Organizers had a way for attendees to track CO<sub>2</sub> levels throughout the venue—even before they arrived.
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This hacker conference installed a literal antivirus monitoring system
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This is great, and the field of building science is going to be a fruitful vein to tap over the next few decades.
But, this jumped out at me:
The better the poster design, the
more I'd distrust a QR code at a security conference.
But, this jumped out at me:
The better the poster design, the
more I'd distrust a QR code at a security conference.
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Elevated CO2 levels do not facilitate the transmission of viruses. Rather, elevated CO2 levels are a proxy indicator of poor ventilation, and that can facilitate the transmission of viruses. It is an imperfect proxy. Replacement of room air with fresh outside air will remove built up CO2 and virus particles. But filtration can also remove virus particles without changing the CO2 level. Commercial spaces typically use a combination of replacement and filtration.
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Yeah the article went into that, but apparently this is an older building with mediocre filtration so probably a decent stand in.
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No. From this article:
From the linked article (bolding mine):
[...]
The linked article goes into more detail, and is worth reading.
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I'm currently building an air quality monitoring solution for my 3D printer enclosure based on the Sensiron SEN66 sensor. While I mainly chose that sensor for its particulate and VOC sensors, the CO2 readings I have gotten during testing were rather insightful which has encouraged me to take corrective action (namely by opening windows more often). Hopefully more venues add CO2 monitoring systems so that conference organizers don't have to DIY it for themselves.
Unfortunately, in the US Sensiron sensors are subject to a 44% tariff right now. While I was fortunate to get mine before the tariffs went way up, I don't know if other people in the US are going to be very interested in trying to build my project right now. :/
Unfortunately, in the US Sensiron sensors are subject to a 44% tariff right now. While I was fortunate to get mine before the tariffs went way up, I don't know if other people in the US are going to be very interested in trying to build my project right now. :/
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Do they have the data for CO2 rates from the conference? I’d be curious to see how much it changed during the conference.
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I’m sure the tariffs are working so well that they’ll close the dispensaries and turn them back into Radio Shacks selling American made sensors any day now. /s
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Photon_plumber
Ars Tribunus Militum
I worked throughout Covid in a Class 100000 clean room, not as stringent as others, but effective enough. Air changes and filtration are the two key factors in removing or keeping the concentration of anything down. Face masks are still a requirement in ISO 8, with the threat of Covid making us move to more suitable models in daily use.
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Society improved on some things after the pandemic. Courts & medicine finally started using remote conferencing & appointments more, it became socially acceptable to wear a medical mask in public, etc. But it seems there's still little movement on the subject of air quality in buildings, for anyone to know what standards are being adhered to in any given building. (There are always complications, "Yeah we posted how we have high MERV / MPR filters and about our good air circulation rate... but maintenance probably hasn't changed the clogged filters in ages.")
So it was interesting to see this attempt.
(I personally have a couple CO2 monitors in my home, but that's more just as a guide to when to air out my office or bedroom, given that it is an older house with rads. No forced air circulation or heat recovery ventilators.)
So it was interesting to see this attempt.
(I personally have a couple CO2 monitors in my home, but that's more just as a guide to when to air out my office or bedroom, given that it is an older house with rads. No forced air circulation or heat recovery ventilators.)
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Love it. I always get sleepy fast in high CO2 env, there was a particular conference room I avoided for 5+ years after realizing what always happened there.
The sad thing is that we've raised CO2 levels on the planet so much.. no one really talks about it, but we're probably a fair bit dumber than our forbears all the time.
The sad thing is that we've raised CO2 levels on the planet so much.. no one really talks about it, but we're probably a fair bit dumber than our forbears all the time.
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Some years back I purchased a full-flow filtration stack for my home HVAC (heat-pump based), which includes an ESP, after wild fire smoke in our area became in indoor air problem for us. The promotional literature provided stated the ESP could/would remove virus particles. Monitoring CO2 in the plenum makes sense - never thought about that before this article - but I'd really like to monitor particulate in and out of the filter stack. Anybody know of a simple (inexpensive) continuous particulate counter?
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I am curious if the organizers offered to pay the venue to install higher efficiency filters for the duration of the conference. That would seem a logical extension of their concern for airborne pathogens.
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Higher MERV filters restrict airflow. It makes the HVAC system less effective. So just replacing the filters without other changes may negatively impact the heating/cooling and air circulation.
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Using fresh air (make up air) to manage CO2 levels costs energy. An ERV or HRV can minimize the loss, but there will always be loss, at least when the outside air is not at the right temp and humidity range.
You are, after all, “throwing away” conditioned air and replacing it with unconditioned air.
