Low-cost Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Platform for Healthier Classrooms in New Zealand: Engineering Issues

Providing a good quality classroom environment where children can breathe in fresh air is important. However, investigating the Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) in large numbers of classrooms is often too costly because currently available commercial brands are too expensive for the majority of schools. We have been developing a low-cost Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) platform called SKOMOBO which can monitor important IAQ parameters such as classroom temperature, relative humidly, particular matter and carbon dioxide level. Because our platform is designed in-house and utilizes low-cost sensors, there is a significant cost reduction and is affordable. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of SKOMOBO with the focus in several hardware and software engineering issues to explore the right set of strategies for developing a practical system. Through extensive experiments and evaluation, we have determined the various characteristic and issues associated with developing a low-cost sensor platform and their practical implications and mitigations.