There was a tough road to get the 3x Portable Environmental Monitor beta prototypes to the Hackaday Headquarters in time, but the effort was worth it! With today’s official announcement, the project has advanced to Finalist in the Best Product competition, and to Semifinalist in the Hackaday Prize 2015 competition. Last year it was a thrill as well, with the uRADMonitor-A advancing to Semifinals. With this previous project spread all…
For the Portable Environmental Monitor beta release, both the project summary and the system design document presented some of the things to improve next. The first PCB was fine, but there was a linear regulator wasting power, that had to be replaced. Also, new ideas needed more hardware changes. Here is another hardware iteration to implement all that. The new changes include: – power efficient Lithium battery voltage converter, using…
The portable environmental monitor addresses pollution, the kind that we are unable to see but directly affects our health and causes life threatening diseases. Airborne toxic chemicals, radioactive dust and radioactive radon are correlated with cases of pulmonary cancer. Since our biological senses can do little to warn us of such possible dangers, the plan was to design the Portable environmental monitor as a first line detection and warning system….
It’s been a crazy run, trying to make this happen. After less then one month I now have the first functional hardware iteration or the first prototype. The Portable Environmental Monitor has been brought to life! All that’s left is finalising the enclosure (it will be a nice rugged aluminium enclosure, small enough to fit the palm of the hand, despite the many sensors packed inside) and the software (both…