Development of classroom microclimate monitoring system

Abstract

Microclimate in classrooms can affect students' productivity. Since nowadays students and existing specialists of various fields, including engineering, most of the day spend indoors, it is important to ensure quality environment that would increase their productivity. It is important to pay attention to room microclimate factors that include temperature, air humidity and quality. Microclimate requirements are also regulated in the country legislation and organizations have to follow certain requirements. Therefore, it is important to perform detailed monitoring of microclimate. As technologies evolve there are various sensors offered in market that perceive certain microclimate parameters. These parameters inadequacy to recommended indicators can cause all kinds of health and work quality affecting problems as headaches, sleepiness, tiredness that results with lower concentration powers. In this research technological solutions for microclimate monitoring were introduced as a system prototype that measures microclimate parameters in classrooms. The monitoring system is based on the Arduino platform with sensors for measuring air temperature, humidity and carbon dioxide level. Additionally, a desktop application was developed to represent data remotely and receive warnings about microclimate indicator deviation from the recommended values. The developed system is used to monitor microclimate in the computer room at the Faculty of Information Technologies, Latvia University of Agriculture. During the research it was concluded that in non-ventilated room the CO2 level was always above the recommended value (1000 ppm) about 1500 ppm, temperature was slightly over the maximum recommended value (25 °C) but relative humidity was slightly over the minimum recommended value (30 %). The developed prototype can be scalable and adjusted for application in multiple buildings and organizations.