Building an IAQ device with Meadow
02/17/2024
Indoor air quality (IAQ) is increasingly important for our health, productivity and well-being. The industrialized world suffers from air pollution, and buildings are no exceptions. A room's air might be filled with pollutants such as bacteria, carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.
Meadow is a microcontroller that can run C# code. It is designed by Wilderness Labs. Meadow can be attached to a Project Lab, which is a functional IoT prototyping platform. It has numerous sensors built-in, buttons, a screen and a wide variety of connectors.
One particular sensor on the Project Lab board is the BME688 manufactured by Bosch. This sensor is interesting as besides the regular temperature, pressure, humidity, it can measure gas resistance. It is a metal oxide-based sensor that can detect gases by adsorption on its sensitive layer. It also comes with a software library, which can distinguish the different gases using AI. It can detect Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Volatile Sulfur Compounds (VSCs), carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide.
The sensor also comes with an AI feature and a comprehensive SDK that enable developers to design and customize its behavior to their use-case. One such example I found online is the Cheese vs. Meat detector.