20 ms·

The hidden cost of air quality monitoring

606 points by ahaucnx 3y ago

accrual 3y ago
I was thinking about getting a SAF Aranet4 recently but looks like you're tied to their app to viewing the data. This article helped me second guess my choice. I would much rather such a nice looking device have a simple API that some docker container can query and present a UI for, and/or would integrate with HomeKit or HomeBridge which it looks like it does not. Does HN have any recommendations? Should I even bother with optimizing another metric beyond "open the windows every couple hours", assuming outdoor AQI is OK?
- vosper 3y ago
  I have no affiliation with Air Gradient (who wrote TFA) but I recently assembled one of their DIY devices (the Pro Pre-soldered version) and I'm quite happy with it. > Since the AirGradient DIY Pro Kits are fully open-cource [sic] you can send the data to any server, i.e. Home Assistant If you can put lego together you can assemble this device, and the price is right IMO, especially compared to competitors. I don't think it's as compact or good looking as an Aranet 4, and it's not portable unless you use a battery bank, but's it half the price. https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ https://www.airgradient.com/kits/
- throwaranay4933 3y ago
  You're not limited to the Aranet4 app. The device speaks Bluetooth and there are Python and Go libraries for parsing the protocol. There is also a Prometheus exporter for it.
  - lilyball 3y ago
    Home Assistant already has an integration to read from it as well.
    - secabeen 3y ago
      You will need a BT -> HA relay, but you can do that with any ESP32 board and ESPHome.
      - lilyball 3y ago
        I'm running hass on a raspberry pi 4 and its built-in bluetooth works fine, no extra setup needed.
      - silversmith 3y ago
        Only for huge distances. I have mine connected directly to the BT of the mini pc I use to host HA.
        secabeen 3y ago
        Yeah, I'm running HA on the server that I use for all home services, so I needed the BT relay.
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  These Airgradient blog posts are great marketing because they give people like me a chance to talk about how good their devices are :) I put together an Airgradient Basic based on their PCB design, a slightly more accurate temp/humidity sensor (in retrospect probably not worth it), and the USB-C version of the microcontroller they recommended at the time. Soldering everything took an hour or so, and I also 3d printer a case. IMO the display doesn't look as nice as an Eink would (a la the Aranet), but it probably wouldn't be too difficult to mod one in. However I don't actually look at the display much, I have it hooked up into Home Assistant so I can check everything on my phone. Granted, the main lesson I've learned is the one you mentioned: open the windows every once in a while, especially if the oven or stove are on. It was also cool to validate that my air purifier actually works.
  - accrual 3y ago
    That validation does sound very worthwhile. Thanks for the reply and suggestion!
- stavros 3y ago
  I got an IKEA air quality sensor for $50. It reports readings over Zigbee (PM 2.5 and tVOC, along with temperature and humidity), which is great. The PM2.5 reading is within 2-3 μm/m3 of my laser sensor that I got off of Ali, so quite accurate.
  - voxelghost 3y ago
    >within 2-3 μm/m3 of .. had me confused for longer than I like to admit, I assume you meant μg/m3?
    - stavros 3y ago
      Oops, yes, thank you.
- lxchase 3y ago
  I have a Aranet4 linked with home assistant. For quick glances at trends though their app is perfectly fine in my opinion.
- ahaucnx 3y ago
  Achim from AirGradient here. The open source nature of our air quality monitor kits give you a number of choices for data transfer. You can use the monitor and send the data directly to your end point, e.g. through ESPHome or just change our default firmware and change the http post endpoint to your own server. Alternatively, if you want to use the AirGradient dashboard, we do also have an API that you can access your own data.
  - ck2 3y ago
    Achim not sure if you'll see this but an idea to really make AirGradient take off in the USA nationally on your https://map.airgradient.com/ https://map.airgradient.com/ You should contact the national public WeatherSTEM program! They have a great open-data network in all kinds of public community places like universities and firehouses and such. But WeatherSTEM does not have air quality sensors! That is a huge oversight. If your hardware can be paired with all their rigs nationally, you'd blow away all other services like purpleair overnight. https://www.weatherstem.com/dashboard?public_access_token=e75cd9ae5f91981fbdab9e7abbde8866 https://www.weatherstem.com/dashboard?public_access_token=e7...
    - ahaucnx 3y ago
      Thanks. This looks interesting. I would loved to learn more about it. Could you please contact me? https://www.airgradient.com/support/ https://www.airgradient.com/support/
- tguvot 3y ago
  ecowitt wh45. you can read data from it with rtlsdr usb dongle and rtl_433 program
- r1ch 3y ago
  My Aranet4 has been great, the original batteries lasted well over a year with even with Bluetooth transmissions enabled, which can be read by any BLE application (I use Home Assistant). You only "need" the app for firmware updates, speaking of which, the most recent firmware update seems to have thrown my calibration out of whack as outdoor air now reads 600ppm. Hopefully they fix it soon.
- mischief6 3y ago
  i have the aranet4. it can be used with HomeAssistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/aranet/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/aranet/) and can be tracked using ESPHome bluetooth proxy(https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy.html https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy.html) if you don't have bluetooth on your HA machine. using this, i can view CO2, humidity, pressure and temperature in HA.
- winrid 3y ago
  I have never connected my Aranet4 to anything. I just look at the screen.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
[flagged]
- deadonarrival 3y ago
  capitalism is functioning as designed
  - vba616 3y ago
    Why don't you go harass capitalism instead of people? I question whether a constant barrage of "everything is bad, and you should feel bad about it" is really that profitable or if there is some other reason for it. I used to think, well, this is the world adtech has built, I blame GOOG, but I'm not so sure any more. Aren't people getting desensitized?
    - autoexec 3y ago
      Why are you upset that people keep reminding you about how bad things are instead of being upset that things are bad? If you're sick of hearing about it, why do you think it's the people who point out the badness who are the real problem that needs solving? The entire article here is about how companies are screwing over users who were conned into buying bad products. I'm not blaming the person who wrote the article tho. In fact, I hope there are more articles about this problem so that people can learn about this problem and take steps to improve their situation. In this case, they might do that by refusing to buy things like air quality sensors that require apps and cloud services. I'm grateful that people are pointing out the problems and failures around me, not because I want to "feel bad" but because I want to be "informed and aware and inspired to look for solutions"
      - vba616 3y ago
        If you care about anything, you work on it and you develop knowledge and positive emotions so you can recruit others.
FloatArtifact 3y ago
It's a shame you can't buy there pro circuit board. It's temperature monitoring is more accurate to the replacement of the sensor.
- ahaucnx 3y ago
  Achim from AirGradient. Please contact our support. We will make it available soon.
toomuchtodo 3y ago
Mentioned open data exchange: https://openaq.org/ https://openaq.org/ https://explore.openaq.org/ https://explore.openaq.org/ EPA.gov: A Guide to Siting and Installing Air Sensors https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/guide-siting-and-installing-air-sensors https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/guide-siting-and-inst...
- DannyBee 3y ago
  SCAQMD actually does independent field/lab evals of sensors. http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec
bumby 3y ago
What the article laments seems to be the same business model that building automation systems have been operating under for decades and not specific to air quality. The commercial version usually has the additional downside of very expensive service contracts.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
milofeynman 3y ago
I've been thinking about getting one of these kits for a long time. I was going to buy a kit but they're not on Shopify and I'm in a hurry. I'll buy one tomorrow.
cwkoss 3y ago
