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Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

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Re: Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

#41

Post by jdoss »

agwa wrote: post #12
JSDevOps wrote: post #3

https://aranet.com/products/aranet4-home

These are great. I have two of them and access the readings over Bluetooth using some Python code: https://github.com/Anrijs/Aranet4-Python (there's also a mobile app which I've never used) The eink display is really nice and if you disable Bluetooth the battery seems to last forever. It's 40% off right now which makes me tempted to pick up a third!

This python code looks fantastic. Worked right out of the gate. Thanks!

Also I was not aware of the Aranet Radiation sensor. There goes some of my fun budget towards picking one of these up.

Re: Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

#42

Post by mtlynch »

phinnaeus wrote: post #6

I picked up a pair (indoor+outdoor) of https://www.airgradient.com monitors a few months ago. Happy with them so far though I have not decided on their final positions.

I also own an indoor AirGradient, and I like supporting open-source, open hardware, but I've been pretty disappointed with the product.

There were no instructions in the box, and I had to dig around a while until I found this PDF from three years ago.[0] I normally can figure out a gadget without reading instructions, but this wasn't self-explanatory, as there are no inputs on the device itself, and I had to figure out how to connect it to my WiFi.

It's open-source, but there are no official instructions for re-flashing the device. I had to piece the process together from third-party blog posts.

The code itself is pretty low quality. They use tons of globals that could trivially be local variables, and they throw away precision of floats by casting them to ints.

I fixed a bunch of bugs in my fork[1] and started contributing them upstream, and the maintainer told me that they just did a giant rewrite, so I'd have to re-do all my changes.[2] I get that it happens, but I would have preferred they announce in the README that the code is deprecated and not to work on it until this rewrite is complete.

I still think it's fine overall and I'd probably buy it again for other rooms in my house, but I hope they get their act together a bit more.

[0] https://www.airgradient.com/documents/AirGradient%20Manual%2...

[1] https://github.com/mtlynch/airgradient-arduino

[2] https://github.com/airgradienthq/arduino/pull/45

Re: Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

#43

Post by AtlasBarfed »

hedora wrote: post #23

If you don't want to go the DIY route, and also are interested in a weather station, Ambient Weather is great. It just works out of the box (the CO2 sensor is an add on), and supports a large pile of local APIs and cloud service integrations. We went with one of the fancier models, including a nice LCD display and a solid state (ultrasonic) wind monitor, since we get hurricane-level gusts around here. It's held up fi…

The sad reality of consumer IoT is that you will diy eventually. If you start out with a magically integrated system, well, just wait a few years.

Hope you thoroughly document your house for its next owner!

Re: Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

#46

Post by danudey »

mrweasel wrote: post #26

I've been looking at the Eve Room, but haven't gotten it yet. It's one of the only devices I found that seems to work with HomeKit.

I have an Eve Room and I quite like it. The little e-ink display is incredibly easy to read in most lighting conditions (i.e. any condition where there's some light), and the battery life is really fantastic.

I also have an air monitor from Qingping[0] which I got from Amazon, and I quite like that as well. Instead of VOCs, it reports pm2.5 and pm10 particulate, which was important for us (in Vancouver) because of the advent of 'wildfire season' in the past few years.

I think I would prefer to have the pm2.5/pm10 sensors in the living room and bedrooms (which have windows and where people spent the most time) and the VOC sensors in the kitchen (where cooking/burning happens) and bathroom (where cleaning products are used but ventilation is poor) but I haven't gotten around to buying more of everything yet.

[0] https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B092HK4BB1/

Re: Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

#48

Post by agwa »

blankx32 wrote: post #45
JSDevOps wrote: post #3

https://aranet.com/products/aranet4-home

Does the app require any clouds to work?

No, for the home version the app just connects over Bluetooth. The protocol is documented and there are robust open source implementations such as https://github.com/Anrijs/Aranet4-Python

Re: Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

#49

Post by radicality »

sofixa wrote: post #27

I have Apollo Automation MSR-1 (it does multiple things, including CO2 and mmWave movement/presence detection; they also have AIR-1 which tracks all sorts of air quality metrics such as VOC etc), flashed with ESPHome reporting to my Home Assistant setup. It's main advantage is that it's extremely affordable compared to the competition, and entirely local. Also I have a Netatmo Indoor Air Quality Monitor (requires the…

That looks like a nice all-in-one. If anyone from Apollo Automation reading it, perhaps you could also offer a version with the improved scd41 sensor vs the scd40.

Re: Ask HN: What indoor CO2 monitor do you recommend?

#50

Post by danudey »

kkfx wrote: post #44

Honestly? I recommend a VMC. Simply because monitoring allow to let you know something you can already know enough from your feelings, a VMC allow to breathe more oxygenated air.

It's still useful to know to what extent your air is unpleasant (especially if it degrades over a long period of time and you acclimatize) as well as seeing historical trends.
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