Project Development

This blog is a bit more special as it shows what my group has created using our skills (you may read up more in the other pages) learned in CPDD. 

Project Development Entry:

1. Our Chemical Device

WE chose to make a Carbon Monoxide (CO) Gas Sensor.
There is an alarm that sounds when the level of CO is too high in the surrounding air. This can be placed in the kitchen or even during campfires where incomplete combustion may occur, thus producing carbon monoxide.

Why?
Carbon monoxide is a gas that is odourless and invisible, we cannot detect the amount of CO gas by ourselves. CO is also harmful when in high quantity/ concentration, as it would hinder oxygen transported in your body. This is known as carbon monoxide poisoning! Nonetheless, it is always better to err on the safe side of caution and prevention is better than cure, hence we decided that having an alarm system to alert people of the high levels of CO would be a good safety measure. It would also activate the fan to ventilate the surrounding air so as to reduce the CO present. 

2. Team Planning, Allocation & Execution

Team Members: Haziq (Hawkeye), Derrick (Spiderman), Dorson (Me as Iron Man)

Finalised Bill of Materials(BOM)





Finalised Gantt Chart



2 bars are shown for each activity, namely: planned for execution and actual time for execution.


3. Design and Build Process

Part 1. Design and Build of Casing and Lid (done by Hawkeye). 


Part 2. Programming of CO Gas Sensor and LCD (done by , Spiderman).

Part 3 Integration of All Parts and Electronics (done by Iron Man, Me)

What parts do we require?

Main Components:
- LCD with l2C microcontroller
- MQ2 gas sensor
- Maker UNO Arduino
- Breadboard

Sub parts:
- Wires (male to male)
- Wires (female to female)

While having a lid that sits flush with the box was a good idea, having a small, barely noticeable gap will help us to open and close the box

This gave us easier access to the parts in the box and was overall a good design choice to make :)



How do we connect them?
The components are not only connected to each other (interfacing) but also interconnected, meaning, they rely on each other to meet the functionality of the product.

Meaning, if you remove 1 component from this image, the whole products functionality diminishes.

For example, without the sensor, the Arduino board does not receive any input. Thus, the Arduino cannot tell the LCD to display the CO concentration. Thus, the LCD also becomes useless.

How did I manage to fit all of it inside?
Initially, we had a purple box that was bigger, but we decided to create a smaller box so it will be less bulky and takes up a smaller a space. Hence, everything had to be squeezed in. We were given a black wire with circular insulator which is rather stiff and could not fit into the box. I switched to a white flat cable so that it could fit better.

The buzzer was fit at the bottom of the container and everything was rather fixed since it was quite squeezy... 


Click on the link to watch how it works!


4. The Problems and Solution

There were 2 problems that we encountered:

The Parts 

The Program


The Part:

1. Missed out on a driver motor for the ventilation fan.
2. The MQ2 gas sensor and the LCD were not able to fit into their respective slots.

Solution: 

1. We improvised by using an alarm system instead of a ventilation fan to warn users of high CO levels which can be equally effective.
2. We printed many cases to fit the different aspect. Finally we printed the one in blue with bigger slots to fit the components.

The Program:

The LCD was displaying fluctuating values of CO concentration even though CO was not introduced. There was possibly some error in the downloaded library.

Solution:

Used a totally new program that had a slight difference in the codes of the MQ2 library

5. Downloadable Links




Here's how the Case looks like:

    

Thank you for the fruitful semester Dr Noel!!

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