Air Sampler Device

Introduction

This is one of the products we worked on in 2016. The device was requested by Tropical Ecology and Evolution (TrEE) Lab, Department of Biological Sciences, IISER-Bhopal. The product requirements were simple compared to the IoT based systems, but we faced interesting challenges in the design and development phase of the product. In this blog post and the next, we will be discussing the product requirements and challenges related to hardware development.

Project details

The requirement was to build an air sampler unit for the TrEE lab to collect fragrance samples for ecological studies. A similar device is available in the US but it is too costly to be imported to India. So, we were given the device specifications like flow rate, size limit etc. and we got on with the development.

We were asked to build a rechargeable battery operated volatile collection unit with both inflow and outflow and adjustable flow rate of upto 1000 ml/min. The imported device available to them has a flow rate of upto 250 ml/min and battery run-time is 10 to 12 hours. The prototype that we made was quite bulky compared to the imported device, but we were able to greatly reduce the size in the final version. Apart from the specs that were given to us, we also added features e.g. a digital display for adjustment and configuration..

In the next blogpost we will be discussing what specific components were used in the product and why they are used, how design decisions were made to choose a specific component and some of the challenges we faced.