OSAMD workshops in autumn 2022: Air quality monitoring stations for school classes in the Heidelberg city area
Thanks to project funding from the City of Heidelberg, I am pleased to announce that in autumn 2022 I will be able to hold workshops with students from grade 8 onward on building air quality monitoring stations themselves.
Shortly after the City of Heidelberg opened up the opportunity to offer projects by young people for young people in the field of climate protection, I applied for this project funding with my OSAMD project as air quality monitoring stations for indoor spaces.
Now that the project has been approved, and with it certain that the workshops for school classes can take place in autumn this year, interested schools can now get in touch about the workshops - all further details are in this post.
The idea
The idea behind the now funded project is to determine indoor air quality in a simple way and without high material costs, so that ventilation recommendations can be made without the need to use expensive CO2 sensors that are complex in their technical design. This is made possible through the relationship with the ammonia concentration in the air, which increases as air quality worsens. In doing so, I was able to derive a given causality between CO2 concentration and ammonia concentration, so ventilation recommendations can also be made purely by measuring the ammonia concentration. I implemented this technology in a 3D-printed housing in such a way that the air quality can be read easily and even audiovisual alarms can be triggered when the air quality becomes too poor.
I have made further information on the technical design and all resources for building your own publicly available on GitHub.
The project received an award in the field of mechatronics in the "HAW Super Scientist" competition, achieved a main prize at the BundesUmweltWettbewerb 2021, as well as funding from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and from the VDE - Verband der Elektrotechnik Elektronik Informationstechnik e.V.. In addition, I was nominated with the project for the German Engagement Award 2022 and featured as part of the program "Einfach Genial" on Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR).
About the workshops
The workshops are to be held this autumn - a morning will be needed for this, and we are flexible regarding the location; we have all the necessary equipment available, and if needed we can also provide the rooms.
The workshops will be led primarily by me, Paul Goldschmidt - I volunteer to take care of the coordination and workshop leadership, and during the actual workshops additional volunteer helpers will be present to support us, depending on the class size.
In total, in the first round we can offer three classes the opportunity to take part in an OSAMD workshop. There are no costs at all for the classes or schools - thanks to the funding, these are covered by the City of Heidelberg. Classes from grade 8 onward are eligible for the workshops, with a focus on classes around grade 10. Technical prior knowledge is an advantage, but not absolutely necessary.
During the workshops, basic methods of measuring air quality and their significance will be taught to the students; in the practical part of the workshops, the students can assemble the monitoring stations themselves - this also includes some soldering and an insight into the simple software that brings the monitoring station to life.
Contact
If you are interested in holding such a workshop, please contact me by email at [email protected]. I will then take care of scheduling and everything else required.
