Documenting my journey of building projects with AI - where code meets creativity and human ideas merge with artificial intelligence
Where engineering meets intelligence. A software engineer's exploration of AI-enhanced development.
After successfully miniaturizing our CO2 monitor with a 3D printed enclosure in Part 5, it was time to tackle the final stage outlined in our original roadmap: Stage Three - Custom PCB & Cost Optimization for Potential “Mass Production”. What I discovered during this journey was that custom PCB design and manufacturing is far more accessible and affordable than I ever imagined!
Read more →After successfully integrating the SCD41 sensor in Part 4, it was time to tackle the next major challenge: miniaturization. The goal was to transform our bulky breadboard prototype into a sleek, compact device that could fit into a custom 3D printed enclosure. This journey introduced me to the world of CAD modeling, 3D printing technique, and opened up an entirely new hobby!
Read more →The components I ordered for the next iteration of our DIY Smart CO2 Monitor have finally arrived! In this part, we’ll be focusing on cost optimization by switching to more affordable hardware while significantly improving accuracy with the Sensirion SCD41 sensor. This upgrade brings us closer to a production-ready design while maintaining the core functionality we built in Part 3.
Read more →In Part 2 of our DIY Smart CO2 Monitor project, we successfully built a proof-of-concept (PoC) using an ESP32-S3, an SH1106 OLED display, a DHT11 sensor for temperature and humidity, and an SGP30 sensor for CO2 and TVOC levels. We also got our first taste of coding with GitHub Copilot. Now, in Part 3, we’ll take a significant leap forward by connecting our ESP32 to WiFi, exposing the collected air quality data in Prometheus format, and setting up Prometheus and Grafana with Docker Compose for long-term data storage and visualization.
Read more →Welcome back to the DIY Smart CO2 Monitor series! In Part 1: The Plan & Goals, I outlined my motivation and the overall roadmap for building a custom, smart CO2 monitor. Now, it’s time to dive into the first practical stage: the Proof of Concept (PoC).
For this PoC, I assembled the core components on a breadboard to test functionality and get a feel for the sensors and the ESP32 platform.
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