Design and Evaluation of an Affordable Hypoxic Chamber with Comprehensive Environmental Control for Research Applications

PurposeIn-vivo Hypoxia chamber is sought after for research on sleep apnea, among others. Recently hypoxia chambers are utilized to create intermittent hypoxia, thereby utilizing it as a treatment strategy. The commonly used Invivo hypoxic chambers only monitor oxygen levels and fail to read up on vital factors like CO2 buildup, and humidity among others. In addition, these devices are expensive and make them unaffordable for many labs. MethodsHere we report a lab-designed and assembled Arduino microcontroller-based hypoxic chamber with automatic maintenance of O2 level, CO2 level, and Humidity. The entire 650$ setup is inclusive of an Arduino module with sensors for oxygen, CO2, humidity, pressure, and temperature. A detailed software program was also written to help efficiently carry out the parameters set out for use. ResultsThe equipment is capable of automatically regulating the inner environment based on the set parameters. The combined cluster of regulators, efficiently controlled the oxygen levels, CO2 levels, and humidity levels within the experimental parameters. ConclusionThis equipment thus acts as one of the easily reproducible simple assembly units with the integration of complex parameters, thus monitoring and controlling the inner environment with high precision.