More novelty for research idea

[saezealbrecht]

hello everyone!! sooo I'm trying to find a good research topic to work on as a school requirement and all I could think of is this:
ESP32-based smart monitoring system with Adafruit IO

It uses the DHT11  sensor and a PIR motion sensor. It also has an MQ2 gas sensor specifically calibrated for smoke and LPG.

and like- a graph will be shown in the Adafruit IO dashboard with the relevant info such as temperature/humidity and whatnot. Also, you will be notified via email when the temperature/humidity reaches a certain threshold and if there's a gas leak happening. I'm also planning to add a buzzer when this happens.

I've already consulted my research adviser about it and the only comment he gave was that there are already too many of these online and you really can't call it novel anymore.

Do you guys have any ideas on how I can make the research idea more unique or novel? I'm new to all this electronics stuff so finding a good topic proved to be quite a difficult task for me.

[thephil]

My two cents: What you describe sounds like a nice engineering project but not research. In order to turn it into research, you would have to add a scientific question that you want to answer with your project. Maybe you could come up with something interesting that you could measure with your setup (or even a sensor solution off the shelf) and do some data analysis on it in order to answer a research question about temperature, humidity, etc. under specific conditions.

But before believing me, check the actual requirements of your school...