Testing WEIRD Masks and PPE for Adafruit!

Hey everyone! A few months ago this would have been completely ridiculous, now it’s just mostly ridiculous. Today we’re going to talk about masks and other PPE- don’t worry, nothing too serious. We’re just going to have a little engineering fun with a bad situation. Wheew- that’s a little hot! Okay, I’m sure everyone is up to date on the basics of masks right? It’s all we hear about now. Of course, everyone should be reserving professional disposable PPE for front-line healthcare workers and using alternative protection.

01:06 - But what sort of alternative protection is out there? What can you get now, what will we be using in the next few months or next few years? What does the future look like? Well, we’re going to take a look. Now a quick word- I’m doing this video for my friends at Adafruit. Adafruit is owned by Limor Fried, she and her husband Phillip Torrone run an electronics factory and STEM education company in the heart of New York City. You know all those people who say you can’t beat Chinese at hardware manufacturing? Adafruit has been beating our pants off at STEM education hardware for years! Unlike a lot of businesses, during the recent crises, when Adafruit closed they kept paying all their staff, all their contractors. When other companies laid people off, Adafruit didn’t- and that means a lot to me because I consider a lot of their staff good friends.

02:12 - This is incredibly hard to do with a company that size, and in a business so competitive. I don’t know how long they can keep doing it for, but it’s amazing that they have for this long. When I found out about this I told my sponsor JLCPCB- hey, let’s do a little switcharoo instead of me doing a PCB video for you this week, let me tell everyone about what’s going on at Adafruit. And then Adafruit can do a little video for me showing how to use EagleCAD and JLC to order a PCB. Like, you know, trading jobs for a day. We’re all friends so they agreed- and I’m really happy they did because it’s important people know.

02:57 - Some of the PPE products I’m showing here today will be in the Adafruit store soon, but I learned everything I know from their electronics tutorials, so if you’re stuck at home with a little extra time it’s a great place to get started. If you want to support American manufacturing that cares about its workers? Please support Adafruit and buy a gift certificate for yourself and friends show that supporting local businesses, and taking care of workers matters to you. Now, getting back to business. Masks protect others by creating a barrier against droplets from your mouth when you breathe, speak, and cough, but offer a lot less protection to you unless you’re wearing a proper N95 respirator and face shield. Here in Asia, we’ve been wearing masks for years, sometimes if your city has bad pollution, but also if we feel sick- to make sure our colleagues and classmates don’t catch anything from us. So we’ve got a lot of mask experience. One thing that you’ll see on a lot of masks is this exhaust or check valve. That’s a problem.

04:13 - In a hospital ICU, sometimes they are ok- that’s up to hospital administers, but for the public, at soon as you are letting out unfiltered exhalations, you defeat most of the purpose of wearing a mask. They do make it easier to breathe if you are painting, or doing woodwork, but aren’t great when you are wearing a mask for public health reasons. So we’re going to look as how they work, and how they can be disabled to make a mask or respirator more suitable for public health applications. This is what’s called a half-face respirator, I like this particular model because you can just open it up and just replace the N95 filter paper without having to buy a whole wasteful plastic cartridge. And the whole mask can be dunked in a bleach solution to clean it.

05:10 - These are for trades, construction, and so on. So they are comfortable to wear all day. If you look at the silicone gasket on it- see how far that moves? That’s the big issue with 3D printed masks. Even if you use a little foam window gasket, they just don’t have enough deflection to conform to many faces so you are looking at a time-consuming custom fitting for each one. With a commercial half-face respirator it will fit almost anyone with a really good, safe seal. Looking inside we can see the check valve and that thin piece of soft plastic that makes it work one way.

05:55 - So you can breathe out the valve, but not in. There are a few ways to disable it. Some people just tape over it- the thing with that is to be careful what tape you use. The adhesive can have a strong chemical odor and taste that gets the back of your throat definitely doesn’t seem healthy. I found it better to use super glue and let it cure and out-gas for at least 48 hours. No really- don’t try to use it right after the glue dries, it will still be outgassing, you’ll regret it.

