Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
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Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#2Does anyone have experience with the open air monitor version [1]? I am looking for an affordable outdoor air sensor that will be used to collect data from certain urban and suburban areas to use as evidence in efforts to dissuade (through public comment periods and possible litigation) industrial rezoning near residential areas due to pm2.5 and other combustion emission pollution (and deploying a sensor network to establish a baseline).
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#3Author here.
I wrote this article a few weeks ago after discovering that a well known air quality monitor in the market that retails for more than USD 1000 actually uses a PM module that costs less than USD 20.
Often people assume that the more expensive, the better but as you can see in the article this is often not the case -especially when it comes to the accuracy of the monitor.
If you are looking for an open source / open hardware air quality monitor kit that uses high quality sensor modules and is very easy to assemble, have a look at the project we maintain. Instructions to built an indoor monitor [1], instructions to built an outdoor monitor [2] and overview of the kits [3]. All is open source (firmware, schematics, 3d files for enclosure, etc).
[1] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/instructions/di...
[2] https://www.airgradient.com/open-airgradient/instructions/di...
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#4Does anyone have experience with the open air monitor version [1]? I am looking for an affordable outdoor air sensor that will be used to collect data from certain urban and suburban areas to use as evidence in efforts to dissuade (through public comment periods and possible litigation) industrial rezoning near residential areas due to pm2.5 and other combustion emission pollution (and deploying a sensor network to e…
Thank you for mentioning our kits.
The Open Air outdoor monitor has been designed in co-operation with scientists and is currently undergoing co-location testing on four continents to collect a large dataset and being able to completely understand the performance in different environments and to develop accurate compensation algorythms if required. The first results look very good. You can read more about it on our research page [1].
We get a lot of interest and support from the research community on this monitor as it is completely open hardware / open source.
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#5Does AirGradient have any options that are connected and powered via PoE? The Awair Omni looks like a great option for what I imagine I'd like to set up but it would be nice to support Air Gradient if possible.
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#6There's some good empirical data about the cheap PM2.5 sensors that Adafruit sells on their forum. The sensor itself has a microcontroller that filters the raw values and you need to keep this in mind when interpreting the data.
https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=136528&p=76...
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#7Does anyone have experience with the open air monitor version [1]? I am looking for an affordable outdoor air sensor that will be used to collect data from certain urban and suburban areas to use as evidence in efforts to dissuade (through public comment periods and possible litigation) industrial rezoning near residential areas due to pm2.5 and other combustion emission pollution (and deploying a sensor network to e…
Thank you for mentioning our kits. The Open Air outdoor monitor has been designed in co-operation with scientists and is currently undergoing co-location testing on four continents to collect a large dataset and being able to completely understand the performance in different environments and to develop accurate compensation algorythms if required. The first results look very good. You can read more about it on our r…
Thank you for taking the time to reply! Genuinely appreciate it.
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#8Does AirGradient have any options that are connected and powered via PoE? The Awair Omni looks like a great option for what I imagine I'd like to set up but it would be nice to support Air Gradient if possible.
We currently don't have PoE but since it's open hardware and firmware people can look into adding it themselves. All documentation is open source.
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#9I bought a fairly expensive air quality monitor. Accuracy wasn’t what caused me to go with a more expensive model. I wanted CO2 readings, which most models under $200 don’t provide.
Re: Air quality monitors: paying more does not get you more accuracy
#10Author here. I wrote this article a few weeks ago after discovering that a well known air quality monitor in the market that retails for more than USD 1000 actually uses a PM module that costs less than USD 20. Often people assume that the more expensive, the better but as you can see in the article this is often not the case -especially when it comes to the accuracy of the monitor. If you are looking for an open sou…
While I admire the efforts of the SC-AQMD, and generally agree with the article, using R2 from a higher-end, but not quite perfect instrument, can be quite misleading, and is not a great indicator of actual sensor performance. Also, there are a lot of potential improvements in sensor tech, but instead almost everyone is relying on the same cheap sensor modules instead of innovating, which have have pretty bad deficiencies, especially in detecting particulates in the ultra-fine range, and don’t age very well. But, they are the cheapest.