Engineering Laboratory IAQ Monitoring: A Real-Time Solution using Raspberry PI and Grafana Dashboard

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that people who spent approximately 80 % - 90 % of their time being indoors daily, resulted in over 3 million premature deaths each year due to a disease caused by indoor air pollution. High concentration of indoor air pollutant such as particulate matter, carbon dioxide and imbalances between temperature and relative humidity have the potential to create unpleasant odour and dusty air, resulting in an incommodious environment and respiratory issues. The purpose of this project was to investigate the air quality at two engineering laboratories in a higher learning institution. A survey revealed that 41 % of students reported a bad odour in the workshop laboratory, while 38 % experienced the same issue in the Material & Automation Laboratory of the particular institution. Therefore, an IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) alert system was developed. The system consisted of sensors that measured the air quality, whereby data were continuously read and fed into a Raspberry PI controller by using a wireless communication device namely ESP-32. The controller has a smart card memory for logging purposes. The data were continuously read by a computer dashboard by using Grafana software. A beacon light was integrated with the controller to provide an alert indicator. Parameters measured were Particulate matter concentration, Carbon Dioxide level, Temperature and Humidity level. Measurement was done for three days while students were undergoing their activities in both laboratories. Data was benchmark with IAQ DOSH (Department of Safety & Health) and WHO (World Health Organisation). It was found that Particulate Matter in both laboratory and Workshop exceeded the IAQ limits, while the Carbon Dioxide reading was a concern. Temperature and Humidity were at acceptable levels but required constant monitoring.