Young technovators invent device to measure air quality anywhere

Ignited minds

While 12-year-olds in Bengaluru spend their free time playing games and catching up on the latest movies, a group of four young innovators has invented a portable device that can measure the air quality of a place with the click of a button.

AirEye is an air quality monitoring device that measures the quality of air through the sensors attached to it. It displays the pollutants in the air on a small LCD screen attached to it. The screen changes colour based on the intensity of the pollutants present in the air and rates them as good or bad.

For example, the screen turns light green if the air quality is good and turns deep red if the quality is very bad. It also stores this information in the form of a text file for future reference.

Amulya Doss, Amisha Pai, Arnav Mayur and Sreysht Prakash from the National Academy For Learning (NAFL) came up with the idea as they wanted to make a positive change by providing solutions to pressing issues.

“We wanted to do our bit for the environment. There are a lot of issues in the world such as poverty, climate change and depleting water resources. Water can be saved by conserving, but how do you save air that your breathe. Hence, we worked towards creating a device that can measure air quality that will help us reduce our pollution imprint,” Amisha said.

Arnav said: “All of us like programming. We wanted to come together and put our programming skills to conserve the environment and that is how AirEye was born. We learnt to create and assemble the device by ourselves. We have learnt Python which is a programming language and we went deeper into the subject to create this device.”

The young technovators visited the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board’s (KSPCB) office and found that it was using massive and bulky machines with filters, each costing lakhs of rupees, to measure air pollution levels in different parts of the city.

This gave the children the idea to invent a small portable device that can be carried anywhere and could accurately measure the air quality.

“The cost of making this device was around Rs 3,000. We will instal these devices across the city and connect them with GPS. We will also develop an app that will be connected to the device whereby the user can just log in to the app and know the air quality of a particular place at that point in time,” Sreysht said.

Future plans
Amulya said: “We want to set up a company in the future and create more such products that will help society. We are in talks with startup founders to help us. We are also pushing our idea to Intel and other companies, and plan to acquire a patent for the device.”