Covid Zapper
Channel: UNLVECE
Date: 11/06/2021

As many of us have seen on the news this year, COVID-19 is delivering havoc on our daily lives on a scale which has not been seen in some time. Economies all over the world are shutting down and reopening only to shut down again due to ever rising number of new cases. The goal of this project is to craft a device which will be able to be inserted into a variety of different sized and shaped air vents in order to sterilize the outgoing air feeding into enclosed environments.
The device will utilize an array of UV LED lights with a wavelength of 275nm. It is well known from prior research that UV light can cross-link DNA molecules and can kill both viruses and bacteria.This array will be controlled by a microcontroller that will take in inputs from different sensors and output an “on” signal. This “on” signal will be a 5v signal and it will be the input voltage for the relay devices that will control the current being delivered from the batteries to the LED array. So far, the design will incorporate a tension rod that will allow the user to deploy the device in air vents of a variety of different shapes. The LED array will be attached to a gooseneck rod that will allow it to be manipulated in such a fashion that the user will be able to control the direction of light. This will be especially useful in smaller vents and vents that have an immediate turn in the duct work right before the air vent register.