Research Paper - Final Draft

Naso Sense: Cigarette Smell Detector

Cecilia Giorcelli

MFA Design and Technology

Parsons The New School for Design

giorc086@newschool.edu

ABSTRACT

Bans on indoor cigarette smoking in public spaces began in the 1990’s. Across America, smoking bans prohibit smoking in public spaces such as hospitals, bars, restaurants and workspaces. [1] In 2006, Westin, one of the biggest hotel chains in the US, was the first to completely ban smoking in its buildings. [2] This caused a domino effect and many other hotels including Marriott followed, by also banning tobacco smoking on their premises. [3] Regardless of the strict non-smoking policy, some people still choose to light up cigarettes indoors. Smoking causes rooms to smell bad and it exposes people to harmful second-hand smoke; moreover, it simply bothers non-smokers. I am studying smoke sensors because I want to find out a way to detect if someone has been smoking in prohibited areas in order to collect concrete actionable evidence. The proof of concept created for this project is a business-to-business product.

KEYWORDS

Smoke, smell, e-nose, sensor, cigarettes, marijuana, carbon monoxide, Arduino.

INTRODUCTION

Since 2001, cigarette sales have been decreasing steadily each year. A closer look at the numbers shows that many people have quit smoking completely but a fraction of smokers have substituted conventional cigarettes for electronic cigarettes. [4] This decrease in conventional smokers can be attributed to an increased awareness of the negative health effects, the increased cost per packet of cigarettes or the inability to smoke indoors in public spaces. Despite this continuous health and environmental improvement, in 2014, 42 million Americans still smoked. [5]

Since 2008, most hotels across the US have banned indoors smoking completely. [6] In order to discourage guests from smoking in the rooms, hotels enforce an extra charge when they find out if the policy has been violated. The collected money serves to fund a deep cleaning of the room when the smell is very noticeable. Although hotels can fine their guests, it can be difficult to blame the correct person. Guests who have smoked in their rooms could argue that the smell was already in the room when they arrived, or worse, hotels can risk upsetting non-smokers.

I intend to solve this problem by offering hotels the chance to collect hard evidence when someone is smoking in a room. I created a proof of concept smoke sensor that detects the smell of cigarette smoke. This device could be applied to a series of public spaces were smoking is an issue, not just hotels but for the sake of this project I analyzed the application of my product specifically to hotels.

BACKGROUND

My family and I move and travel frequently. This means that I spend long periods of time in hotels. The smell of smoke is something that bothers my mother a great deal, as she is very sensitive to it as a former smoker. When we travel, she asks to switch rooms relatively frequently, so I saw an opportunity to create a product that would help hotels monitor when indoor smoking had taken place. An additional incentive I had to build this prototype was that not only do hotel guests smoke indoors, but so do employees. Recently my parents were staying at a hotel in downtown Manhattan and at five in the morning, the fire alarm rang. All the hotel guests evacuated the building including, my parents. What caused the alarm to go off was an employee smoking a cigarette in the stairwell before beginning his shift. Due to this series of events I came up with the idea of creating a sensor that just detects the smell of cigarettes in order to further enforce the ban on indoor smoking.

PRECEDENTS

For this project I chose to look at innovative devices that are involved with air monitoring and overall security monitoring. These products are relevant to my project because they collect data and translate it to useful information in real time. To understand the following products in relation to mine, I used the Ansoff Growth matrix (figure 1). The matrix is a tool commonly used for marketing planning to understand and determine a product’s market growth strategy. [7]

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Nest Protect is a smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) sensor. It currently retails at $99 per device. Nest Protect connects to your phone via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and can alert you if there is smoke, burning popcorn or high levels of CO in a specific room. The device is able to communicate alerts by voice and if you are in one room it will tell you if something is happening in another room. When the alarm goes off, but there is nothing wrong, the user can turn the alarm off from the phone application. Nest Protect is marketed as a potential substitute for current smoke detectors and is attached to the ceiling. Nest Protect also claims to be able to detect fires faster than conventional sensors. [8] Due to the additional features Nest Protect provides in comparison to conventional smoke detectors, it is a diversified product in an existing market.

[endif]--Canary is a security device that records video and audio. Canary is controlled from an Android or iPhone. The device sends you motion alerts to your phone. It also allows you to set off a siren from your phone whenever you decide. Furthermore it can monitor air quality, temperature and humidity in your home. Canary also has infrared LED lights that enable it to have night vision. Canary retails at $199 per device and it provides three premium plans to record and store more data. Canary connects to the Wi-Fi or Ethernet and must be plugged in the wall for electricity. [9] This product is interesting because it is a development of already existing home security cameras. In addition to video monitoring, it sends you notifications to your smartphone when it detects new activity in a room. Canary diversified itself as a smart security device that is able to detect if there is a stranger in your home or just your kids coming home from school.

[endif]--Fresh Air Sensor is a product that has not yet come to market. This product will be sold in two versions: mobile or a power socket device. Fresh Air Sensor claims it will be able to distinguish between cigarettes and marijuana. Batteries will power the mobile sensor and it will transfer data to an Android application via Bluetooth. [10] The static device appears to be installed in wall electricity sockets to receive electricity and as means of disguise. Since the details of how this product is built and should work, are not yet available, it is difficult to make a detailed analysis.

FIELD RESEARCH

Data on smoking violations in hotels is not readily available online. To obtain a broader understanding of the necessity for a product like the Naso Sense, I carried out interviews with hotel representatives, giving them description of my project before asking them three questions.

I am working on a project that concentrates on smoke and smell sensors in hotel rooms at Parsons and I was hoping to ask you a few questions.