Is there anything good samaritan citizens can do locally (on a standard residential lot) to improve the particulate pollution levels outdoors around their house? (and possibly their neighbors' too?). What are the effects of trees/plants on PM2.5 pollution? Are there plants that catch more? Do damp leaves catch more? Does watering plants with a mist pull extra microparticles out of the air vs a stream? (if so, Do plants mind or benefit from the extra stuff in their water?) Are there any "permaculture" solutions for air filtration? Could a filter caked with pm2.5 black carbon and whatnot be useful for anything else? Can I manufacture a filter that will reduce pm2.5 using home grown plant materials? What if I converted a wall of my shed into all filtration material, made it airtight, and pushed air out the other side of the shed under solar power? How would 100sqft of filter give flexibility of filter media? If I made a giant/parallelized bong in my backyard that constantly pulled air through water to try to catch microparticles, how big would it have to be to have an appreciable effect? Would ground charcoal in the water help?
- aidenn0 3y ago
  Don't use leaf blowers; those are a huge source of outdoor particulates.
  - cwkoss 3y ago
    I got a rechargeable battery powered leaf blower last year and love it. Plenty powerful for my needs, and ~10 mins is almost always plenty for all I need to get stuff cleaned up. But i suppose they might temporarily kick up a bunch of dust, regardless of power source...
    - cowsandmilk 3y ago
      > they might temporarily kick up a bunch of dust To me, this is why raking just makes sense. I can’t stand the dust from leaf blowers. And often, just mowing over the leaves is adequate and better for the environment.
      - 3y ago
crazygringo 3y ago
So who is the "one of the largest air quality monitoring manufacturer in the world" they are referring to but not by name? Awair seems to be the best-known consumer brand (?). I use an Awair Element which works great and has no subscription fee for the associated app or local API functionality, so it doesn't seem like it could be them?
- roseway4 3y ago
  PurpleAir?
- wheelie_boy 3y ago
  I would have thought that purpleair was the best-known consumer brand. It looks like this May they introduced API pricing? But honestly, it still seems very reasonable https://community.purpleair.com/t/api-pricing/ https://community.purpleair.com/t/api-pricing/
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- benwr 3y ago
  Maybe IQAir? They do have paid plans, it looks like.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    I have an IQAir monitor, but their whole system seems like a PurpleAir copycat. Right now, most of the data on their maps comes from PurpleAir sensors, and it's likely that it's PurpleAir that doesn't care for that. That said, IQAir is kind of crazy to me. They launched a new dashboard which has a "view as TV dashboard" button, but doesn't let you click it unless you upgrade your plan. The local data access situation is also unclear to me; I bought the sensor after reading that it has a Samba server, but it requires the indoor monitor to display the password to you. I opened a support case to get the password for local analysis, but am beginning to feel like they're not going to give it to me. (Who wouldn't want an indoor air quality monitor? Well I already have one. I've cared about indoor air quality forever, but after wondering for two days why the sky was a weird shade of yellow, I wanted to keep an eye on outdoor air quality as well.) In that case, it will be UART time. It's definitely Linux running an out-of-date unpatched Samba. Won't be at all difficult to get my data, I'm guessing. The question is... why do they think there's money in a cloud service that shows you dashboards of your own data? They should be bending over backwards to accommodate anyone that wants to contribute to their public site; they are way behind PurpleAir there. TL;DR I'm certain that PurpleAir is the unnamed company in this article. IQAir is too new to be relevant in the space.
Havoc 3y ago
I managed to find some cheap <20 SDC41 sensors on aliexpress (they’re normally closer to 50). True co2, not equivalent like say the bme680. Previously used equivalent ones and the data is tangibly better. Highly recommend. Can’t figure out a good way to do pm2.5 without a whiny fan though. The unit I’ve got has a barely audible high pitched whine
- currio 3y ago
  Can you post links here. I bought one in AliExpress and the readings were highly variable when there was no change in quality (as far as I can tell. Outdoor weather hasn't changed. I didn't cook, etc..)
- breput 3y ago
  I have built CO2 monitors using MH-Z19B, Senseair S8 (same detector used in the AirGradient kits), and the SDC41 modules and my favorite is the S8. It seems equally accurate to the SDC41 and is easier to keep calibrated. It also has a pin that is enabled when the CO2 level exceeds 1000 ppm so you can build a useful monitor using nothing more than an LED and an old USB power adapter.
  - ahaucnx 3y ago
    Yes I agree. The SenseAir S8 is probably the best of the three. The SCD41 gives similar values indoors but at lower concentrations outdoors it seems to become less accurate. The MH-Z-19 is also pretty good but I think the S8 has a better built quality and less noise in the measurements.
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  My home brew weather/air quality station is seemingly totally silent, though the PM sensor does have a fan. I've never heard it. https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-monitoring-station-with-esp8266-and-home-assistant/ https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-...
  - djmips 3y ago
m463 3y ago
> The Questions You Should Ask Very carefully chosen questions that tiptoe around the elephant in the room "Does my data stay local, and do I opt-IN to sending it to your servers?"
- autoexec 3y ago
  My rule is: "Never buy hardware that requires an app or the cloud in order to be functional" I'm sure someone somewhere has some weird specific case which requires an exception to that rule, but I sure don't.
- ShakataGaNai 3y ago
  On the kits page it says >24 months AirGradient data platform (or connect it to your own server, e.g. home assistant) and >Fully open-source code so you can easily make adjustments So clearly you do have the option.
londons_explore 3y ago
The other cost: Typically the solution to high CO2 in indoor air is to exchange it with outdoor air. Most users will open a window. The energy cost of that is relatively huge, when room air is heated or cooled. In modern eco buildings, there might be counterflow heat exchangers - those can recover 80+% of the heat - but still, the energy loss through air exchange can quickly add up to be a major component of the buildings energy bill. I believe we should work towards buildings that don't exhaust dirty air to the environment. Throwing away contaminated stuff and letting nature deal with it is 1900's thinking. We should instead break that CO2 back into oxygen, filter the dust, and remove VOC's. We should fix the air, not replace it. So far, to my knowledge, nobody does this except on submarines.
- ShakataGaNai 3y ago
  Submarines don't turn CO2 back into O2. They "scrub" the CO2 out using Soda Lime (or similar). They use electrolysis or oxygen candles to generate new oxygen. https://www.analoxgroup.com/blog/how-do-you-breath-onboard-submarine https://www.analoxgroup.com/blog/how-do-you-breath-onboard-s... After the soda lime is maxed out, it's tossed. At least so far as I understand you can't meaningfully re-use it for scrubbing, though there are other industrial uses where it can be re-purposed. Also O2 electrolysis takes a fairly substantial amount of electricity, which is OK when you've got a nuclear generator on your hands. So.... it's a lot cheaper (and more environmentally friendly) to use an ERV system in your HVAC system even at "only" 80% recovery. Let the plants do what they are good at and deal with capturing CO2 and giving us O2. The problem is we don't generally build insulated enough or tight enough houses to matter. If everything was built to passive house standard, we'd save HUGE amounts of energy globally.
  - rascul 3y ago
    > After the soda lime is maxed out, it's tossed. At least so far as I understand you can't meaningfully re-use it for scrubbing, though there are other industrial uses where it can be re-purposed. Does it get re-purposed? Is there an issue to "tossing" it out of the sub while submerged?
djbusby 3y ago
This was the coolest one on Pi I saw http://airpi.es/ http://airpi.es/ Had a cool hw kit but sadly not anymore. All the specs are published so clones are trivial.
- throwoutway 3y ago
  Looks like the APIs are down too. Clicked several and they are all responding with: > Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined constant "php" in /home/public/feed.php:1 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in /home/public/feed.php on line 1
