aariq / co2-monitor

co2-monitor

I'll be attending the 2024 US-RSE meeting and I'm concerned about ventilation and COVID-19 risk. Rather than buying a CO2 sensor with a readout, I took some advice on Twitter and decided to build my own. My plan is to share the data I collect on Mastodon.

This repository holds code to pull data from the Arduino trinkey kit and send a toot with rtoot. When the Arduino trinkey is plugged into a USB port, running the code in co2_monitor.R will prompt the user for a room number and start collecting data. When the trinkey is unplugged from the port, it will create a plot and some text and prompt the user if they'd like to post a toot with the plot and some info about the CO2 levels and the room number.

In arduino/ there is the very slightly modified arduino code I'm using to send the data over serial (co2_sender.ino) as well as a forced re-calibration script I cobbled together but did not test. Originally I thought the sensor needed re-calibration as it was reading ~500ppm outdoors, but then I just moved the sensor further away from my face and it reads ~420ppm. So please use forced_calibration.ino at your own risk!

References

Literature on CO2 as a proxy for COVID-19 risk:

• https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o736/rr-0
• https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8043197/

co2-monitor's Issues

API problems

Not sure why, but API returns 403 error with auth_as(rtweet_user()) most of the time and with auth_as("co2-app") (a rtweet_app() auth) it gives me something like "API did not return JSON".

Make it possible to edit default toot text in shiny app?

What if you could (in the shinyalert) edit the text if you didn't like it? Ehh.. probably easier just to edit the mastodon post afterwards

Shiny app maybe posts even when I hit "cancel"

An unexpected post to mastodon happened and the closest I got to posting was hitting the "toot" button, but then choosing "cancel" in the pop-up

dropped/inconsistent readings

Not sure why, but sometimes it doesn't get a reading for a few timepoints in a row. E.g. https://twitter.com/LeafyEricScott/status/1555687438248546305?s=20&t=9oDFSbDHBX0nIzEyMhq4Ag

Calibrate sensor?

Take my laptop outside and see what it reads. Figure out how to calibrate if necessary.

better cutoffs for CO2

Would be nice to have some categorical cutoffs for values of CO2, but should be supported by data

Add "toot" button to Shiny app

Rather than sourcing the co2_monitor.R script, I could use the Shiny app and add some inputs for room number and a "toot" button to send a plot of the current data.

Shiny app freezes

App seems to freeze after running for more than an hour. Investigate? I wonder if using crew or something to be collecting the data from the sensor asynchronously from running the app might help