Wayne,

Did you look at the Recreational Vehicle area?   All travel trailers, 
campers, motor homes are required to have smoke, carbcarbon monoxide, 
and propane leak detectors.   Maybe a sensitivity adjust on a 
combination detector will give you a quick go-no go test.

pat


On Thu, Aug 29, 2013 at 7:07 AM, Wayne Thayer wrote:

> To answer previous question:
>
> The idea is a cheap sensor.  3rd world homes are notoriously smoky due 
> to the cooking fire and due to kerosene lamps.  Most of the smoke is 
> carbon.  There are lots of ideas for improving these homes (like LED 
> lights with solar rechargers) so we can "improve their lot" by making 
> it more healthy for kids to study inside (or maybe so they can buy 
> stuff on the internet?).  Anyway, the aid groups want a way to see 
> what the bang for buck is in improving the indoor environment, so they 
> need a sensor.  These sensors work by shining an LED or laser through 
> an air stream, and measuring the amount of light which is reflected 
> off-axis by the particulates in the air.
>
> How does the bicycle pump (actually I'm imagining a disposable plastic 
> syringe) pick up a defined amount of cigarette smoke?  Maybe arrange a 
> fixture which leaves the cigarette burning and allows the smoke to 
> just rise into the open end of the syringe for a set amount of time, 
> then put the plunger in.  Might work-cheap to try!
>
> As to the other suggestions, such as the nichrome wire, I keep coming 
> back to needing some kind of heated basket so I can make sure I burn 
> 100% of whatever I put in there.  A circulating fan and Brownian 
> motion should make the environment pretty uniform, although with the 
> tests I've been doing, I get a spike with an exponential decay as the 
> particles settle.  Still, the interior of the 5 gallon bucket appears 
> pretty uniform, even though the peak duration is only about 40 secs.
>
> Wayne
>
> From: Inge Hernefjord [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Thursday, August 29, 2013 4:45 AM
> To: TechNet E-Mail Forum; Wayne Thayer
> Subject: Re: [TN] Blowing Smoke
>
> Don't laugh now, I am serious. A kind of cycle pump, but with a very 
> small diameter nozzle. Pull the handle and suck a second sniff of 
> cigarett smoke, continue pulling handle until pump is filled with 
> air/smoke mixture. Now press handle slowly and you get a constant 
> stream of mixture. Simple and cheap. Guess the nozzle should be 
> fractions of a millimeter.
>
> Inge
>
> On 28 August 2013 08:07, Wayne Thayer 
> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
> OK, here's another problem I've been playing with (although it has 
> little to do with IPC mission, it might be related).
>
> I am trying to build a system for measuring airborne particulates for 
> humanitarian organizations looking for inexpensive ways to 
> measure/monitor indoor air quality.  There are cheap sensors available 
> which might do the job, but they would need periodic re-calibration.
>
> So I need a controlled, extremely small amount of smoke.  At first, I 
> thought this would be trivial:  Find a cheap part at DigiKey and put 
> too many watts through it.  Way too much smoke and too little control. 
> Then I tried burning thin wires.  Too irregular because sometimes they 
> incinerate completely and other times they find a tiny defect and just 
> burn that until the wire stops conducting.  Then I tried just heating 
> the wire enough to burn off the insulation.  Still too irregular!  I 
> did just a few experiments and got 30% variation.
>
> Now I'm starting to think maybe a tiny piece of paper on an automotive 
> cigarette lighter.  That's a lot of power to get that glowing, and it 
> is not convenient to attach to.  Any other ideas?
>
> Wayne
>
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