Why did your startup fail? The CO2 was sitting at 1.000 ppm
The bottleneck might be the air in the room
91–100 of 499 posts
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#92I’m not saying this isn’t a legitimate concern but this really seems to have exploded amongst the tech community as the next obsession. I see this pop up on X every few weeks. Is the concern about this really based on actual science? Is there empirical data proving people are less productive or are damaging themselves as a result of heightened CO2 levels? And I don’t mean observational epidemiology studies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA
This is not a peer-reviewed study. It's a Tom Scott youtube video.
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#93I’m not saying this isn’t a legitimate concern but this really seems to have exploded amongst the tech community as the next obsession. I see this pop up on X every few weeks. Is the concern about this really based on actual science? Is there empirical data proving people are less productive or are damaging themselves as a result of heightened CO2 levels? And I don’t mean observational epidemiology studies.
I’ve lived in Australia and France and I’ve always attributed the taller size of Australians to the excellent state of their ventilation in buildings. Vents (and rooms themselves) are systematically bigger than in France, and if you live in a healthy environment, with meat, lots out outdoors during teen age, and correctly ventilated classrooms during their 20 best years, it makes no secret to me that they grew bigger.
Meanwhile in France we heat classrooms by stacking 35 kids in a confined space. It saves on heating, plus condensation that makes windows opaque helps pupils concentrate on the blackboard, as teachers said during my childhood.
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#94I really wish a Apple or another major OEM would integrate CO2 monitor into watches or smartphones. Suddenly, everybody would be aware of the CO2 level in the room, get alerts, etc. and the problem will just solve itself. There are so many rooms, classrooms, movie theaters and other places with poor ventilation where you just feel dizzy, or fall asleep, not knowing it was just due to lower oxygen levels in your blood…
I was looking at CO2 sensor module boards this week and the sensors themselves are quite large and the floor price is $15ish.
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#95I really wish a Apple or another major OEM would integrate CO2 monitor into watches or smartphones. Suddenly, everybody would be aware of the CO2 level in the room, get alerts, etc. and the problem will just solve itself. There are so many rooms, classrooms, movie theaters and other places with poor ventilation where you just feel dizzy, or fall asleep, not knowing it was just due to lower oxygen levels in your blood…
> Raising awareness is the only real solution. You'd have to raise awareness on every single person in the room and them sustain pressure to the organization in order to have proper CO2 levels in the room/organization. And then you have to align every other person on every other organization to do this as well and hope for the best. Or, you can do the right thing and have the state introduce regulations
I can just imagine the horrors and skin crawls that your last sentence has evoked in some people's minds. Not the state!!
But seriously, so much care needs to be taken here. OK, well "care" at least. Employers certainly would benefit from scrubbing CO2 from the air, in terms of productivity. I'm willing to bet that with central air it would be quite easy, and even with heat and AC off, lots of places still circulate the air regardless.
So the central place to scrub is already there.
But then you have other issues. Such as, will your body adapt to 8 hrs of reduced CO2, and then you become torpid and barely awake when not at work. Such a horrid thought, that is to me. And what if employers learn that the tiniest boost of O2 helps too! Now your body becomes accustomed to that, and what are the long term effects there?
I can personally envision myself being concerned. I guess the legislation could be crafted to "the same CO2 levels found just outside of downtown city core" or some such blather. Maybe even same for O2. So that you're at least pegged to something normal for the area.
Maybe that's where the state could come into play. A simple, highly accurate monitoring station which has an API to be polled.
Come to think of it, CO2 and O2 rates fluctuate during the 24 hour cycle. Trees need O2 to live, but only produce O2 during the day. And so differing amounts of light might mean up and downs in these numbers. It may be another circadian rhythm. Getting it the same as in a nearby forest, might be the healthiest thing of all.
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#96> Open a window.
In most office buildings (towers) that's impossible. You have to deal with what the A/C gives you.
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#97Two tips: if you want a stationary CO2 meter in a room, you can make one very cheap with a SenseAir S88 sensor (22 Euro) and hooking it up to an ESP board. Flash ESPHome and you can get live statistics in your Home Assistant dashboard. The S88 is a pretty good optical NDIR Sensor that auto-calibrates by putting it in the outside air or in a well-ventilated room every N-days (N is in the data sheet). A bit more info a…
Thanks for mentioning that, last week I got 2 SwitchBot hub mini, 3 temperature sensors each, for 70€ total, they are really neat. Even put one in our fridge, I didn’t expect the signal to pass but it’s working :)
Will look at adding the CO2 monitoring
Edit: actually, they only sell them as part of a 6-in-1 device, with a display, and a bunch of other sensors. That feels overkill, I wish they would just sell the CO2 sensor itself
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#98Goes a long way to prove that industrial air conditioning is absolutely abysmal. If air conditioning actually worked satisfactorily, opening a window should never be necessary unless you want the cold waft of air, while the air conditioning actually delivered high-quality, low-CO2 air without smell.
Instead any room at > 20% capacity is quickly filled with CO2 and the putrid smell of bad mouth and body odour.
I get it that perfect ventilation would be way more expensive, but at the current level it is just bad, and the windows are sealed shut. It does not make sense from a human perspective.
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#99There needs to be a meter for the amount of AI writing in blogposts. Same physics, same climb, same afternoon fog.
I've actually been tracking the front page of HN for AI posts for a while now:
https://www.salahadawi.com/hacker-news-ai-detector
This post evaluates to 99% AI generated.
Re: The bottleneck might be the air in the room
#100I really wish a Apple or another major OEM would integrate CO2 monitor into watches or smartphones. Suddenly, everybody would be aware of the CO2 level in the room, get alerts, etc. and the problem will just solve itself. There are so many rooms, classrooms, movie theaters and other places with poor ventilation where you just feel dizzy, or fall asleep, not knowing it was just due to lower oxygen levels in your blood…
I was looking at CO2 sensor module boards this week and the sensors themselves are quite large and the floor price is $15ish.
And I believe the accuracy is also not great on these cheap ones. The product in the OP's photo costs $200 where I live! And ISTR finding the sensor itself contributes a lot to this cost.
IIUC they also need fans. The one I have in my home has one that's actually integrated into the sensor unit.