Cloud-Based IoT Air Quality Monitoring System

Poor airflow in buildings can cause deterioration in the health of the occupants. The health concerns may be minor occurrences such as irritation of the eyes, nose and skin, headaches and fatigue to long term effects that include respiratory disease and heart inflammation. Indoor air quality monitoring system has been touted as one of the potential applications for the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper described the design and development of an IoT-based remote monitoring device and testbed that measures indoor air quality (IAQ), specifically eCO(2) level, Total Volatile Organic Compound (TVOC), temperature and humidity. Air quality sensors (BME680 and CCS811), were used with an ESP32 microcontroller, which acts as the brain and sends data to the InfluxDB cloud database. The data from the IoT device are visualized and monitored through the Freeboard.io dashboard hosted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) server. A testbed was developed at Planet IoT, The Energy Sphere, UNITEN for IAQ monitoring. A performance study was conducted to test the functionalities of the IoT devices, communications, database effectiveness, and energy requirements in terms of battery life. An insight of the IAQ in the building was obtained with the IoT device able to function both in detecting harmful gases (eCO(2) and TVOC), temperature and humidity level condition 24x7 with 76 hours of battery life for a 10 min reading interval or 273 hours of battery life for a 1-hour reading interval.