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
These don’t need to be cloud services. Don’t connect shit to the internet, and then the manufacturer can’t disable it.
- lumiukko 3y ago
  Or use open solutions that you can connect to any service on the internet you want, even your own. As my citizen science example somewhere.
ahaucnx 3y ago
Achim from AirGradient here. Nice to see my blog post getting some attention. I think the underlying picture here really is that I and my co-founder are both heavily affected by air pollution in Northern Thailand and are seeing how it affects the health of thousands of people. We believe strongly that air quality monitoring should be affordable so that people from poorer regions and countries can afford air quality monitoring and thus protect their health by knowing when the air quality turns bad. This is one of the reasons why we open-sourced our air quality designs [1] and are working with many NGOs and Universities to bring accurate low-cost air quality monitoring to underserved communities around the world. Since we are a self-funded company we do not have pressure to maximize profit but can work under the mantra "Impact first (and profit will follow if we do a good job)." By the way, if you work in air quality research, we are currently running a global co-location test program and are interested in additional partners [2]. [1] https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ [2] https://www.airgradient.com/research/ https://www.airgradient.com/research/
- daveisfera 3y ago
  What’s your thought on that air quality monitor released by Amazon? I’d love to see the cost come down even more, but it looks like the most affordable option on the market right now
- garfieldnate 3y ago
  Where are the actual source code and hardware designs? Being marketed as open source, I expect a link to repositories in the footer at least.
- throwoutway 3y ago
  This looks really cool! Could you confirm one thing though, which I can't find on your site after ~5 minutes of searching? Do your PM2.5 sensors truly measure PM2.5 or is it doing an approximation based on factors (many sensors supposedly do this). If it's the former, it might be useful to make that more clear on your site as I could not confirm it.
  - 3y ago
hillacious 3y ago
Does anybody know of something similar but for water quality monitoring?
kingsloi 3y ago
I run a lil air quality sensor in the Miller neighbourhood of Gary, IN. I started off with a PurpleAir II, then higher tech monitor from AQMesh for a few months, and now I operate another higher tech monitor from a local company in Valparaiso, IN called Sensit Technologies, which they generously donated. I also operate a AIS boat tracker from FleetMon. I did track aircraft flying to/from ORD/MDW/GYY, and also the local train operator SouthShore line have an open API (I wish the other tracks, Norfolk Southern, would have an API!) I built a crappy lil frontend/api using Express and do plan to continue to work on it and track more stuff, hopefully more people with use it. Hopefully it convinces some more citizen scientists to run their own (bring your own cloud & hardware) https://millerbeach.community https://millerbeach.community It's actually had a lot of visits recently due the the BP oil refinery leaking SO2 after a recent storm [1], and now the Canadian wildfires bringing that PM our way, our air quality is the worst it's been since I've started to track it. I was hoping to figure out how to turn the years of data into an infographic, or use AI to digest the data and generate a bunch of useful data points/stats. If anyone knows of an easy way, rather than creating the queries by hand! https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor [1] https://abc7chicago.com/sulfur-smell-indiana-bp-refinery-whiting-gas-leak-porter-county/13428050/ https://abc7chicago.com/sulfur-smell-indiana-bp-refinery-whi...
- throwaway24124 3y ago
  This is an awesome project, I would love to do something similar for my community. Great UX design too. FYI, the trends and weather modals aren't loading data (possibly because of the darksky.net API cutoff?)
  - kingsloi 3y ago
    Hey I appreciate that, just been tinkering with it as I added more to it... it's came a long way from when I ran a simple PurpleAirII! Yeah I'm working on the Darksky replacement, but the trends issues is because of another hidden cost of air quality monitoring: lots of data! My mongo queries aren't the most efficient and for the past week or two I must have topped a Mongo/RAM issue and my DO box is running into memory issues. I'll hopefully get that fixed soon! Especially now, it's a cool lil feature as you can see around what day/time we first started to get hit with the CA wildfire smoke. Feel free to pull it and add to it as you want! You could probably just use a PurpleAirII monitor near you and use that as for your AQI until you get something else, and disable all the other stuff (boats, advisories, etc), and keep traffic, planes, air quality. That's kinda how I've been doing it anyway.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
This reminds me of how Strava encourages users to tick the "share my data with city transportation planners" box and make it sound to users like they're awesome dudes who share this data to be great citizens helping out The Cause for alternative transportation. ...and then I talked to an urban planner who told me that: * Strava's data was worthless to them, mostly because the vast majority of transportation riders do not even remotely care about mapping their transportation riding so there isn't much data and it has a huge skew toward the riding habits of white, wealthy, tech bros and social media gals. The kind of people who are already well-represented at community meetings, emailed surveys, and traffic counts centered around 9-5 commuters. It's the "invisible" commuters - migrant, blue collar, service industry - especially shift workers - who are difficult to try and find/count. They can't afford to show up to 4pm city hearings, may not speak english, or it simply never occurs to them to look for any of this and bike advocacy orgs have historically done a terrible job of outreach (many are aware of this and have been trying to work on it, or at least try to account for the bias.) * The data isn't provided free of charge, and in fact its provided at prohibitively expensive rates compared to other data sources, even for a relatively small city. I don't remember the exact figures, but I believe for a east coast small city it was "approaching a mile of bike lane" costs, ie tens of thousands of dollars.
sliken 3y ago
A sadly common patterns, reduced API access, worse free plan, and increasing costs. Reminds me of Redhat and Reddit. I just wanted to mention airthings. Turn key, cloud enabled, and "just works". But also has a github repo with examples for importing data into graphana, reading data from into a Raspberry Pi, etc. Said tools talk directly to the device, so you can skip the cloud completely. I've got one gateway (if you plug in a usb-c power source) it reads data from the devices over bluetooth then uploads to the cloud. But you can do similar with a Pi. Then distribute the bluetooth sensors around the house. I was surprised to get good coverage over 3 floors of a house with BLE to a single gateway. View plus is the gateway (when it has USB-c power, otherwise just a sensor), has radon, PM 2.5, CO2, temp, VOCs, air pressure, and humidity. It just works. Wave plus is the similar without the gateway, it has radon, CO2, temp, VOCs, air pressure, and humidity. Nice quality hardware that "just works" out of the box with a free cloud, but you can later import the data directly (not a cloud download) into graphana or similar. The batteries last a year or so, as advertised. The app is decent, and there's a web dashboard for more control of the presentation. Github repos at https://github.com/Airthings https://github.com/Airthings
- yuuuuuuuu 3y ago
  > I just wanted to mention airthings. Turn key, cloud enabled, and "just works". Cloud. As soon as it's in the cloud, it's not yours. Just a matter of time for the next round of closing some API and boom there goes your access to data.
  - sliken 3y ago
    That's optional, you can skip the cloud and download the data directly from the device over bluetooth and dump it into graphana or whatever floats your boat.
    - chromatin 3y ago
      IMO it’s absurd that you cannot download over your local LAN and have to rig up a Raspberry Pi (or similar) to read via BLE. That turned me off, although I’m still looking for a sensor with radon.
seventytwo 3y ago
Sounds ripe for competition
purpleidea 3y ago
If it's not PoE, I'm really not interested. Nice idea though. I'd love something with an open, local API, that looks as nice as the awair products, but not cheaper and PoE!
- throw9away6 3y ago
  Poe would really be a nice touch but I don’t think the microcontroller is setup for that. You would need a different microcontroller
