Friday, January 15, 2021

Sterilization Box

A project brought to you by the pandemic.

I had been reading about one of the ways to kill the little nasties that tend to make us ill from time to time. One of the ways was to use UVC light. Considering that I am never one to shy away from a project that deals with harmful radiation I decided to build a little sterilization box using a 25 watt germicidal bulb from Amazon, some items around the house, a smart plug, and some Amazon Echo integration.


Here you can see the inside of the sterilization chamber. Nothing special here just lined with tin foil to reflect as much light as possible. The hole is to allow for a shop light to go on top.


Here we see the shop light mounted.


Below is a video of a demonstration. A few things to note. 1. The audio from this clip WILL trigger your echo device if one is in range. It won't do anything since I doubt anyone has the command "STERILIZE" set up. 2.Near the bottom of the box I have a card that lights up when UVC hits it. This tells you "Yes, there is ionizing radiation present." 3. This is a demonstration so I merely set the command up to turn on for light 5 seconds and then turn off. In actual practice the light stays on for a period of time that will allow for proper sterilization based on the specs that come with the bulb.