A group of final-year students from the Da Nang University of Technology has invented a mobile air quality monitoring system which allows concerned agencies and people to easily access information to control air pollution.

The 3-member strong group introducing their mobile air quality monitoring system at the national scientific research contest for students

The Da Nang student group brought home a second prize for their invention at a national scientific research contest for students jointly organised by the ministries of Science and Technology, and Education and Training last month in Thua Thien Hue Province.

The solar energy-run mobile system aims at monitoring and alert air pollution in industrial zones and urban areas.

The smart, compact, easy-to-transport system works as a machine that measures air quality, and issues alerts about air pollution.

It includes sensor modules, peripheral blocks, solar panels for charging batteries, main boards, and central processing unit.

Once the system is activated, STM chip, the microcontroller, will read sensor value to get indicators about the concentration of PM 2.5 and PM 10 dust, SO2, CO, and NO2 .

With the GPRS/GSM feature, the information that sensor modules record will be sent to a web server via real-time GPRS protocol.

The information will be displayed on a heat map with coloured lights, from green to red that symbolise low to high levels of air pollution.

If the air pollution is serious, the system will send an urgent alert to users through messages.

The system has many advantages. It is used to measure pollution on a large scale, while local people can easily find information from their smart devices at low costs.

In an effort to complete this prototype product, the team spent much time learning about Viet Nam’s air quality index (AQI), building the hardware structure of the whole system, developing software to operate the system, and opening a website to display the collected air quality data, hereby helping users find it most intuitive and easy to understand.

Each system costs about over 10 million for creation if the products are manufactured on a large scale, whilst similar products developed by foreign countries are quite expensive, at about 3,000 USD each.

Moreover, the system runs with solar energy, so it is energy saving and environmentally friendly.

In the coming time, the talented, strong-willed students will pursue the ambition of adding other applications in terms of flood warning or road congestion to this existing monitoring system.

The device was tested on the top of Danabus, the bus which runs on the Da Nang – Quang Nam Province’s Phu Da route. It can operate 24/7 and give indexes about air quality of the entire city.

Huynh Ngoc Thuong, one of the 3 inventors, said they plans to install this air quality monitoring system on the bus top because the bus goes to many places in the city. In fact, located on the top of the bus, the system can easily receive solar energy to operate.

One of the most difficult works was buying sensor devices from foreign countries. The high spending on sensors was beyond students’ financial capability.

Fortunately, the group was granted a scholarship worth 10 million VND from their university to make the purchase of the sensor devices.