w-ll 3y ago
the irony on a substack... the hidden cost of me scrolling and closing the tab
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
I dont need oled display, data platform or any kind of connectivity. How much such stripped down version would cost?
- ahaucnx 3y ago
  Without display and any kind of connectivity, how do you know the air quality data then?
  - cuu508 3y ago
    I think parent means they do not need OLED display. There are cheaper display types.
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
      yes. any cheap low power usage display would do.
tivert 3y ago
It's not capitalism if someone's not trying to suck you dry.
ck2 3y ago
There needs to be open-source air quality monitoring in every public K-12 nationwide in the USA and the data should be available in realtime to everyone. Kind of like this but way way way more sensors and data https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1 https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1 Feds need to fund this pronto.
sacnoradhq 3y ago
Plantower PMSnnnn modules are pretty damn cheap, easy-to-use, and have had the same interfaces for decade+. The issue is that end consumers downstream aren't demanding cloudless/optional and FOSS solutions, and so are buying their own latent footguns and landmines. This seems a perfect area in r2r, privacy, and fair play for regulators to insist on stable consumer interfaces, documented formats, circuit schematics, and repair parts available to all to level the playing field and reduce e-waste.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > consumers downstream aren't demanding cloudless/optional and FOSS solutions Are we surprised?
ZacnyLos 3y ago
Looks like this polish startup Airly: https://airly.org/en/ https://airly.org/en/
- tajchert 3y ago
  Airly is extremely blocking access to their data. They boast with "open data" but their API is extremely restrictive (ToS) as well limited (ex. how much data you can get and how often), terms of service are very complicated and change often without notice. Airly is exactly a case how we should NOT monitor air quality as this company sells cheap stations to (mostly) government with then high monthly fees and with closed access to data obtained from those stations, while at the same time saying words such as "open data". Source: I'm author of Kanarek mobile app, and had a "pleasure" to work with them. https://spidersweb.pl/2018/01/kanarek-airly-smog-w-polsce.html https://spidersweb.pl/2018/01/kanarek-airly-smog-w-polsce.ht...
mikeytown2 3y ago
Is there a way to get air quality via an api in the US that doesn't require api keys? weather.gov is one example of what I'm sorta looking for. I have a shell script [1] that gets weather and solar radiation from free and open APIs. Adding in some sort of air quality index would be great. [1] https://github.com/mikecarper/bondhome/blob/main/weather.sh https://github.com/mikecarper/bondhome/blob/main/weather.sh
- joecool1029 3y ago
  Maybe https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/air-quality-api https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/air-quality-api
  - mikeytown2 3y ago
    Thanks for sharing that! I think it'll work
moneywoes 3y ago
Good example of content marketing
kimi 3y ago
This one is an EU-sponsored open-source platform: https://airsenseur.org/website/ https://airsenseur.org/website/
- wuming2 3y ago
  2015 seems to mark the beginning and mostly the end of the project. Another EU taxpayers money throwaway subsidy I believe.
lumiukko 3y ago
It seems this wasn't mentioned before, but in Germany some communal open data labs created instructions on how to build an air quality sensor setup and a corresponding map visualizing the results (all over the world by now). https://sensor.community/en/ https://sensor.community/en/ Original page (only in German?) https://luftdaten.info/ https://luftdaten.info/ Map: http://deutschland.maps.sensor.community/ http://deutschland.maps.sensor.community/
przmk 3y ago
I had my eyes on some AirGradient kits but it seems like you can't buy them in the EU directly and, unfortunately, customs fees are way too high for it to get shipped. Does anyone know where I could find them or if there are other open alternatives?
- ahaucnx 3y ago
  We currently sell only out of Thailand but most of our customers in the EU and the US do not get charged any custom fees.
  - przmk 3y ago
    That's interesting. How does that work? Since July 2021 (iirc), customs fees are mandatory for every single purchase made out of the EU.
hettygreen 3y ago
I live in an area where there is no air quality monitoring stations nearby, and was thinking about setting up my own little station to contribute the data. I mostly look at aqicn.org and wondering if the airgradient kits can share data with that website? I think I need someone to explain to me how some of these open source air quality monitors share their data and what websites can use the data.
- ahaucnx 3y ago
  We are currently integrating our data with openAQ [1] and then people can opt in to share data with openAQ and many map applications use that data. [1] https://openaq.org/ https://openaq.org/
vba 3y ago
Air quality is something I've been thinking about more and more. I'm currently mostly in Bangkok and now I check the air quality (aqair) before I exercise outdoors, and often end up skipping. Though I haven't looked into it deeply, I'd love to see some trustworthy conclusions about how I'm affecting my future health by living in Bangkok. I've really come to miss the Pacific Northwest partly because of the clean air (except, of course, during the wildfire seasons) I'm building a house in Bangkok and up in Chiang Mai of all places (see the company is from there) and was thinking of adding some air quality sensors there so will definitely check airgradient's out. If I may ask Achim, do you manufacture in Thailand? What kind of scale you at? No promises, but I have access to some decent sized factories and given your mission, there might be something we can help with.
ndom91 3y ago
Funny this popped up on HN. I just went down this rabbit hole a week or two ago and settled on a Nettigo DIY kit. You solder a few of these sensors together, flash an opensource firmware on the Wemos D1 running the thing and you're good to go. Works out of the box with Homeassistant as well. Looks very similar to this airgradient one. The unit I got has a heating element to combat condensation and the like for outdoor use, humidity and temp sensors, air pressure, and PM2.5 + PM10 https://nettigo.eu/products/nettigo-air-monitor-0-3-base-kit https://nettigo.eu/products/nettigo-air-monitor-0-3-base-kit
KOTYAR 3y ago
Sorry to bother you, but in AirGradient DIY page you mentioned Wemos D1 Mimi clone of D1 Mini - works good with your firmware. Is it still true, or would I run into problems should I buy one for AirGradient?
- ahaucnx 3y ago
  Yes it works good.
teekert 3y ago
I thought this was going to be about “mental cost” of opening the iOS weather app and seeing that you are breathing bad air day in, day out.
crystaln 3y ago
More evidence that the VC model is broken. If every investor wants to 10-100x, every company eventually needs to compromise any semblance of values in order to redeem their latest investors.
- ImaCake 3y ago
  You don't need the pressure of VC capital to have greedy business owners try to do vendor lock-in.
  - crystaln 3y ago
    No you don’t. However the VC model will prevent less greedy business owners from not doing vendor lock-in.
rightbyte 3y ago
Isn't this just an example of "Internet of Shit" gadgets? On the venue subscription based cat feeder. Like, the gadget could just as well run a web server accessable on the wifi or maybe Bluetooth.
- ImaCake 3y ago
  >the gadget could just as well run a web server accessable on the wifi Yes. Consumers with IoT devices know this too - my LIFX bulbs use this trick basically seamlessly. There is vendor lock-in with the LIFX app but you can also use it through home assistant etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hn8305823 3y ago
> It appears that some sensor manufacturers have a strong desire to force people into subscriptions and this is sometimes even a metric mentioned in their annual reports This is a huge problem that goes way beyond the subject of this article. Most companies (especially publicly traded ones) want recurring revenue on their books, not one-time sales. This is why even traditional hardware vendors like Cisco/Juniper try to get as much recurring revenue as possible with subscriptions to unlock ports etc. A CFO explained it to me once that "a dollar of one-time sale contributes 1x to our valuation while a dollar of recurring revenue contributes 17x". I may have translated that wrong but you get the idea.
majkinetor 3y ago
Can anybody recommend good home air monitoring system with option for sending data to some type of local storage and solid local UI? I don't like to use cloud for stuff like that, nor I need mobile access.