Any discussions around indoor air quality that imply buildings should “just have more make up air” are….misguided. Much of the energy code is all about minimizing waste in this area.
That said, in my next house I think I will oversize the ERV and tie its duty cycle, at least partially, to indoor air quality sensors. Would be a fun project.
You are, after all, “throwing away” conditioned air and replacing it with unconditioned air.
Any discussions around indoor air quality that imply buildings should “just have more make up air” are….misguided. Much of the energy code is all about minimizing waste in this area.
That said, in my next house I think I will oversize the ERV and tie its duty cycle, at least partially, to indoor air quality sensors. Would be a fun project.
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I doubt any building engineer would allow that unless the system was specifically designed for the higher efficiency filters.
However, HEPA air scrubbers are available for rental, I don't know how big their conference/venue is but a pair of 2000cfm scrubbers would give around 4 air exchanges/hour in a 40x80x20 ft conference room. Though ensuring good air mixing could be a problem and they might need to put them outside the door to the room to keep noise levels down.
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The DIY work for the application is fascinating. There were many analyses of room airflow, conditioning, filtration, and sensor placement published in peer-reviewed literature in the years following the initial COVID outbreak. It would be interesting if the Kawaiicon team collaborated with the Otago researchers on this and on in-con data analysis. I’d enjoy reading their presentation!
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Air quality and CO2 are two different and often competing targets. Like other comments said, MERV ratings are inversely proportional to HVAC efficiency. I have my own CO2 monitor, and I work in air quality, so it is something I think about often. Proper air circulation is something that requires outside air, but letting outside air may lower the air quality.
This is purely me speculating, but CO2 air scrubbers will be something in the future added to commercial spaces for solving this. HVAC filtering/UV will be for the air quality and decontamination, while scrubbers will be to reduce CO2 faster.
This is purely me speculating, but CO2 air scrubbers will be something in the future added to commercial spaces for solving this. HVAC filtering/UV will be for the air quality and decontamination, while scrubbers will be to reduce CO2 faster.
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It's fascinating to get a CO2 monitor for home or office. I had one for a while and I found that almost every time I had a feeling of "I'm so toast, don't want to think anymore", I'd take a look at the CO2 and it would be up to ~2000ppm.
Taking it to the office, you could literally watch the number climb as people arrived (400 climbed to 900), left for lunch, and returned.
Hour long meeting in a small room would definitely get things into the brain dead zone.
Taking it to the office, you could literally watch the number climb as people arrived (400 climbed to 900), left for lunch, and returned.
Hour long meeting in a small room would definitely get things into the brain dead zone.
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CrashingTooFast
Wise, Aged Ars Veteran
I was looking at PM monitoring earlier this summer, but cheapness and the worst quality didn't develop in our area. The SEN66 sensors seemed like good quality for about $60 (at that time). As dkent said, tariffs have bumped those up to to $103.
But Digikey also lists another version that is $58. And both are in stock, which wasn't the case a few months back.
Digikey
(oh, I have no personal experience with PM or CO2 monitoring, I was looking at an AdaFruit design. Would like to have better info, especially living in the woods, near a large campground)
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I wish the Wired article was more than upper epidermis deep. When I reached the end and realized it was from Wired, it made sense just how shallow it is. It never delved into what the results of the experiment were or anything else. I should pay attention more closely to the authorship rather than assume an Ars author even on weekdays.
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Yes, it can cost something to be healthier. It costs to be sick, too.
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You're wrong about the facilitation of the transmission of viruses. CO2 does facilitate it rather nicely.
What the monitors do is show risk, which is a better proxy than simply letting people guess. It doesn't say whether there's infectious viral bits floating around. But in higher CO2 areas, it floats around LONGER, increasing the possibilities of becoming infected.
As for replacing room air with fresh, PLEASE, have you EVER been to a large convention? It would take hours to replace the entire volume of air inside, which gives a virus plenty of time to settle in on a victim. Also, the filters don't generally stop things on a viral level. Most aren't N95 rated (or their equivalent) and the replacement of the filters has to be often enough so that a saturated filter isn't just blowing them out the other side (which happens in old surgical masks, which is why wearing one for 8 hours at most is the limit).
That said, this won't actually STOP a virus from infecting you. Much like driving down the road doing everything legally and right won't keep you from getting killed by something out of your control. But much like driving down the road doing everything legally, your odds of being killed by something out of your control are reduced.
What I'd like to know is if this tactic actually reduced the total number of infections. Cons being cons, and even if folks check things as they go and take precautions, if they're NOT masking, and properly disposing of them and changing them every eight hours IN ADDITION to the precautions here, this is only information, requiring proactive use of it. It may reduce exposure, but COVID (as one example) is airborne, so the only way to avoid that is to not go where CO2 levels are high AND mask up.
