MyPart

Personal, Portable, Accurate Air Particle Counting

CHI 2016

In 2012, air pollution in both cities and rural areas was estimated to have caused 3.7 million premature deaths, 88% of those in at-risk communities. The primary pollutant was small airborne particulate matter of 10 microns or less in diameter, which led to the development of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. In response, we developed MyPart, the first personal, portable, and accurate particle sensor under $50 capable of distinguishing and counting differently sized particles. We demonstrate how MyPart offers substantial enhancements over most existing air particle sensors by simultaneously improving accessibility, flexibility, portability, and accuracy. We describe the evolution and implementation of the sensor design, demonstrate its performance across twenty everyday urban environments versus a calibrated instrument, and conduct a preliminary user study to report on the overall user experience of MyPart. We also present a novel smart-phone visualization interface and a series of simple form factor adaptations of our design.

Collaborators
Christine Dierk, Christopher Myers, Eric Paulos, Ethan Chiou

Publication
MyPart: Personal, Portable, Accurate, Airborne Particle Counting, In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16)

Design files
Most recent designs and documentation, open source design files for this iteration

MyPart Device with accompanying mobile application

Correlation against a $5000 MetOne-HPPC6

Air particle counters past and present. With commercial instruments for scale.

Form factor exploration