Development and Validation of Low-Cost Indoor Air Quality Monitoring System for Swine Buildings

Abstract

The optimal indoor environment is associated with comfortable temperatures along with favorable indoor air quality. One of the air pollutants, particulate matter (PM), is potentially harmful to animals and humans. Most farms have monitoring systems to identify other hazardous gases rather than PM due to the sensor cost. In recent decades, the application of environmental monitoring systems based on Internet of Things (IoT) devices that incorporate low-cost sensors has elevated extensively. The current study develops a low-cost air quality monitoring system for swine buildings based on Raspberry Pi single-board computers along with a sensor array. The system collects data using 11 types of environmental variables along with temperature, humidity, CO2, light, pressure, and different types of gases, namely PM1, PM2.5, and PM10. The system is designed with a central web server that provides real-time data visualization and data availability through the Internet. It was tested in actual pig barns to ensure stability and functionality. In addition, there was a collocation test conducted by placing the system in two different pig barns to validate the sensor data. The Wilcoxon rank sum test demonstrates that there are no significant differences between the two sensor datasets, as all variables have a p-value greater than 0.05. However, except for carbon monoxide (CO), none of the variables exhibit correlation exceeding 0.5 with PM concentrations. Overall, a scalable, portable, non-complex, low-cost air quality monitoring system was successfully developed within a cost of USD 94.