There's safer and there's safe. Knowledge of where things are less safe (and therefore other places that are safer) doesn't mean safety. It just reduces risk. Masking improves on that risk reduction, with the higher quality of the mask reducing it even more.
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You (probably) would be better off measuring the pressure drop before and after the filter - that'll tell you when you need the filter replaced.
Measuring/before after doesn't give you very much actionable info.
The one I'm using - https://github.com/gcormier/esphome-pressure.
If you want better air filtration (for virus risk), the computer fan based corsi-rosenthal boxes are extremely effective, quiet, and very low operating costs, far better than other commercial options .
https://old.reddit.com/r/crboxes/
You can buy or build, most people use a bunch of the awesome arctic p12 or p14 fans. PC fans are very energy efficient, and then you can use large house size air filters. (ideally the 3m filterete 1900's specifically, they have the lowest pressure drop, bonus points for using the thicker filters, they are even better!)
If you want trackers - are you looking for standalone or for networked? I feed mine into home assistant. I like apollo's if you want a premade but totally hackable options - https://apolloautomation.com/collections/sensors
I own their msr-1 which has co2 sensor.
https://www.openerv.ca/ - I love what this guy has been doing. OpenERV - energy efficient recovery ventilator
Internal air filtration https://www.bqap.ca/
I've spent wayyyy too much time geeking out on air quality. lmk if anyone has questions.
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Not always! It's super interesting digging into the data. The Filtrete 1900's have a much better pressure drop compared to almost any other filter in their lines, both higher and lower MERV ratings.
Of course the easy win is to upsize the filters - going from the standard 1" to a 3-5" filter thickness is a giant win.
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In the late 19th/early 20th century, 'fresh air' was literally a treatment for diseases like TB. We built hospitals with big opening windows, high ceilings, balconies and terraces where patients could be in airy surroundings. Some of them we called 'sanitoria'.
Now we've decided that they're going to be hermetically sealed HVAC-dependent bunkers where you can barely crack a window, and we keep finding that airborne transmission of pathogens is a problem. We seem remarkably stupid to have regressed over the last 150 years.
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But unless it's your home, usually the costs are paid by different parties...there's little economic incentive for a building owner to spend extra money making the building healthier than legally required as the cost of illness is borne by the building tenants (or conference attendees). And aside from occasional outbreaks of legionnaires disease, there's usually little publicly known correlation between buildings and illnesses so there's little benefit in going above and beyond, only a few organizers/tenants would pay more for healthier air if there's no hard evidence that it leads to fewer illnesses
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Guys,
While on this topic - can anyone recommend a good, inexpensive pm and CO2 monitor that is prebuilt and can be bought in Europe?
While on this topic - can anyone recommend a good, inexpensive pm and CO2 monitor that is prebuilt and can be bought in Europe?
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This is straight-up nonsense. I'm not talking about the CO² levels, I'm talking about categorizing some portion of pre-human Earth history as being more environmentally friendly than any other.
As far as the effects of CO² I've done a literature review on exactly this subject and 500 ppm is enough to have adverse cognitive effects at least from the admittedly sparse papers I was reading.
Few studies looked at levels below 1000, and fewer still injected pure CO² into the air as opposed to subjecting the treatment groups to stale air, in which VOCs from humans confounded the variables so I didn't include those in my review but predictably they had worse outcomes than pure CO² studies. All studies I found were done by HVAC trade groups, which I guess makes sense since CO² isn't generally considered toxic. I found that this lack of concern over CO²'s effects on human health may be something that needs rethinking, but I have to acknowledge that if one's business is HVAC there would be an interest in exaggerating the effects of stale air.
In case there's anyone wondering, the effects included reduced focus on single tasks, worse math performance, increased stress markers, and improved ability to rapidly switch from one task to another.
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I wish this sort of monitoring equipment were available and as inexpensive in the early 2000’s as they are now. Intel bought a part of Compaq and promptly built walls from floor to under the roof. Given that the return air path was the space above the dropped ceiling, that destroyed the HVAC in that area (until a subsequent rework of the vents above the windows was done a couple of years later). The predictable result was increased humidity supporting mold growth, triggering a whole raft of severe airborne allergies (which had been pretty minor before) in me. I knew that there were problems, right away, but facilities would never respond to this stuff without evidence… which was out of my reach.
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I have a couple of Aranet CO2 sensors. They are well designed. I like that the iPhone app shares absolutely no information whatsoever. Latvian company.
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