606 points by ahaucnx 3y ago

I was thinking about getting a SAF Aranet4 recently but looks like you're tied to their app to viewing the data. This article helped me second guess my choice. I would much rather such a nice looking device have a simple API that some docker container can query and present a UI for, and/or would integrate with HomeKit or HomeBridge which it looks like it does not. Does HN have any recommendations? Should I even bother with optimizing another metric beyond "open the windows every couple hours", assuming outdoor AQI is OK?

vosper 3y ago
I have no affiliation with Air Gradient (who wrote TFA) but I recently assembled one of their DIY devices (the Pro Pre-soldered version) and I'm quite happy with it. > Since the AirGradient DIY Pro Kits are fully open-cource [sic] you can send the data to any server, i.e. Home Assistant If you can put lego together you can assemble this device, and the price is right IMO, especially compared to competitors. I don't think it's as compact or good looking as an Aranet 4, and it's not portable unless you use a battery bank, but's it half the price. https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ https://www.airgradient.com/kits/
throwaranay4933 3y ago
You're not limited to the Aranet4 app. The device speaks Bluetooth and there are Python and Go libraries for parsing the protocol. There is also a Prometheus exporter for it.
- lilyball 3y ago
  Home Assistant already has an integration to read from it as well.
  - secabeen 3y ago
    You will need a BT -> HA relay, but you can do that with any ESP32 board and ESPHome.
    - lilyball 3y ago
      I'm running hass on a raspberry pi 4 and its built-in bluetooth works fine, no extra setup needed.
    - silversmith 3y ago
      Only for huge distances. I have mine connected directly to the BT of the mini pc I use to host HA.
      - secabeen 3y ago
        Yeah, I'm running HA on the server that I use for all home services, so I needed the BT relay.
Rebelgecko 3y ago
These Airgradient blog posts are great marketing because they give people like me a chance to talk about how good their devices are :) I put together an Airgradient Basic based on their PCB design, a slightly more accurate temp/humidity sensor (in retrospect probably not worth it), and the USB-C version of the microcontroller they recommended at the time. Soldering everything took an hour or so, and I also 3d printer a case. IMO the display doesn't look as nice as an Eink would (a la the Aranet), but it probably wouldn't be too difficult to mod one in. However I don't actually look at the display much, I have it hooked up into Home Assistant so I can check everything on my phone. Granted, the main lesson I've learned is the one you mentioned: open the windows every once in a while, especially if the oven or stove are on. It was also cool to validate that my air purifier actually works.
- accrual 3y ago
  That validation does sound very worthwhile. Thanks for the reply and suggestion!
stavros 3y ago
I got an IKEA air quality sensor for $50. It reports readings over Zigbee (PM 2.5 and tVOC, along with temperature and humidity), which is great. The PM2.5 reading is within 2-3 μm/m3 of my laser sensor that I got off of Ali, so quite accurate.
- voxelghost 3y ago
  >within 2-3 μm/m3 of .. had me confused for longer than I like to admit, I assume you meant μg/m3?
  - stavros 3y ago
    Oops, yes, thank you.
lxchase 3y ago
I have a Aranet4 linked with home assistant. For quick glances at trends though their app is perfectly fine in my opinion.
ahaucnx 3y ago
Achim from AirGradient here. The open source nature of our air quality monitor kits give you a number of choices for data transfer. You can use the monitor and send the data directly to your end point, e.g. through ESPHome or just change our default firmware and change the http post endpoint to your own server. Alternatively, if you want to use the AirGradient dashboard, we do also have an API that you can access your own data.
- ck2 3y ago
  Achim not sure if you'll see this but an idea to really make AirGradient take off in the USA nationally on your https://map.airgradient.com/ https://map.airgradient.com/ You should contact the national public WeatherSTEM program! They have a great open-data network in all kinds of public community places like universities and firehouses and such. But WeatherSTEM does not have air quality sensors! That is a huge oversight. If your hardware can be paired with all their rigs nationally, you'd blow away all other services like purpleair overnight. https://www.weatherstem.com/dashboard?public_access_token=e75cd9ae5f91981fbdab9e7abbde8866 https://www.weatherstem.com/dashboard?public_access_token=e7...
  - ahaucnx 3y ago
    Thanks. This looks interesting. I would loved to learn more about it. Could you please contact me? https://www.airgradient.com/support/ https://www.airgradient.com/support/
tguvot 3y ago
ecowitt wh45. you can read data from it with rtlsdr usb dongle and rtl_433 program
r1ch 3y ago
My Aranet4 has been great, the original batteries lasted well over a year with even with Bluetooth transmissions enabled, which can be read by any BLE application (I use Home Assistant). You only "need" the app for firmware updates, speaking of which, the most recent firmware update seems to have thrown my calibration out of whack as outdoor air now reads 600ppm. Hopefully they fix it soon.
mischief6 3y ago
i have the aranet4. it can be used with HomeAssistant (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/aranet/ https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/aranet/) and can be tracked using ESPHome bluetooth proxy(https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy.html https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy.html) if you don't have bluetooth on your HA machine. using this, i can view CO2, humidity, pressure and temperature in HA.
winrid 3y ago
I have never connected my Aranet4 to anything. I just look at the screen.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago

[flagged]

deadonarrival 3y ago
capitalism is functioning as designed
- vba616 3y ago
  Why don't you go harass capitalism instead of people? I question whether a constant barrage of "everything is bad, and you should feel bad about it" is really that profitable or if there is some other reason for it. I used to think, well, this is the world adtech has built, I blame GOOG, but I'm not so sure any more. Aren't people getting desensitized?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Why are you upset that people keep reminding you about how bad things are instead of being upset that things are bad? If you're sick of hearing about it, why do you think it's the people who point out the badness who are the real problem that needs solving? The entire article here is about how companies are screwing over users who were conned into buying bad products. I'm not blaming the person who wrote the article tho. In fact, I hope there are more articles about this problem so that people can learn about this problem and take steps to improve their situation. In this case, they might do that by refusing to buy things like air quality sensors that require apps and cloud services. I'm grateful that people are pointing out the problems and failures around me, not because I want to "feel bad" but because I want to be "informed and aware and inspired to look for solutions"
    - vba616 3y ago
      If you care about anything, you work on it and you develop knowledge and positive emotions so you can recruit others.

FloatArtifact 3y ago

It's a shame you can't buy there pro circuit board. It's temperature monitoring is more accurate to the replacement of the sensor.

ahaucnx 3y ago
Achim from AirGradient. Please contact our support. We will make it available soon.

toomuchtodo 3y ago

Mentioned open data exchange: https://openaq.org/ https://openaq.org/ https://explore.openaq.org/ https://explore.openaq.org/ EPA.gov: A Guide to Siting and Installing Air Sensors https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/guide-siting-and-installing-air-sensors https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/guide-siting-and-inst...

