You’ve likely heard this hauntingly beautiful question echo through a song at some point in your life. While the artist behind it may have intended a different meaning, for Brian Angoda, it struck a more literal — and urgent — chord.
During an insightful conversation, Brian shared his journey as the engineer behind CODETECT, an indoor air quality monitoring device designed for the Geospatial Data and Computational Intelligence Laboratory (GDCI) at Makerere University, under the stewardship of Professor Tonny J. Oyana and Dr. Steven Eyobu.
In response to the rising tide of respiratory illnesses such as asthma, COPD, lung cancer, and infections — issues that are becoming increasingly prevalent across African populations — Brian and the GDCI team set out to build a low-cost solution targeting indoor air quality. CODETECT was born from that mission.
Built to support Sustainable Development Goal 3 (Good Health and Well-being), CODETECT is more than a prototype; it’s a proactive health shield. It continuously monitors carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, dust, and pollution levels, relaying critical data through IoT technology to a secure remote server. This data, once aggregated, fuels advanced analytics and generates real-time alerts when air quality breaches safe thresholds — offering users timely intervention against silent indoor health hazards.
For Brian, this project wasn’t just a technical milestone. It was a personal growth journey. From enhancing his teamwork and collaboration skills to learning the invaluable importance of due diligence — knowing what to look for, where to source components, and how to mitigate hardware challenges — CODETECT was both a lesson and a leap forward.
As he reflected, Brian expressed deep excitement about the potential of CODETECT:
“This prototype could really go far in detecting and preventing the hazards hidden in the very air we breathe indoors.”
Indeed, the question “How do I breathe?” now carries new weight — and with innovators like Brian leading the charge, we’re a step closer to breathing a little easier.
By Brian Angoda Nyanga – Software/ML Engineer | Microservices | Embedded Systems
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