Question: Vape detector

Ryanwest is asking a question about air-quality
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by Ryanwest | December 10, 2019 23:54 | #21717


I am an engineering club advisor and we are exploring using the simple air sensor to detect vaping in school bathrooms. I am wondering if the purpleair sensor will detect this and if anyone has any experience or can direct us toward someone who does. Thanks!



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This is a really interesting question! I know that the plantower sensors are affected by vapor, humidity, aerosols, though how comparable those results are to other kinds of particulate matter I can't say ( but I'm sure someone else can). I did a very quick online search for "vaping and PM 2.5" and it does seem like some of the vaping products would produce vapor that is at least the right size to get picked up by the sensor-- they definitely get triggered in the presence of smoke , but am curious if non-smoking related bathroom activities might also set these off. If you set up an experiment we'd love to see the results!!

I don't know if this is helpful at all, but it shows a comparison of PM associated with e-cigarette vapors: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6210766/


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Hi, me and a friend were working on a project similar to this and we wanted to figure out how a sensor like yours sends alerts to a device (phones or laptops). We were wondering if you could help us out with that? Please let me know!

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