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38 The PCB Design Magazine • February 2017 and integrate with all the popular EDA tools to enhance your process efficiency. Beyond 2016, iCD will continue to develop new features to enable productivity gains as new methodolo- gies and technologies arise. PCBDESIGN References 1. Barry Olney's Beyond Design column: Rock Steady Design. 2. A full list of manufacturers and materials available in the iCD Dielectric Materials Library is available here. Barry Olney is managing director of In-Circuit Design Pty Ltd (ICD), Australia. This PCB design service bureau specializes in board-level simulation, and has developed the ICD Stackup Planner and ICD PDN Planner software. To read past columns, or to contact Olney, click here. NEW FUNCTIONALITY IMPROVES DESIGNER'S PRODUCTIVITY This season, assis- tant professor Kerry Kelly and associate professor (lecturer) Tony Butterfield have launched the AirU program for Salt Lake County high schools in which they visit science classrooms to talk about air qual- ity and help students build a functional air pollution detector kit out of toy blocks and an inexpensive computer board. Beginning this month, the professors also will leave their own low-cost portable air-quality sensor with each classroom they visit so students can test and main- tain them as well as collect data for researchers about pollution throughout the Salt Lake Valley. "We started out with candy containers like Tic Tacs and other things and decided that wouldn't work," he says. "Then we realized [toy blocks] were the way to go because they [students] could build them into any shape they want." So far, the team has built 15 kits. The professors use a small fog machine to demonstrate how the sensor works. In addition to the toy-block sensors, Kelly, But- terfield and students from the University of Utah's electrical and computer en- gineering depart- ment also designed and created low- cost portable air pollution monitors that they will be- gin leaving in each classroom they visit. These monitors — about the size of a small box of tissues — are similarly powered by a low-cost computer board but are higher-grade than the toy-block monitors and have sensors that can specifically de- tect and measure particulate matter, temperature, humidity, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. They also are equipped with GPS and will be con- nected to the Internet wirelessly. The professors will ask the students to maintain the sensors and help test their reliability. Ultimately, Butterfield and Kelly want to distrib- ute as many as 50 of their research-grade sensors in schools around Salt Lake County to track pol- lution throughout the valley. They also want to eventually sell the kits for personal home use once they get the cost down. The Building Blocks for Bad Air