Canary: YHack Environmental Monitor

Overview

Canary is a real-time, low-cost environmental monitor built at YHack, Yale's premier hackathon. Much like the namesake inspiration, the canary in the coal mine, the system protects miners in developing countries from the dangers of carbon monoxide, methane, and other hazardous gas exposure. Going further than just detection, Canary uses a Raspberry Pi and Intel RealSense depth camera pipeline to map out areas of gas exposure within the greater mine layout and predict its spread to improve safety.

Inspiration

The Dominican Republic has some of the largest mineral reserves in North America. Mines employ 1% of the working population but are responsible for 8% of workplace deaths. One of the main causes is scentless gases like methane and carbon monoxide. In the US, this isn't as significant an issue because of sensor networks, but in developing countries like the Dominican Republic, these sensor systems are simply too expensive. Canary was built to change that.

How It Works

The system operates in a continuous loop to ensure real-time responsiveness:

1. Gas sensors (MQ-series) and the DHT11 humidity sensor constantly collect environmental data from the surroundings.
2. The system compares incoming readings against predefined safety thresholds for gas concentration and humidity levels.
3. If conditions are safe, monitoring continues. If thresholds are exceeded, the system triggers alerts and updates a hazard map to reflect dangerous zones and predicted gas spread.
4. This cycle runs continuously, providing live updates and evolving situational awareness.

Tech Stack

• Compute: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
• Sensors: MQ-series gas sensors (CO, methane), DHT11 humidity sensor
• Vision: Intel RealSense depth camera module for tunnel geometry mapping
• Software: Python pipeline for real-time data processing, threshold detection, and hazard visualization
• Dashboard: Web-based real-time monitoring dashboard (HTML/CSS/JS)

My Contributions

As the only mechanical engineer on the team, my responsibilities fell less on forcing a mechanical emphasis and more on creating the housing and mounts that allowed the electronics to truly play their role. This was a change of pace from traditional mechanical work, centering more on design through adaptability rather than pure function.

• Designed and fabricated the physical housing and sensor mounts for the wearable vest
• Created mounting solutions that allowed rapid reconfiguration of sensor placement
• Integrated the circuit board, sensor array, and depth camera into a high-visibility safety vest
• Ensured the physical implementation was robust enough for the demonstration environment

Challenges

• Integrating and interfacing with the depth camera module under hackathon time constraints
• Extensive circuit validation including continuity checks, waveform analysis, and oscilloscope measurements
• Designing and executing test cases to verify system functionality across multiple sensor types
• Refining the dashboard UI/UX for clarity and real-time usability

Results & Awards

Got a real-time gas and humidity monitoring system up and running from scratch. Successfully connected all sensors to a Raspberry Pi and built a live data pipeline. Added hazard detection with automatic alerts and built a simulation to visualize how gas spreads through tunnels, then used that data to predict potential danger zones.

Project Media

What's Next

• Scale into a distributed network of low-cost sensors across mines for broader coverage
• Transition to a custom PCB to make the system smaller, cheaper, and more robust
• Integrate a lighter power supply for extended field deployment
• Enable predictive alerts and automated emergency response protocols

Links

Tools & Methods

Built at YHack (Yale) over a weekend hackathon sprint.