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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 h
by 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 agoWhat’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 agoWhere 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 agoThis 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.
- jauer 3y agoTheir website mentions the sensor they use directly on the kits page. It's a Plantower PMS5003 which does actually count particles: https://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/aq-spec/resources-page/plantower-pms5003-manual_v2-3.pdf https://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/aq-spec/resources-p...
- dhhagan 3y agoWhile the spec sheet does say that, it's not actually true. The PMS5003 is a truncated nephelometer (https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/15/655/2022/ https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/15/655/2022/) that measures the total scattered light from all particles with diameters less than ~1 µm. This single scalar value (proportional to the total scattered light, as collected across a wide viewing range) is then correlated to a reference measurement of PM2.5 and typically correlates quite well in most urban areas where PM2.5 and PM1 are highly correlated. For more info on the difference between particle counters and nephelometers in this context, see https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/13/6343/2020/ https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/13/6343/2020/.
- jauer 3y agoTIL! Thank you for the detailed explanation and links to additional context.
- ahaucnx 3y agoWe use the Plantower PMS5003 sensor for PM2.5. This sensor has been extensively tested and is one of the most accurate low cost sensors. All low cost sensors are using the laser scattering technique and thus do approximate the mass and not a direct measurement. However tests show that PM2.5 is the most accurate and often PM10 in these sensors is not very good.
- throwoutway 3y agoThanks for the response!
- 3y ago
- gcanyon 3y agoCongrats on doing important work! I grew up in Southern California back when it was hard to see the mountains ten miles away on bad days. I lived in Bangkok for two years. At the worst of the year I still wandered around maskless, thinking "feels like my childhood!" So for me it really didn't seem that bad, but I'm glad people are taking it more seriously now.
- xctr94 3y agoLooks like a great concept! I found the price relatively high compared to other solutions on the market, aren’t you concerned that you’re touting “affordability” as a selling point?
- ra 3y agoSub $100 USD is a pretty good price. What comparable products have you seen for less?
- ahaucnx 3y agoComparable products are typically 3x or more the price. A lot of costs are not BOM related, e.g. costs for tooling (e.g. plastic mold), certifications, testing & calibration etc.
- yardie 3y agoWhat AQMs are you finding for <$100?
- supermatt 3y agoJust want to say - I received mine yesterday. I was expecting it to be held up in customs but it arrived with no hassle whatsoever via the postal service. I got the presoldered version, kind of expecting it to be 100% assembled, but it was even better that I had to to "plug" the sensors and microcontroller in! It made me feel like I had achieved something myself, and gave an appreciation of how it works :) The quality of the product looks excellent - inside and out. Although maybe some snap-in transparent plastic in front of the display would protect it from accidental damage? Not that there is any reason to ever touch it, so I guess its not really that important. It certainly doesnt detract from the overall build quality. A minor niggle on adding the sensor to the online app - i didn't get any feedback that it had added, and when i tried a second time it told me that it was already added. Also, I cant see a way to add/edit places other than creating the one during setup. Probably a few other minor UX niggles I can send an email if desired? But overall it looks great! I am very interested to see how the air quality changes during the next kiln firings. Thanks!
- ahaucnx 3y agoThanks for the feedback. We are working on making the onboarding easier and also improve the UI in general. Please get in touch with us if you have more feedback (you can use the support form on our website).
- itronitron 3y agoI agree with the mission of your company and hope you find success, however after reading your website's Privacy Policy regarding the sharing of personal information I don't expect to ever revisit your site.
- charcircuit 3y agoI don't see anything unusual there just google analytics and that they comply with law enforcement.
- itronitron 3y agoThe site doesn't provide an option to opt out of advertising/marketing cookies.
- ahaucnx 3y agoWe currently don't do any paid advertising at all. But good point, we will look into this and it's definitely something we can improve.
- artemonster 3y agoIs it hard to skip MCU and output to raspberry?
- tda 3y agoOn a side note, I recently upgraded my airgradient-pro to and esp32 s3 based board (forgot which one but it is pin compatible with the esp8266 it came with). I got everything to work with ESPHome, except for the BSEC version of the BME680 driver (I added a BME60 because I had one lying around. It worked fine with BSEC and ESPHOME on the ESP8266). I was thinking of sharing my experience, but I never got to it
- MegaThorx 3y agoThanks for the awesome DIY version of the air quality monitoring solution. Due to this nice guide I already built 3 of the basic sensors and I just purchased one pro to support your cause.
- ahaucnx 3y agoThank you!
