Environmentally conscious clothing with Arduino

My Air, My Health recently challenged Makers to create a wearable device capable of measuring air quality, along with heart and breathing rates.

“The required system design must be capable of linking air pollutant concentrations with physiological data, providing geocoded and time-stamped files in an easy to use format, and transmitting this data via existing networks to a central data repository,” reads the contest guidelines outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Institute of Environmental Health Services (NIH).

And that is exactly what Conscious Clothing did, courtesy of David Kuller, Gabrielle Savage Dockterman and Dot Kelly. Indeed, the Conscious Clothing team designed a system that calculates inhaled particulate matter while simultaneously collecting basic health stats. The resulting information is subsequently transmitted and displayed in real-time on a Bluetooth-enabled device.

According to the official Arduino blog, the Conscious Clothing prototype is built around an Atmel-powered Arduino Lilypad (ATmega168V) connected to a particulate matter air sensor that hangs near the neck. There is also a series of stretchy strips of silver-knitted yarn wrapped around the chest to measure breathing.

Additional information about Conscious Clothing can be found here.