Problem Statement:
Indoor environmental conditions such as uncomfortable temperatures, poor air quality, and high noise levels frequently impair the cognitive performance of students. These poor conditions almost always go unnoticed and have negative effects on cognitive performance, productivity, and health with the students like us unaware of the cause.

Why this problem:
Being students ourselves, we are often in classrooms that may be uncomfortable or distracting. This can be particulary disruptive during exams or presentations that require your full focus. We wanted to address this problem by, at the bare minimum, providing an easy and comprehensive solution to monitor indoor conditions. Additionally, we all are interested in IoT, embedded, and programming, and had similar ideas for our project proposals.

One of the most prominent existing solutions is the Awair Element/Omni, which measure:

• Temperature
• Humidity
• CO2 levels
• TVOC levels
• PM2.5 levels

However, these solutions are quite expensive, with the Element version costing over $200.

Another solution is the uHoo Smart Air Monitor, which offers similar features to the Awair Element/Omni, but is even more expensive than the Awair Element at $300. There are many other consumer and business solutions similiar to these two products, but they are typically quite expensive which may make them unfeasible for public facilities (schools) or small businesses.

In addition to these existing solutions, there have been some proposed solutions that are arguably more compelling because of their affordability. One such solution is VentQsys, detailed in this paper. Of course, this is only a theoretical solution, but it seems to address some of the problems that we are also trying to solve.

In summary, there are multiple existing and comprehensive solutions, but they are all very expensive, which may be responsible for the low adoption in classrooms or public spaces.