DannyBee 3y ago
SCAQMD actually does independent field/lab evals of sensors. http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec

bumby 3y ago

What the article laments seems to be the same business model that building automation systems have been operating under for decades and not specific to air quality. The commercial version usually has the additional downside of very expensive service contracts.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

milofeynman 3y ago

I've been thinking about getting one of these kits for a long time. I was going to buy a kit but they're not on Shopify and I'm in a hurry. I'll buy one tomorrow.

cwkoss 3y ago

Is there anything good samaritan citizens can do locally (on a standard residential lot) to improve the particulate pollution levels outdoors around their house? (and possibly their neighbors' too?). What are the effects of trees/plants on PM2.5 pollution? Are there plants that catch more? Do damp leaves catch more? Does watering plants with a mist pull extra microparticles out of the air vs a stream? (if so, Do plants mind or benefit from the extra stuff in their water?) Are there any "permaculture" solutions for air filtration? Could a filter caked with pm2.5 black carbon and whatnot be useful for anything else? Can I manufacture a filter that will reduce pm2.5 using home grown plant materials? What if I converted a wall of my shed into all filtration material, made it airtight, and pushed air out the other side of the shed under solar power? How would 100sqft of filter give flexibility of filter media? If I made a giant/parallelized bong in my backyard that constantly pulled air through water to try to catch microparticles, how big would it have to be to have an appreciable effect? Would ground charcoal in the water help?

aidenn0 3y ago
Don't use leaf blowers; those are a huge source of outdoor particulates.
- cwkoss 3y ago
  I got a rechargeable battery powered leaf blower last year and love it. Plenty powerful for my needs, and ~10 mins is almost always plenty for all I need to get stuff cleaned up. But i suppose they might temporarily kick up a bunch of dust, regardless of power source...
  - cowsandmilk 3y ago
    > they might temporarily kick up a bunch of dust To me, this is why raking just makes sense. I can’t stand the dust from leaf blowers. And often, just mowing over the leaves is adequate and better for the environment.
    - 3y ago

crazygringo 3y ago

So who is the "one of the largest air quality monitoring manufacturer in the world" they are referring to but not by name? Awair seems to be the best-known consumer brand (?). I use an Awair Element which works great and has no subscription fee for the associated app or local API functionality, so it doesn't seem like it could be them?

roseway4 3y ago
PurpleAir?
wheelie_boy 3y ago
I would have thought that purpleair was the best-known consumer brand. It looks like this May they introduced API pricing? But honestly, it still seems very reasonable https://community.purpleair.com/t/api-pricing/ https://community.purpleair.com/t/api-pricing/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
benwr 3y ago
Maybe IQAir? They do have paid plans, it looks like.
- jrockway 3y ago
  I have an IQAir monitor, but their whole system seems like a PurpleAir copycat. Right now, most of the data on their maps comes from PurpleAir sensors, and it's likely that it's PurpleAir that doesn't care for that. That said, IQAir is kind of crazy to me. They launched a new dashboard which has a "view as TV dashboard" button, but doesn't let you click it unless you upgrade your plan. The local data access situation is also unclear to me; I bought the sensor after reading that it has a Samba server, but it requires the indoor monitor to display the password to you. I opened a support case to get the password for local analysis, but am beginning to feel like they're not going to give it to me. (Who wouldn't want an indoor air quality monitor? Well I already have one. I've cared about indoor air quality forever, but after wondering for two days why the sky was a weird shade of yellow, I wanted to keep an eye on outdoor air quality as well.) In that case, it will be UART time. It's definitely Linux running an out-of-date unpatched Samba. Won't be at all difficult to get my data, I'm guessing. The question is... why do they think there's money in a cloud service that shows you dashboards of your own data? They should be bending over backwards to accommodate anyone that wants to contribute to their public site; they are way behind PurpleAir there. TL;DR I'm certain that PurpleAir is the unnamed company in this article. IQAir is too new to be relevant in the space.

Havoc 3y ago

I managed to find some cheap <20 SDC41 sensors on aliexpress (they’re normally closer to 50). True co2, not equivalent like say the bme680. Previously used equivalent ones and the data is tangibly better. Highly recommend. Can’t figure out a good way to do pm2.5 without a whiny fan though. The unit I’ve got has a barely audible high pitched whine

currio 3y ago
Can you post links here. I bought one in AliExpress and the readings were highly variable when there was no change in quality (as far as I can tell. Outdoor weather hasn't changed. I didn't cook, etc..)
breput 3y ago
I have built CO2 monitors using MH-Z19B, Senseair S8 (same detector used in the AirGradient kits), and the SDC41 modules and my favorite is the S8. It seems equally accurate to the SDC41 and is easier to keep calibrated. It also has a pin that is enabled when the CO2 level exceeds 1000 ppm so you can build a useful monitor using nothing more than an LED and an old USB power adapter.
- ahaucnx 3y ago
  Yes I agree. The SenseAir S8 is probably the best of the three. The SCD41 gives similar values indoors but at lower concentrations outdoors it seems to become less accurate. The MH-Z-19 is also pretty good but I think the S8 has a better built quality and less noise in the measurements.
acidburnNSA 3y ago
My home brew weather/air quality station is seemingly totally silent, though the PM sensor does have a fan. I've never heard it. https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-monitoring-station-with-esp8266-and-home-assistant/ https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-...
- djmips 3y ago

m463 3y ago

> The Questions You Should Ask Very carefully chosen questions that tiptoe around the elephant in the room "Does my data stay local, and do I opt-IN to sending it to your servers?"

autoexec 3y ago
My rule is: "Never buy hardware that requires an app or the cloud in order to be functional" I'm sure someone somewhere has some weird specific case which requires an exception to that rule, but I sure don't.
ShakataGaNai 3y ago
On the kits page it says >24 months AirGradient data platform (or connect it to your own server, e.g. home assistant) and >Fully open-source code so you can easily make adjustments So clearly you do have the option.

londons_explore 3y ago

The other cost: Typically the solution to high CO2 in indoor air is to exchange it with outdoor air. Most users will open a window. The energy cost of that is relatively huge, when room air is heated or cooled. In modern eco buildings, there might be counterflow heat exchangers - those can recover 80+% of the heat - but still, the energy loss through air exchange can quickly add up to be a major component of the buildings energy bill. I believe we should work towards buildings that don't exhaust dirty air to the environment. Throwing away contaminated stuff and letting nature deal with it is 1900's thinking. We should instead break that CO2 back into oxygen, filter the dust, and remove VOC's. We should fix the air, not replace it. So far, to my knowledge, nobody does this except on submarines.

ShakataGaNai 3y ago
Submarines don't turn CO2 back into O2. They "scrub" the CO2 out using Soda Lime (or similar). They use electrolysis or oxygen candles to generate new oxygen. https://www.analoxgroup.com/blog/how-do-you-breath-onboard-submarine https://www.analoxgroup.com/blog/how-do-you-breath-onboard-s... After the soda lime is maxed out, it's tossed. At least so far as I understand you can't meaningfully re-use it for scrubbing, though there are other industrial uses where it can be re-purposed. Also O2 electrolysis takes a fairly substantial amount of electricity, which is OK when you've got a nuclear generator on your hands. So.... it's a lot cheaper (and more environmentally friendly) to use an ERV system in your HVAC system even at "only" 80% recovery. Let the plants do what they are good at and deal with capturing CO2 and giving us O2. The problem is we don't generally build insulated enough or tight enough houses to matter. If everything was built to passive house standard, we'd save HUGE amounts of energy globally.
- rascul 3y ago
  > After the soda lime is maxed out, it's tossed. At least so far as I understand you can't meaningfully re-use it for scrubbing, though there are other industrial uses where it can be re-purposed. Does it get re-purposed? Is there an issue to "tossing" it out of the sub while submerged?

djbusby 3y ago

This was the coolest one on Pi I saw http://airpi.es/ http://airpi.es/ Had a cool hw kit but sadly not anymore. All the specs are published so clones are trivial.

throwoutway 3y ago
Looks like the APIs are down too. Clicked several and they are all responding with: > Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined constant "php" in /home/public/feed.php:1 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in /home/public/feed.php on line 1

