Project name: N.I.E.S. (NodeMCU Indoor Environment Sensor)
Description: I’m intrigued by exploring the air and comfort quality in my new home, sparked by ongoing discussions on the subject. My past checks on temperature and humidity have only deepened my curiosity.
Goals: Providing background information about air quality and the describing the road to building a custom in-house air quality sensor
With all the information gathered, let’s start by putting a brainfart brainstorm on paper for what the new sensor should become. As even the European Commission is concerned about our health (LINK and LINK) it’s time to design N.I.E.S.
First, what does it really need to ‘sense’ and what would be ‘cool’ to have as a extra feature if the budget allows.
In my opinion, based on what is read and would practically fit within the budget, NIES should meet the following requirements:
Although it is very probable that not every wish is possible, partly do to the limited budget but also because limited supported sensor with ESP Easy.
I selected a few devices I deemed interesting as a affordable indoor home IAQ (Indoor Air Quality) sensor. Now knowing what to look for and what I like to include in my NIES sensor, I checked these devices with the following checklist:
The following devices are selected for this comparison:
And for the comparison, these are the results, with the uHoo a clear winner and the Foobot on second place for price. Only the Airthings Wave Plus offers a sensor for radiation (Radon) but lacks other important sensors.
In the future I will address these device further and if time (and manufacturer) permits test a few of them…
Besides your own (home) sensors as equipment, more and more efforts are being done to provide real-time insight in your local air quality. I wanted to share a couple of these movements with you.
The World Air Quality Index project is a non-profit project started in 2007. Its mission is to promote Air Pollution awareness for citizens and provide a unified and world-wide Air Quality information.
The project is proving a transparent Air Quality information for more than 80 countries, covering more than 10,000 stations in 1000 major cities, via those two websites: aqicn.org and waqi.info. The founding team is located in Beijing, China and composed of several contributors in the domain Environmental Sciences, System Engineering, Data Science, Machine Learning as well as Visual Design.
The team has been expanding worldwide, and several contributors, located in Singapore, India, Australia and USA are now also supporting the project.
And during my search for this project, I found a really, really, really cool project I like to share with you..
https://github.com/MarcFinns/AtmoScan
The AtmoScan seems to embody everything this project focuses on with only a very few exceptions…
My first problem with the AtmoScan project is that I do not have a good soldering station for SMD soldering nor the experience. But that can be learned with the right equipment, practice and patience…
Second, the project goes way over budget with a total price card of more then € 300,- (see calculation, and I probably forgot parts…).
For that it is a solution to keep in mind and perhaps can teach me some tricks but for now I have to skip this one…
But it’s one to remember and to include in future en-devours!
The Dutch government is also concerned about the air quality so they measure and publish these results on their website.
They measure PM10, NO2 and O3:
https://www.luchtmeetnet.nl/kaart
One last project I would like to share is from our German hackers.
They created a filthy cheap outdoor PM sensor and keeping track of all these sensors online. I probably begun as a small and local pet project but since then, i keeps getting bigger.
You can easily build such a sensor yourself for less then € 25,-. Instructions are found on there website in most world languages
Take a look on there website if you are interested:
https://luftdaten.info/en/home-en/
