And so it’s time for the second instalment of our Internet of Things Collections blog series for eBay:...
And so it’s time for the second instalment of our Internet of Things Collections blog series for eBay: the EMF Smog Box!
This episode is basically a deep-dive into one of my pet projects we released a little while ago: the Ondes Visible project.
The basic concept of this project is quite simple: making electro magnetic fields (aka EMFs) visible! EMFs surround us day and night. Some are generated by natural elements such as the Sun or the stars, others however are created by humans – mostly through the use of wireless technologies.
EMFs are invisible but scientists are not yet sure of the impact they have on our health, sleep patterns, moods, etc. especially when considering high-frequency fields (see for instance the results of the Interphone study, one of the biggest of its genre). So, visualising these fields is the first step towards awareness; plus it’s quite fun!
The project is composed of three main building blocks:
- An Arduino Uno or more recent controlling two EMF sensors: one for low-frequency fields (< 30 KHz) one for high-frequency fields (> 30 kHz)
- An Android phone to make sense of the sensor data and visualise it
- The Ondes Visible open-source app to learn more about what you are observing as well as to graph the data
‘Receipe’ time…
Again, all the ingredients you need can be found in the EVRYTHNG’s eBay Collections then simply follow the following steps and you should be good to go!
- Step One: building the sensors.
The EMF smog box project can sense two big families of EMFs: low-frequency and high-frequency fields. Examples of low-frequency fields are those generated by electric appliances, e.g. your alarm clock or a lamp.
Sensing them is easy and all you need is a wire and a resitor. Simply solder them together and you are good to go for sensing low-frequency fields (< 30 kHz).
Interestingly enough, low-frequency fields are also far less mysterious in terms of their impact on our health (tried putting your fingers in the power socket anyone? well don’t!).
Sensing high-frequency is much more interesting because those are harder to detect, generated by any modern wireless devices and their impact on our health still generates some controversies…
To build the high-frequency sensor we’ll need a LT5534 RF Power Detector and to solder it onto a protoype board. Unfortunately this component is only available as an SMD (Surface-Mount Device) which means it’s really small and challenging to solder. Make sure you order at least two of them just in case! A nice tutorial on this particular complex step is available here.
- Step Two: connecting the sensors to the Arduino
