Re:The Weight of Numbers: Air Pollution and PM2.5
by jonathankoren on Wednesday August 08, 2018 @05:44PM
(#17719775)
I have a https://www.purpleair.com/ . It measures PM 1.0, PM 2.5, and PM 10.0 . It uses the same laser scanning sensor that everyone else seems to be using, a https://learn.adafruit.com/pm25-air-quality-sensor/overview , only it has two of them. You have to plug it into the wall and it communicates over wifi. Honestly, it feels a bit mom-and-pop-ish (it's literally housed in a PVC pipe.), but it seems to work.
Purple Air, talks about how it uploads everything to PurpleAir.com, but their website is really really janky. Luckily, the device has a web server, and spits out data in JSON, so even if Purple Air goes belly up, your sensor should still work.
Ideally, I'd like a sensor that calculated all the other pollutants you're supposed to track, but this is what I have.
The sensor is responsive. When the smoke filtered down from the Mendocino Complex fire last week, I saw a huge spike across the particulates, and even today with the Spare The Air alert, the AQI is quite a bit elevated.
The one thing I'll note about its performance, is that after installation, the sensor read abnormally high until the first rain. After that, its performance is on par with other surrounding sensors.
Would I recommend it? I don't know. I feel like I should have shopped around more for one, so I can't really compare it to anything. I do like how it reports data in an open manner.
Purple Air, talks about how it uploads everything to PurpleAir.com, but their website is really really janky. Luckily, the device has a web server, and spits out data in JSON, so even if Purple Air goes belly up, your sensor should still work.
I have mine integrated into http://www.weewx.com/ via https://github.com/bakerkj/weewx-purpleair , and I calculate an Air Quality Index from this data using https://github.com/jonathankoren/weewx-aqi .
Ideally, I'd like a sensor that calculated all the other pollutants you're supposed to track, but this is what I have.
The sensor is responsive. When the smoke filtered down from the Mendocino Complex fire last week, I saw a huge spike across the particulates, and even today with the Spare The Air alert, the AQI is quite a bit elevated.
The one thing I'll note about its performance, is that after installation, the sensor read abnormally high until the first rain. After that, its performance is on par with other surrounding sensors.
Would I recommend it? I don't know. I feel like I should have shopped around more for one, so I can't really compare it to anything. I do like how it reports data in an open manner.