- lwouis 3y agoHello, Thank you for sharing this. I'm genuinely wondering how our nose is not a good enough sensor. Are there common cases that affect large areas like the one you live in, where the pollution is not smellable? Thank you
- gbajson 3y agoIn my area in the winter you always sense air pollution. But with just a nose it's hard to say if it's 100 μg/m3 of or 200 μg/m3 of PM2.5.
- olyjohn 3y agoI never could smell the pollution in Bangkok. I don't think people in LA could smell the smog. Certainly when we had wildfire smoke here near Seattle a couple years ago, I could not always smell it. Sometimes when it was heavy, you could smell smoke right when you went outside, but not always... and your nose gets used to it really quickly. But like, that was pollution you could see, the skies were dark and orange. Not really typical pollution levels that people live in every day.
- kodah 3y agoDo you have any plans to do Radon monitoring? I currently use AirThings Wave+ because of a radon monitoring requirement.
- ahaucnx 3y agoWe are not aware of any suitable radon module on the market that we could easily integrate. I think airthings use their own developed module.
- evandev 3y agoWouldn't it be suitable to use something like ABPMAND001PG2A3[0] And set it up like this[1]? 0: https://www.digikey.com/short/rhbvm452 https://www.digikey.com/short/rhbvm452 1: https://www.instructables.com/Radon-Mitigation-Monitor/ https://www.instructables.com/Radon-Mitigation-Monitor/
- hosteur 3y agoHello. I would love to buy your products. However, I am stopped by the fact that I have to enter email and agree to terms before I can even see shipping options and costs. Please consider making the shopping process easier and more pleasant. I am in EU and concerned that it might not be feasible for me to order your products due to high import fees, tax, customs, VAT, etc. that I would probably need to handle myself. Do you plan on establishing a dealer in EU or a shipping site in EU such that items can be shipped from within EU without customers having to deal with the customs, tax, etc?
- ahaucnx 3y agoCurrently we ship all kits from Thailand but setting up some fulfillment in the US and EU could be something we might do in future. Currently most customers do not get charged customs and VAT.
- louison11 3y agoPlease do! Maybe Amazon is the easiest way to do so? On top of reducing delays, you'd reduce uncertainty. Here in Portugal, the problem isn't really custom fees - but customs completely blocking/losing/returning the product. Really hard to get packages from abroad to get through our super incompetent custom services. But that's not a problem if it comes from within EU.
- lokar 3y agoYou want counterfeits? Selling/buying on Amazon is a good way to get them.
- BizarroLand 3y agoAmazon is terrible for small companies. Sure, it boosts your income and customer reach, but that's just the cheese to get you in the trap. After you are locked into their ecosystem, they prevent you from selling for less elsewhere, even on your own site, they coerce you into paying them ad fees to boost your listing in their search results, and if you don't pay them enough they will put your competitors above you and redirect searches that are specifically for your product to other similar items. Then, if despite all of that you do well, they will find some company in China to make an "Amazon Basics" version of whatever it is that you're selling and then undercut you on price and boost their listings above yours. You might even say that this is a win for consumers since they get fast cheap access to products, but the product quality is always a race to the bottom and because this happens so often it results in the death of product innovation from good companies because they have to spend so much brainpower and energy keeping the Amazon machine happy while it consumes them. Ebay is a little better, but that is also rapidly enshittifying as well.
- RegnisGnaw 3y agoInteresting none of the kits from AirGradient seem to do PM0.3, which is the big thing I want (due to smoke).
- standard_man 3y agoWho sells reliable and accurate sensors for PM1 and smaller? Do they even exist?
- cloudripper 3y agoThank you for sharing more about AirGradient and its origins. I appreciate the impact-driven mission. I will checkout the details of your co-location program and may have a few sites that would be a good fit.
- ahaucnx 3y agoGreat! Please get in touch with us via the support form on our website if it is a fit.
- stinos 3y agoJust wondering, do you have any comments on https://smartairfilters.com/en https://smartairfilters.com/en ? The premise is a bit similar as yours.
- hedora 3y agoI have some (hopefully) constructive criticism. I looked into your product, but needed a monitoring solution, not a hobby project. I ended up paying a bit over $1000 for a (more capable) ambient weather solution, which meets the requirements in your blog post (with the possible exception of repairability). Anyway, I’d have paid about 2x your pre-soldered kit price for a thing that came pre-assembled, with software preloaded, and an idiot proof way to publish the results to local devices and/or cloud services. I am comfortable with soldering irons, writing embedded software, etc. However, I have plenty of money, but no time. I’m sure you could make large margins off of people like me, and plow it back into additional products. Best of luck! You’re doing cool stuff!