1. Do you encounter issues with guests violating the non-smoking policy?

2. If yes, how often?

3. How are you able to prove and consequently charge the violators with a fine?

I was able to interview eight hotel managers in Manhattan, one in Washington, DC and one in Toronto, Canada. The hotels had a rating of three to five stars. The overarching response was that smoking was not a problem encountered frequently but it did happen from time to time. The sample of people I asked is still very small and specific to urban hotels located in the northeast. Results could also change greatly depending on the type of hotel and the respondents’ ability to share objective information. Other aspects include the type of hotel, the hotel’s geographical location, and even whether a designated outdoor smoking location is provided.

Another common response received from four hotels was that sometimes employees are the indoor smoking problem. These statements also relate to my parents’ recent experience of the employee smoking in the stairwell. These responses incentivized me to consider the application of Naso Sense in different locations and not just hotel rooms, to determine if the project should be developed in the future.

PROCESS

The first component to the Naso Sense is the detecting sensor. Gas sensors are commonly used to detect smoke. However, my aim is to detect the smell of smoke the same way a person would. This can be done with the use of an electronic nose, generally known as an e-nose. [11] The e-nose “is an instrument that attempts to mimic the human olfactory system. Humans and animals don’t identify specific chemicals within odors; what they do is to recognize a smell based on a response pattern.” [12] This means that when a human smells a banana he will say this is the smell of a banana. Instead, a typical piece of equipment would detect all the individual chemicals present in the smell of a banana. The e-nose is capable of giving a human-like response because it has an array of chemical sensors that detect gasses or vapors. “Each one of these sensors is different, so when they are presented to a complex odor formed by chemicals, each sensor responds differently to that odor. This creates a pattern of sensor responses, which the machine can be taught to recognize.”[12]

To create a working prototype of the Naso Sense I used an Arduino Uno, which is a micro-controller and gas sensor. The gas sensor I used is an MQ-2 sensor compatible with the Arduino. The MQ-2 uses a small heater with an electro-chemical sensor and it detects the concentration of methane, butane, LPG and smoke. [13] These gasses are irrelevant to my project but I had to use the MQ-2 sensor as a proof of concept for my project. To enclose the sensor in a presentable container, I cut Plexiglas with a laser-cutting machine. Then I created a scaled down model of a room to show how the sensor would theoretically work.

PROPOSAL OF NASO SENSE IN A HOTEL SCENARIO

Naso Sense will be installed on the ceiling because smoke tends to move upwards. This happens because “smoke is usually created by fire, so smoke is warmer than the air around it.” [14] Therefore, when a gas is warm, it is less dense or, in other words, lighter. Most ceilings are painted in neutral colors so the sensor will have to be white in order to go unnoticed. When a Naso Sense detects the smell of cigarettes, the time and location of the sensor will be sent via Wi-Fi to a database. Naso Sense will provide concrete actionable proof. It will directly apply a fine to the checkout bill, avoiding any embarrassing accusations of guests who haven’t smoked, allowing the confrontation of those who have.

Sensors that detect smells are already used in other industries, but there is no business-to-business product targeted for the detection of cigarette smell. Therefore, when analyzing the Naso Sense with the Ansoff Matrix, the product falls under market development, meaning that there is some risk involved in launching a product in a new market.

CONCULSION

Overall, the main goal of Naso Sense is to provide actionable evidence of smoke odors in smoke-free areas. This project offers research on the most appropriate types of sensors that can be used discretely to monitor the smell in the air.

If Naso Sense could be further developed it would be prototyped with a real e-nose sensor and would be connected to the Wi-Fi in order to show the information on a website.

A problem that might arise from installing Naso Sense in hotel rooms is that once people start to realize what it is, new ways of avoiding smell detection might be invented. Another problem that could arise is guests arguing that this device is invading their smell privacy in some way.

In addition to cigarette smokers, marijuana smokers have also become more numerous in the US. About 14 million Americans smoke marijuana regularly and 25 million have smoked it in the past year. [15] The Naso Sense could theoretically be programmed to detect any type of smell. In order to develop this project further, a collaboration with a chemist will be necessary to discover further useful smells to detect.

Other applications of this device can include any and all indoor public spaces: hospitals, college dorms and even children’s bed rooms.

REFERENCES

1."Read "Secondhand Smoke Exposure and Cardiovascular Effects: Making Sense of the Evidence" at NAP.edu." 5 The Background of Smoking Bans. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.

2."Hotel Chains Ban Smoking." About.com Travel. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.

3."The Marriott Smoke-free Hotel Policy." Marriott. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.

4."Electronic Cigarettes (e-Cigarettes)." DrugFacts. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

5.“Current Cigarette Smoking Among Adults in the United States.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 25 Aug. 2015. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

6."Hotels." - No-smoke.org. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

7.Riley, Jim. "Ansoff's Matrix | Business." Tutor2U. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.

8."Meet Nest Protect." Nest. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

9."Canary - A Complete Security System in a Single Device." Canary - A Complete Security System in a Single Device. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

10."What We Do." FreshAir Sensor Corp. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

11."NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology." NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.

12.Davis, Nicholas. "Electronic Noses Explained: In Future We Will Be Sniffing out Disease." The Guardian. 1 Apr. 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2015.

13. "MQ Gas Sensors." Arduino Playground. Web. 15 Dec. 2015.

14. Karvinen, Tero, Kimmo Karvinen, and Ville Valtokari. "Smoke and Gas." Make: Sensors. Sebastopol: Maker Media, 2014. Print

15."NORML.org - Working to Reform Marijuana Laws." About Marijuana. Web. 6 Nov. 2015.

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