06:31 - The problem with disabling the check valve is the filters are designed to be one way and the moisture from your breath makes them less efficient. So you can get CO2 build up. Which can be a pretty bad thing. So what I’m going to do is use this inexpensive carbon dioxide and oxygen meter I bought on Taobao, to get a very, very rough idea of what’s in the air I’m breathing with the check valve disabled, and see if I should expect problems from it. The only problem is it’s designed to measure the air quality in a room, and it’s much to big to fit in a mask. It just has these little vents on the side. So I need to find a way to get it to sample air from the mask, and give me a ballpark idea what’s going on.

07:25 - Now I have this little blower which was part of an air filter that didn’t work very well. So I’m going to recycle that and 3D print an enclosure for it. Okay, the glue has cured overnight and I am going to use some putty to attach the gas meter on the blower. I am not going to use glue or anything like that. I don’t want to mess it up, maybe I will use it on something else later. Okay, then just a little bit of tape on the vent. Very, very important warning here. I’m strapping something airtight to my face- this isn’t like other DIY projects. The list of people who have killed themselves historically messing around with homemade diving helmets and respirators is a long one. Don’t go experimenting with this alone in your basement or garage, have someone keep you company. Don’t assume you’d have typical symptoms or enough time to yank it off- accidents happen.

10:16 - Maybe O2 is too low, maybe CO2 is too high, maybe you slip and hit your head and are unconscious and you can’t take it off- stuff happens. I usually shoot alone, but today I’ve got a henchman waiting off camera if I miscalculate make sure you take similar precautions. Obviously better CO2 clearance but nothng crazy. I think we can say it’s okay to disable the check valve. Now those are serious looking pieces of equipment- maybe not a fashion statement. But they’re an important option to explore when we consider shortages. But what about going about daily life? We might be wearing masks for a while, no one knows. Maybe the new normal is masks? My friends at Wearme.com have an online store devoted entirely to wearable electronics and sent me this really, really cool mask- it has bone conduction headphones built in. Now that’s practical, lets try it out. Okay, this is the mask, you can see it has the metal piece on the nose.

12:34 - On the side it has bone conduction speakers, on the other side, there are power button and volume button. I already connected it with the bluetooth so I can play music. Let me put it on first. You can’t hear it but I can and right now it’s playing the music. It’s actually not bad. I thought it would be… Actually I quite like it. If you want one, I am going to put the Wearme store link in the description box. Oh, you can also disable the check valve if you want to be extra careful This one is a lot of fun. This is the LED mask.

13:44 - You see, it changes to different colors and different patterns as I recall. Now it is flashing. It’s just like the normal mask. I can breath in, breath out normally, no problem. It doesn’t feel like anything. Two things that bother a lot of people is it can be harder to understand people if you don’t see their lips moving, and masks can be a little hard to breathe through. This mask tries to solve that, it’s clear and has a small electric blower to bring in fresh air. Let’s try it. The big problem here is the same as with a lot of 3D printed masks the gasket just doesn’t have enough deflection to seal to the face very well.

15:16 - I can feel air coming in and out all around the edges of the mask. Maybe if someone redesigned it with a larger silicone gasket. I’m not going to test it with the meter because I don’t want to drill a hole in it. What about this? What, don’t want to look like a pig? These were actually designed for pollution, I guess the idea is you breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Useless for our purposes, but still funny.

16:00 - This is a style of mask I really like and sometimes wear if I’m going for a long walk, or doing something that will have me breathing too hard for a regular mask. So this has a filter and an electric blower you put on your arm, and it feeds fresh filtered air to the mask. Now some air does leave through the edges of the mask so it’s not perfect, but for people who just can’t breathe through a mask it’s a good option and still provides a good barrier against droplets. But what about protecting your eyes and face? Don’t worry- we’ve got you. For a while, when it was bad I wore a mask and this jacket to the market.

16:51 - It doesn’t fog up for me? But I sent some to Limor and Phil at Adafruit to test, if it’s good they might stock them. Another option that’s become popular is these hats. They are comfortable and have enough air circulation that they don’t fog up. These are great. Adafruit has these in their store right now, I’ll put the link in the description below. Ok, I hope that was fun and interesting. There’s a lot of options out there as soon as supply lines are a little better. Please hang in there, we can get through this. Again please support my friends in American manufacturing and consider buying an Adafruit gift certificate. Until next time, if I can do it, anyone can do it! .