Introduction: The CANARY. Arduino Based NO2 Sensor and Mapper

This project was made by Davide Scola, Laura Newton and I, Siddharth D'Souza.

We undertook this topic as part of our module Applied Measuremental Control at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Science.

Being Environmentally conscious students, we wanted to measure and map the NO2 in the air around us. NO2 is a toxic gas emitted from vehicular exhaust.

The name CANARY comes from the bird that was used as a indicator of high carbon-monoxide levels in underground mines.

You can find more details about the different components and their working in our final presentation.

Take the CANARY with you!

We are happy to share all the files we used and created. Feel free to adapt and tweak them.

Feedback, comments and suggestions always welcome!

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Step 1: The Sensors and the Code

Things you will need:

  1. Seeeduino Stalker (V3 used for compatibility to micro SD Card)
  2. GPSBee
  3. UART SBee (to connect Stalker to computer)
  4. MiCS-2714 NO2 Sensor
  5. LED
  6. Resistors 132Ohm (2 264Ohm used in paralell) and 22kOhm

The Arduino code used can be downloaded.

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Step 2: The House for the CANARY

The house for the CANARY is based on a Stevenson's Screen. A standard box used to house weather measuring equipment. The basic idea was that there should be a natural air flow, while our devices are still protected from the natural elements.

We laser cut a box from 6mm MFD board. The sketch was made in Rhino and is available for download.

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Step 3: Viola! the CANARY Is Ready to Go Around Town

As you can see, our box fits perfectly on a cycle carrier and is light and easy to take around.

Step 4:

To create a heat-map, QGIS was used. Since the data coming from the GPS sensor was too long, a parser was created in Python to optimise the data.

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