Anatomy Of A Fake CO2 Sensor

The pandemic introduced with it a need to have to maintain adequate air flow in enclosed spaces, and hence, there is been considerable curiosity in low-cost C02 screens. Sad to say, there are unscrupulous actors out there that have noticed this as a opportunity to make a brief income.

Just lately [bigclivedotcom] obtained just one these kinds of small-expense CO2 sensor on his bench for a teardown, and confirms that it is a faux. But in carrying out so he reveals a interesting story of design selections great and negative, from some thing which could just about have been a handy product or service.

Guiding the slick colour exhibit is a PCB with an unknown microcontroller, electrical power provide circuitry, a DHT11 environmental sensor, and a further little module which purports to be the CO2 sensor. He speedily demonstrates with a SodaStream that it does not reply to CO2 at all, and via additional exams is capable to determine it as an alcoholic beverages sensor.

Past the liquor sensor he analyses the PSU circuitry. It has a area for a battery safety chip but it is not equipped, and an mistake in the regulator circuitry potential customers to a slow drain of the unprotected mobile. Most oddly there is an complete 5 volt switching regulator circuit that is equipped but unused, remaining in put to support a missing infra-purple module. Ultimately the screen is an application-specific Liquid crystal display section.

It is very clear some energy went in to the design of this unit, and we just can’t support wondering regardless of whether it could have started off lifetime as a layout for a better-spec real unit. But as [Clive] says, it’s a celebration detector, and of minimal additional use than as a undertaking situation and battery.

Need to have a lot more doubtful instrumentation? How about a magnetic area tester?

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