$230… the sensor monitors:
- particulate matter (PM2.5)
- CO2 concentration
- volatile organic compounds (TVOC)
- nitrogen oxides (NOX)
- temperature
- humidity.
vs IKEA sensor (VINDSTYRKA for $60).
- particles (PM2.5)
- temperature
- relative humidity
- total Volatile Organic Compounds (tVOC)
Fine enough product I suppose… but not sure that those 2 other sensors would ever be worth $170 more for me, especially since I have a CO2 monitor on one of my fire alarms on each floor… and those alarms have a z-wave relay on them. Especially since it’s wifi and I prefer zwave/zigbee to keep the wifi less cluttered. The real site (https://www.airgradient.com/indoor/) mentions pm1 and pm10 but only in like one place and doesn’t go into detail on that sensor in use or anything like that. So not sure about that. 2A power adapter requirement (non-included) seems excessive as well… They do claim that they will never lock in, that nice. They support their own software though… so there’s always that risk I suppose of any ol’ firmware update locking it down, though the certification hopefully proves that this won’t happen. I bet it’s more accurate than the VINDSTYRKA, but I’m not sure how much accuracy people actually need vs just monitoring the trend and triggering on spikes.
I’m more interested in finding an outdoor unit since air quality isn’t often part of any weather station setup. This company has outdoor units, but they’re all cellular and way expensive. Anyone know of a good outdoor unit?
The sensor is open source software and hardware. The hardware platform is standard ESP. It can run ESPHome and in fact there are alternative firmware builds for it. The ESP has serial for software loading. I’m pretty sure they can’t lock it. And if something goes awry with the firmware, we can use ESPHome. The sensors are well defined and can be replaced if they fail.
Has anybody designed a wired PoE version yet?
Apollo Automation
I’m looking on that company’s website but not seeing it. I see the “R PRO-1 PoE mmWave Multisensor” and the “TEMP PRO-1 PoE Temperature and Humidity Sensor,” but those have different capabilities. Apollo’s “AIR-1 Air Quality Sensor” is also WiFi/USB-C power, not PoE.
I haven’t heard of any.
I prefer zwave/zigbee to keep the wifi less cluttered
Just double check that your Zigbee channel doesn’t overlap your 2.4Ghz wifi channel, otherwise Zigbee will clutter the wifi. It’s a common issue! Note that the channel numbers are different too. You should use either wifi channel 1 and Zigbee channel 25, or wifi channel 11 and Zigbee channel 11. Wifi channel 6 isn’t recommended when using Zigbee.
I’ll be honest that I’m real lazy on this and just let the wifi controller choose whatever it thinks is most sane (which hopefully accounts for neighbors and stuff as well). It re-scans nightly and moves if it needs to.
But I have 55 z-wave devices and 12 zigbee… So it should be readily apparent that I don’t have to worry that much about it.
Zigbee is basically all Vindstyrkas (5x, one per bedroom and on in the “Great” room) and outdoor philips light fixtures (6x). But that’s why I was interested and looked at this product. I have so many Vindstyrkas that I was curious if there was something better out there.
To be fair, you can buy it as an “easy to assemble kit” for $138, which makes it very clear that you’re paying $92 for labor/calibration/certification.
The chips in the vindstryrka are kinda shit. CO2 builds up really quickly, and it’s the primary reason I got one of these.
Your fire alarms most likely have a CO detector, not a CO2 detector. I don’t really know the point of a CO2 detector, though, so I agree with you on everything. Just get a few more indoor plants if CO2 is a concern.
The first AirGradient I bought helped eliminate a source of headaches and poor sleep by showing how bad the CO2 level was getting in the bedroom. Did some changes to the air circulation in the room so that the CO2 levels are held below the levels that produce symptoms. Headaches disappeared and sleep improved. So CO2 monitoring isn’t critical but it could be useful.
CO2 concentration is an indicator of indoor air quality and can generally inform the quality of ventilation. Indoor plants likely won’t exchange enough to be effective.
Baseline (outdoor) is around 400 ppm, 1000 ppm is generally the ‘comfort limit’ or where some cognitive effects start to become present (drowsiness), then over 2000 ppm is generally the unhealthy limit.
Unfortunately, you can’t just put plants everywhere. CO2 conversion is also highly dependent on light levels, which sufficient light levels not being achievable everywhere.
Office buildings with a large number of people meeting rooms etc.) could also benefit from monitoring.
Heck, even at home, I have a room that quickly accumulates CO2, easily reaching 2000ppm with just a single person being inside, which makes spending prolonged time in said room a tiring affair.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11253968/
https://www.pjoes.com/pdf-68875-24089?filename=The+Influence+of+House.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666790823000502
You need a lot of houseplants to make up for a human. Humans exhale something like 1 kg CO2/day where plants consume something like 0.2 kg/hr/100 m2. Figure natural light, maybe 6-8 hours of full sun in a day, and you’d need 60-80 m2 of leaf surface.
That kg/day of CO2 is enough to raise a 200 m2 home to 3000 ppm CO2. CO2 diffuses pretty well, but my 110 m2 house equilibrates around 1000ppm when it’s sealed against the summer heat.
I have had to order these type of sesnors for mobile handheld units before. The units themselves are more than this unit and the replacement of these two sensors would tally the difference between units.
Sure… But does a typical household need this. My point was that I’m not sure that $170 for these sensors makes sense for me. And I suspect that most people are in the same boat as me. Maybe a sane answer for someone truly interested in the CO2 sensor and such for say 5 rooms is one of these in a central room and Vindstyrkas in the others. Otherwise you’re talking about $1150… Which most people just aren’t going to do.
I’ve had one of these for a few years now, the CO2 sensor is the primary sensor I was interested in. I ended up putting esphome on mine because I didn’t want any cloud dependency, but glad to see it’s officially supported in home assistant now.
Don’t fire alarms look for CO?
Just to be clear because I don’t want anyone to read this and take it as fact…
Smoke detectors detect smoke by looking for particles.
Some devices are combo Smoke/Carbon Monoxide (CO) detectors. They cost more but it’s good to have both and it’s easier to have fewer devices.
You can also get stand alone Carbon Monoxide detectors and absolutely should. It’s odorlesss and very deadly and is produced by burning gas/oil/propane or whatever else you burn to heat your house.
The problem with the combo ones is that CO is heavy and goes the the ground and smoke rises with heat. So CO alarms should be low and smoke alarms high.
I’ve quickly skimmed 3 articles on the subject just now, and the consensus is it just mixes evenly with air. It’ll naturally be more concentrated near the source, but there’s tons of air flow in a house especially when the heat is on. One article even said CO is lighter than air (bit not enough to separate and rise on its own).
I was a little skeptical and just looked at NFPA codes (USA) and they don’t seem to care about placement elevation, only type of rooms and heating sources. I didn’t read all 68 pages, only what seemed relevant, so maybe I missed some discussion.
Probably. It’s been a long day…
wow, if you understand from electronics, or have a friend who do, just get a BME680 or BME688 and slap it onto an ESP32…
I’ve been using airthings wave plus and didn’t have any issues so far with HA. They also detect radon, I’m not sure about nox.
I wonder what the air quality of my place looks like after taco night… 🤔
My only question was does it support Matter, and apparently as it’s follow the requirements of Home assistants it may.
It’s important cause the protocol is free to use and allows a full variety of devices and services. Say good bye to ChromeCast and AirPlay and the 20th century, say hello to the 21st where manufacturers have two goal compatibility and quality.
Hm, I guess the certification is new, but Air Gradient has been working great with HA for a while now. Great sensors and open source software and hardware.
