Category: Awareness

Summary of the action:

The project is about building on your own (Do It Yourself) a device that can measure the rate of CO2 in the classrooms to raise awareness about ventilation. Ventilation is a recommendation made by the High Counsel of Public Health  given the fight against Covid. We cannot measure the viral load in a classroom, but the link between the rate of CO2 and the potential viral load.

The High Counsel of Public Health insists on the importance of opening the windows for a couple of minutes several times a day in order to increase the level of air renewal in the classrooms.

In several countries, recommendations suggest 15 to 20 minutes between two ventilations. 

The objectives: 

The continuous measure of CO2 concentration  thanks to the sensors allow us to determine the quality of the air renewal in an area as well as a classroom. The LED banner makes it possible to calculate the desirable periods of ventilation.

The rate of CO2 is expressed in ppm, with a near value of 413 ppm in ambient air. The first threshold at 1000 ppm corresponds to the threshold of recommended ventilation whereas the threshold at 1500 ppm is the emergency threshold. 

Details on the installation:

The construction of the device requires an Arduino UNO with a supply cable, a Shield Grove base, a CO2 MH-Z16 sensor, a band of 10 RGB leds, with their Grove connectors.

Useful advice:

You can print the case with a 3D print. 

The link to the folder below is an Open Source folder.

Join a folder: https://padlet.com/metgepp/api_berthelot_covidco2

Difficulty of the action from 1 (very difficult) to 5 (very easy): 2