NotYourLawyer 3y ago

These don’t need to be cloud services. Don’t connect shit to the internet, and then the manufacturer can’t disable it.

lumiukko 3y ago
Or use open solutions that you can connect to any service on the internet you want, even your own. As my citizen science example somewhere.

ahaucnx 3y ago

Achim from AirGradient here. Nice to see my blog post getting some attention. I think the underlying picture here really is that I and my co-founder are both heavily affected by air pollution in Northern Thailand and are seeing how it affects the health of thousands of people. We believe strongly that air quality monitoring should be affordable so that people from poorer regions and countries can afford air quality monitoring and thus protect their health by knowing when the air quality turns bad. This is one of the reasons why we open-sourced our air quality designs [1] and are working with many NGOs and Universities to bring accurate low-cost air quality monitoring to underserved communities around the world. Since we are a self-funded company we do not have pressure to maximize profit but can work under the mantra "Impact first (and profit will follow if we do a good job)." By the way, if you work in air quality research, we are currently running a global co-location test program and are interested in additional partners [2]. [1] https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ https://www.airgradient.com/kits/ [2] https://www.airgradient.com/research/ https://www.airgradient.com/research/

daveisfera 3y ago
What’s your thought on that air quality monitor released by Amazon? I’d love to see the cost come down even more, but it looks like the most affordable option on the market right now
garfieldnate 3y ago
Where are the actual source code and hardware designs? Being marketed as open source, I expect a link to repositories in the footer at least.
throwoutway 3y ago
This looks really cool! Could you confirm one thing though, which I can't find on your site after ~5 minutes of searching? Do your PM2.5 sensors truly measure PM2.5 or is it doing an approximation based on factors (many sensors supposedly do this). If it's the former, it might be useful to make that more clear on your site as I could not confirm it.
- 3y ago

hillacious 3y ago

Does anybody know of something similar but for water quality monitoring?

kingsloi 3y ago

I run a lil air quality sensor in the Miller neighbourhood of Gary, IN. I started off with a PurpleAir II, then higher tech monitor from AQMesh for a few months, and now I operate another higher tech monitor from a local company in Valparaiso, IN called Sensit Technologies, which they generously donated. I also operate a AIS boat tracker from FleetMon. I did track aircraft flying to/from ORD/MDW/GYY, and also the local train operator SouthShore line have an open API (I wish the other tracks, Norfolk Southern, would have an API!) I built a crappy lil frontend/api using Express and do plan to continue to work on it and track more stuff, hopefully more people with use it. Hopefully it convinces some more citizen scientists to run their own (bring your own cloud & hardware) https://millerbeach.community https://millerbeach.community It's actually had a lot of visits recently due the the BP oil refinery leaking SO2 after a recent storm [1], and now the Canadian wildfires bringing that PM our way, our air quality is the worst it's been since I've started to track it. I was hoping to figure out how to turn the years of data into an infographic, or use AI to digest the data and generate a bunch of useful data points/stats. If anyone knows of an easy way, rather than creating the queries by hand! https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor [1] https://abc7chicago.com/sulfur-smell-indiana-bp-refinery-whiting-gas-leak-porter-county/13428050/ https://abc7chicago.com/sulfur-smell-indiana-bp-refinery-whi...

throwaway24124 3y ago
This is an awesome project, I would love to do something similar for my community. Great UX design too. FYI, the trends and weather modals aren't loading data (possibly because of the darksky.net API cutoff?)
- kingsloi 3y ago
  Hey I appreciate that, just been tinkering with it as I added more to it... it's came a long way from when I ran a simple PurpleAirII! Yeah I'm working on the Darksky replacement, but the trends issues is because of another hidden cost of air quality monitoring: lots of data! My mongo queries aren't the most efficient and for the past week or two I must have topped a Mongo/RAM issue and my DO box is running into memory issues. I'll hopefully get that fixed soon! Especially now, it's a cool lil feature as you can see around what day/time we first started to get hit with the CA wildfire smoke. Feel free to pull it and add to it as you want! You could probably just use a PurpleAirII monitor near you and use that as for your AQI until you get something else, and disable all the other stuff (boats, advisories, etc), and keep traffic, planes, air quality. That's kinda how I've been doing it anyway.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

This reminds me of how Strava encourages users to tick the "share my data with city transportation planners" box and make it sound to users like they're awesome dudes who share this data to be great citizens helping out The Cause for alternative transportation. ...and then I talked to an urban planner who told me that: * Strava's data was worthless to them, mostly because the vast majority of transportation riders do not even remotely care about mapping their transportation riding so there isn't much data and it has a huge skew toward the riding habits of white, wealthy, tech bros and social media gals. The kind of people who are already well-represented at community meetings, emailed surveys, and traffic counts centered around 9-5 commuters. It's the "invisible" commuters - migrant, blue collar, service industry - especially shift workers - who are difficult to try and find/count. They can't afford to show up to 4pm city hearings, may not speak english, or it simply never occurs to them to look for any of this and bike advocacy orgs have historically done a terrible job of outreach (many are aware of this and have been trying to work on it, or at least try to account for the bias.) * The data isn't provided free of charge, and in fact its provided at prohibitively expensive rates compared to other data sources, even for a relatively small city. I don't remember the exact figures, but I believe for a east coast small city it was "approaching a mile of bike lane" costs, ie tens of thousands of dollars.

sliken 3y ago

A sadly common patterns, reduced API access, worse free plan, and increasing costs. Reminds me of Redhat and Reddit. I just wanted to mention airthings. Turn key, cloud enabled, and "just works". But also has a github repo with examples for importing data into graphana, reading data from into a Raspberry Pi, etc. Said tools talk directly to the device, so you can skip the cloud completely. I've got one gateway (if you plug in a usb-c power source) it reads data from the devices over bluetooth then uploads to the cloud. But you can do similar with a Pi. Then distribute the bluetooth sensors around the house. I was surprised to get good coverage over 3 floors of a house with BLE to a single gateway. View plus is the gateway (when it has USB-c power, otherwise just a sensor), has radon, PM 2.5, CO2, temp, VOCs, air pressure, and humidity. It just works. Wave plus is the similar without the gateway, it has radon, CO2, temp, VOCs, air pressure, and humidity. Nice quality hardware that "just works" out of the box with a free cloud, but you can later import the data directly (not a cloud download) into graphana or similar. The batteries last a year or so, as advertised. The app is decent, and there's a web dashboard for more control of the presentation. Github repos at https://github.com/Airthings https://github.com/Airthings

yuuuuuuuu 3y ago
> I just wanted to mention airthings. Turn key, cloud enabled, and "just works". Cloud. As soon as it's in the cloud, it's not yours. Just a matter of time for the next round of closing some API and boom there goes your access to data.
- sliken 3y ago
  That's optional, you can skip the cloud and download the data directly from the device over bluetooth and dump it into graphana or whatever floats your boat.
  - chromatin 3y ago
    IMO it’s absurd that you cannot download over your local LAN and have to rig up a Raspberry Pi (or similar) to read via BLE. That turned me off, although I’m still looking for a sensor with radon.

seventytwo 3y ago

Sounds ripe for competition

purpleidea 3y ago

If it's not PoE, I'm really not interested. Nice idea though. I'd love something with an open, local API, that looks as nice as the awair products, but not cheaper and PoE!

throw9away6 3y ago
Poe would really be a nice touch but I don’t think the microcontroller is setup for that. You would need a different microcontroller

w-ll 3y ago

the irony on a substack... the hidden cost of me scrolling and closing the tab

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago

I dont need oled display, data platform or any kind of connectivity. How much such stripped down version would cost?

