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IEMI Labs
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SensingDesign complete (stages 1–6, rev A), not built, not validated

VapeSense

Smoke and vape evidence for non-smoking rentals, hotels and offices, with no camera and no microphone

Detects smoke and vape events in non-smoking apartments, hotel rooms and offices, and keeps a dated evidence record (particle curve, gas response, decay time, tamper events) that a manager can act on under a lease addendum or hotel policy.

Who buys it
Managers of non-smoking multifamily buildings first, then select-service hotels and office facilities teams. Not schools.
Why it pays
A smoked apartment turnover is about $1,500–5,000 (est.); Minut puts a hotel smoking incident at $620–1,300. One avoided or recovered incident pays for about 10–25 disc-years (est.).
Target price
$179 per disc + $5 per disc per month; $299 building gateway (target)
First-minute wow
An event card a resident can read too: 'aerosol consistent with vaping, 22:14, fine particles 93 % below 1 µm, cleared in 95 s', with no camera, no microphone and nothing about who was there.
See the CAD designConcept page
VapeSense concept: the idea and where each part goes
The concept. The CAD design is below, under Printable CAD.

What the research found

And how this design answers it

  • School RFPs and false-accusation liability → schools out of scope; the buyer is a property owner enforcing a policy the occupant signed
  • HALO-class price ($1,483–1,595 for the 3C-PC at CDW) → one Sensirion SEN66 module + BME690 + ESP32-C6, a BOM of about $111, sold at $179
  • STR tools already sell smoke alerts at $10–19 a month → $5 a month, aimed at multifamily where tenant Wi-Fi can't be used: LoRa to one building gateway
  • Microphones in a home are unacceptable → no camera, no microphone, no presence reports; the resident sees the same records as the manager
  • Steam, sprays and cooking cause false alarms → event classifier on particle size ratio, decay time, RH and gas response, and a policy template that needs 2 events or a staff check
  • Detectors get covered, sprayed or unplugged → light, flat-line, VOC-saturation and motion tamper events plus a supercap last-gasp frame

Use case

Repeated vaping in a non-smoking apartment

Property managerResident of Unit 304Building gatewayVapeSense cloud

  1. 01Trigger: at 22:14 PM1 jumps to 380 µg/m³ with 93 % of particles below 1 µm, RH +6 % and no NOx rise, clearing in 95 s
  2. 02Classify: the disc labels it an aerosol consistent with vaping (confidence 0.86) and sends a 34-byte LoRa summary, then the curve
  3. 03Report: the manager gets a next-morning digest; a second event within 30 days prepares a notice packet for the manager to review
  4. 04Transparency: the resident sees the same evidence cards through the link in the lease addendum and can add a dispute note

Outcome: The behaviour stops, or the lease fee is applied with a record that holds up; a $1,500–5,000 smoke turnover avoided (est.)

How it works

Architecture

  1. 01

    Sense: Sensirion SEN66 (PM1–10, RH/T, VOC, NOx, CO₂) and Bosch BME690 at 1 Hz, plus light and motion for tamper

  2. 02

    Decide: ESP32-C6 runs an event state machine and a gradient-boosted classifier on 30 event features

  3. 03

    Send: LoRaWAN (RAK3172) to one gateway per building with LTE backhaul, or Wi-Fi MQTT/TLS on an owner IoT SSID

  4. 04

    Tell: hotel push alerts, multifamily morning digests, hash-chained evidence cards, and a resident view

Hardware

Real parts, buyable today

Bill of materials: about $111 per disc at qty-1 prices including the adapter, about $90 at qty 120 (est.).

BlockPartWhy this part
Air sensingSensirion SEN66-SIN-TPM1–10, VOC, NOx, CO₂ and RH/T in one calibrated module, $58.55 at qty 1
Gas fingerprintBosch BME690Heater-profile scans separate sprays and solvents from combustion
MCUEspressif ESP32-C6-MINI-1Wi-Fi 6 for hotels and offices, BLE for install, enough for tree models
Building radioRAKwireless RAK3172LoRa through apartment floors to one gateway; no tenant Wi-Fi
PowerUL-listed 5 V USB-C adapter or PoE splitter + 1 F supercapNo mains in the printed parts; a last-gasp frame when unplugged

Mechanical

Printable CAD

6 parts, generated from code and checked as closed solids. Pick a part to inspect it, or download the STL files to print.

See the CAD parts render
VapeSense printable parts, rendered from the CAD
Render of the printable parts from the actual CAD. Not yet printed or photographed.

Loading the CAD…

Real CAD · drag to rotate · scroll to zoomReal CAD · swipe sideways

Open risks we are working on

  • Classifier accuracy against showers, sprays and cooking in real units is unproven; one wrong fee damages the manager's trust and the resident's tenancy (tests T2–T6)
  • Legal exposure: state rules on monitoring devices in a dwelling, medical-cannabis accommodation and fair-housing consistency need an attorney's review before launch
  • The hotel and short-term-rental market is crowded at $10–19 a month; the multifamily channel (management companies) is untested
  • SEN66 cost dominates the BOM, and its fan life and dust loading over 5 years in a ceiling are not known

Design stage only: nothing on this page is for sale. Specifications and prices are targets.