this contest.

Thank you#Hackster and #DFRobot!!!

Thank you very much @Hackster@DFRobot and other Contest Organizers and Supporters for organizing such amazing contest, "Smart Campus 2023" and sponsoring and supporting my Idea with "Hackster & DFRobot EEDU Environmental Sensor Kit"

Hackster & DFRobot EEDU Environmental Sensor Kit

• Hackster and DFRobot collaborated to design this kit. This well-designed kit can be a good tool for observing and measuring environmental conditions.
• This environmental sensing kit can almost meet all kinds of your needs when you're going to monitor the environment.
• It comes with a waterproof soil moisture sensor, an environmental sensor, and an SGP40 air quality sensor for measuring various environmental data. Also, it provides a FireBeetle 2 ESP32-E controller, the corresponding IO shield, a relay module and an I2C hub for the purpose of helping build your projects. Meanwhile, two LED buttons are included in the package.

We'll definitely try to utilize each and every component in this kit in our project.

System Architecture -

Project assembly will be simple as it will consist of three main component types - Sensors (Input devices), MCU board(Controller) and Output/control devices, Relays, Display, actuators etc. Lets see all in detail

Sensors - In this project we will use following sensors

1. Fermion: Multifunctional Environmental Sensor - This multifunctional environmental sensor comprises SHTC3 temperature & humidity sensor, BMP280 atmospheric pressure sensor, VEML7700 light sensor, and LTR390 ultraviolet sensor into one and offers 5 kinds of environmental parameters.

2. Gravity: SGP40 Air Quality Sensor - The SGP40 Air Quality sensor adopts the new SGP40 digital VOC sensor chip launched by the well-known Sensirion. Based on the Sensirion’s CMOSens® technology, the SGP40 offers a complete sensor system on a single chip, a temperature-controlled micro-hotplate and a humidity-compensated indoor air quality signal.

In combination with Sensirion’s powerful VOC algorithm, the sensor signal can be directly used to evaluate indoor air quality. It features low power(2.6mA), fast response(2s) and small body. The data from the sensor can be directly used to evaluate air quality without calibration.

The sensor provides the change of air quality trend, and the algorithm will continuously adjust the baseline of typical air according to historical data. The longer the sensor is used, the better the sensitivity and accuracy of trend and change.

3. Dust Sensor- DSM501A - This Dust Sensor gives a good indication of the air quality in an environment by measuring the dust concentration. The Particulate Matter level (PM level) in the air is measured by counting the Low Pulse Occupancy time (LPO time) in a given time unit. LPO time is proportional to PM concentration. This sensor can provide reliable data for air purifier systems; it is responsive to PM of diameter 1μm.

The dust sensor module DSM501A is low cost, compact size for a particle density sensor.it is used to quantitative particle (> 1 micron) measurement with the principle of particle counter, can sense the tobacco smoke and pollen, house dust This sensor is consist of light emitting diode lamp, detector, signal amplifier circuit and heater, it can be used in applications such as the air cleaner or air purifier, users can used this sensor easily with sensor PWM output.

4. Sound Sensor Sensor (Microphone) - To detect noise level in classroom we will use basic sound sensor module which comes with mic. The microphone sound sensor, as the name says, detects sound. It gives a measurement of how loud a sound is.

Display - Nextion Display

Nextion is a Human Machine Interface HMI solution combining an onboard processor and memory touch display with Nextion Editor software for HMI GUI project development.

Using the Nextion Editor software, you can quickly develop the HMI GUI by drag-and-drop components (graphics, text, button, slider, etc.) and ASCII text-based instructions for coding how components interact on the display side.

Nextion HMI display connects to peripheral MCU via TTL Serial (5V, TX, RX, GND) to provide event notifications that peripheral MCU can act on, the peripheral MCU can easily update progress, and status back to Nextion display utilizing simple ASCII text-based instructions.

I'll be using Nextion BASIC NX4832T035-3.5″ HMI TFT LCD Touch Display Module.

It will look like following after designed with "Classroom Monitoring Parameters". Please note that I'm not using any touch feature of this display. I used it for bigger screen.

MCU Board - FireBeetle 2 ESP32-E IoT Microcontroller Board

FireBeetle 2 ESP32-E, specially designed for IoT, is an ESP-WROOM-32E-based main controller board with dual-core chips. It supports WiFi and Bluetooth dual-mode communication, and features small size, ultra-low power consumption, on-board charging circuit and easy-to-use interface, which can be conveniently used for smart home IoT, industrial IOT applications, wearable devices and so on.

Above image shows ESP32-E IoT Microcontroller and Gravity: IO Shield, Specially designed for FireBeetle 2 series, this Gravity IO expansion shield offers various ports including digital, analog, I2C, UART, SPI, etc. Also, it comes with power input socket for connecting external power supply as well as EN pin for cutting off the power supply to main-board.

Software -

To make comfortable indoor/classroom climates we need to set certain predefined standards for different Environmental parameters. These standards should be well researched considering factors like historical weather data of that area and all demographical, physical and real-time conditions taken into account. As these standards may unique or different to each school /college /Institute/ University, as per their rules, government regulations. For this project we will take/assume general experimental values(Only for demo purpose).

To maintaining certain environmental condition we have to take specific control measures. For Example - An important consideration in the design of classrooms is the provision of good thermal conditions. So, we need to turn on coolers/AC if temperature rises certain level, or turn on Heater if temperature is very low. Likewise as shown in above (ref image - VOC Index and Air Quality Trend). If the VOC index greater than 300 ventilation should be applied. For that we can start exhaust fans. etc. Therefore flowchart for design of software for this project will be generally as follows,

Once collected all the parameters and data for classroom Environment. Then using ESP32's WiFi feature, we will connect to WiFi router and subsequently to the internet, and Hence we can send all that data to any IoT cloud service. So, I've used Arduino IoT cloud service. Which is online platform that makes it easy for you to create, deploy and monitor IoT projects. You can know more about Arduino Cloud and its features and Getting Started documentation on following links.

https://docs.arduino.cc/arduino-cloud/

https://docs.arduino.cc/arduino-cloud/getting-started/iot-cloud-getting-started

I've created thing and following dashboard to monitor view all the parameters of Classroom at one space.

When project becomes live, dashboard values will get updated as following

Future

Currently the design of project is tested on breadboard. It is still in development phase. I'm planning to make proper PCB and 3D printed enclosure, so it will work stand alone.

Designing robust and efficient power supply is also one of the future expansion task. Currently I've used Power bank to power the ESP32 system and Nextion display. Relay board and Nextion display is powered(Externally) through Power bank instead of ESP32. All other sensor module powered through ESP32 power output. Due to deadline of contest submission I'm submitting whatever I've done still date, but this project work is still in development.

Suggestions about Project design, Circuits, code modifications, Optimization, Errors/Bugs findings and queries are most welcomed.

Credits

Thank you Hackster, DFRobot, Arduino and all other Contest Supporters, peoples, websites and entities who helped me (directly/indirectly) in this project.