ahaucnx 3y ago
Without display and any kind of connectivity, how do you know the air quality data then?
- cuu508 3y ago
  I think parent means they do not need OLED display. There are cheaper display types.
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
    yes. any cheap low power usage display would do.

tivert 3y ago

It's not capitalism if someone's not trying to suck you dry.

ck2 3y ago

There needs to be open-source air quality monitoring in every public K-12 nationwide in the USA and the data should be available in realtime to everyone. Kind of like this but way way way more sensors and data https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1 https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1 Feds need to fund this pronto.

sacnoradhq 3y ago

Plantower PMSnnnn modules are pretty damn cheap, easy-to-use, and have had the same interfaces for decade+. The issue is that end consumers downstream aren't demanding cloudless/optional and FOSS solutions, and so are buying their own latent footguns and landmines. This seems a perfect area in r2r, privacy, and fair play for regulators to insist on stable consumer interfaces, documented formats, circuit schematics, and repair parts available to all to level the playing field and reduce e-waste.

andsoitis 3y ago
> consumers downstream aren't demanding cloudless/optional and FOSS solutions Are we surprised?

ZacnyLos 3y ago

Looks like this polish startup Airly: https://airly.org/en/ https://airly.org/en/

tajchert 3y ago
Airly is extremely blocking access to their data. They boast with "open data" but their API is extremely restrictive (ToS) as well limited (ex. how much data you can get and how often), terms of service are very complicated and change often without notice. Airly is exactly a case how we should NOT monitor air quality as this company sells cheap stations to (mostly) government with then high monthly fees and with closed access to data obtained from those stations, while at the same time saying words such as "open data". Source: I'm author of Kanarek mobile app, and had a "pleasure" to work with them. https://spidersweb.pl/2018/01/kanarek-airly-smog-w-polsce.html https://spidersweb.pl/2018/01/kanarek-airly-smog-w-polsce.ht...

mikeytown2 3y ago

Is there a way to get air quality via an api in the US that doesn't require api keys? weather.gov is one example of what I'm sorta looking for. I have a shell script [1] that gets weather and solar radiation from free and open APIs. Adding in some sort of air quality index would be great. [1] https://github.com/mikecarper/bondhome/blob/main/weather.sh https://github.com/mikecarper/bondhome/blob/main/weather.sh

joecool1029 3y ago
Maybe https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/air-quality-api https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/air-quality-api
- mikeytown2 3y ago
  Thanks for sharing that! I think it'll work

moneywoes 3y ago

Good example of content marketing

kimi 3y ago

This one is an EU-sponsored open-source platform: https://airsenseur.org/website/ https://airsenseur.org/website/

wuming2 3y ago
2015 seems to mark the beginning and mostly the end of the project. Another EU taxpayers money throwaway subsidy I believe.

lumiukko 3y ago

It seems this wasn't mentioned before, but in Germany some communal open data labs created instructions on how to build an air quality sensor setup and a corresponding map visualizing the results (all over the world by now). https://sensor.community/en/ https://sensor.community/en/ Original page (only in German?) https://luftdaten.info/ https://luftdaten.info/ Map: http://deutschland.maps.sensor.community/ http://deutschland.maps.sensor.community/

przmk 3y ago

I had my eyes on some AirGradient kits but it seems like you can't buy them in the EU directly and, unfortunately, customs fees are way too high for it to get shipped. Does anyone know where I could find them or if there are other open alternatives?

ahaucnx 3y ago
We currently sell only out of Thailand but most of our customers in the EU and the US do not get charged any custom fees.
- przmk 3y ago
  That's interesting. How does that work? Since July 2021 (iirc), customs fees are mandatory for every single purchase made out of the EU.

hettygreen 3y ago

I live in an area where there is no air quality monitoring stations nearby, and was thinking about setting up my own little station to contribute the data. I mostly look at aqicn.org and wondering if the airgradient kits can share data with that website? I think I need someone to explain to me how some of these open source air quality monitors share their data and what websites can use the data.

ahaucnx 3y ago
We are currently integrating our data with openAQ [1] and then people can opt in to share data with openAQ and many map applications use that data. [1] https://openaq.org/ https://openaq.org/

vba 3y ago

Air quality is something I've been thinking about more and more. I'm currently mostly in Bangkok and now I check the air quality (aqair) before I exercise outdoors, and often end up skipping. Though I haven't looked into it deeply, I'd love to see some trustworthy conclusions about how I'm affecting my future health by living in Bangkok. I've really come to miss the Pacific Northwest partly because of the clean air (except, of course, during the wildfire seasons) I'm building a house in Bangkok and up in Chiang Mai of all places (see the company is from there) and was thinking of adding some air quality sensors there so will definitely check airgradient's out. If I may ask Achim, do you manufacture in Thailand? What kind of scale you at? No promises, but I have access to some decent sized factories and given your mission, there might be something we can help with.

ndom91 3y ago

Funny this popped up on HN. I just went down this rabbit hole a week or two ago and settled on a Nettigo DIY kit. You solder a few of these sensors together, flash an opensource firmware on the Wemos D1 running the thing and you're good to go. Works out of the box with Homeassistant as well. Looks very similar to this airgradient one. The unit I got has a heating element to combat condensation and the like for outdoor use, humidity and temp sensors, air pressure, and PM2.5 + PM10 https://nettigo.eu/products/nettigo-air-monitor-0-3-base-kit https://nettigo.eu/products/nettigo-air-monitor-0-3-base-kit

KOTYAR 3y ago

Sorry to bother you, but in AirGradient DIY page you mentioned Wemos D1 Mimi clone of D1 Mini - works good with your firmware. Is it still true, or would I run into problems should I buy one for AirGradient?

ahaucnx 3y ago
Yes it works good.

teekert 3y ago

I thought this was going to be about “mental cost” of opening the iOS weather app and seeing that you are breathing bad air day in, day out.

crystaln 3y ago

More evidence that the VC model is broken. If every investor wants to 10-100x, every company eventually needs to compromise any semblance of values in order to redeem their latest investors.

ImaCake 3y ago
You don't need the pressure of VC capital to have greedy business owners try to do vendor lock-in.
- crystaln 3y ago
  No you don’t. However the VC model will prevent less greedy business owners from not doing vendor lock-in.

rightbyte 3y ago

Isn't this just an example of "Internet of Shit" gadgets? On the venue subscription based cat feeder. Like, the gadget could just as well run a web server accessable on the wifi or maybe Bluetooth.

ImaCake 3y ago
>the gadget could just as well run a web server accessable on the wifi Yes. Consumers with IoT devices know this too - my LIFX bulbs use this trick basically seamlessly. There is vendor lock-in with the LIFX app but you can also use it through home assistant etc.
deleted 3y ago
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hn8305823 3y ago

> It appears that some sensor manufacturers have a strong desire to force people into subscriptions and this is sometimes even a metric mentioned in their annual reports This is a huge problem that goes way beyond the subject of this article. Most companies (especially publicly traded ones) want recurring revenue on their books, not one-time sales. This is why even traditional hardware vendors like Cisco/Juniper try to get as much recurring revenue as possible with subscriptions to unlock ports etc. A CFO explained it to me once that "a dollar of one-time sale contributes 1x to our valuation while a dollar of recurring revenue contributes 17x". I may have translated that wrong but you get the idea.

majkinetor 3y ago

Can anybody recommend good home air monitoring system with option for sending data to some type of local storage and solid local UI? I don't like to use cloud for stuff like that, nor I need mobile access.