Why isn't my 1000$ smartphone loaded with sensors, infrared camera, decibel meter etc.

... yeah, apart from gyroscope, pressure, proximity, light, position, magnetic, accelerometer, g, fingerprint, blood oxygen, internal temp and IR sensors.

And some smart speakers are now loaded with thermometer and hygrometer.

All Home pod mini and the new big hompod has those

Because the demand hasn't been there. If more people learn the benefits of these sensors and decide they want more of them they'll pay more for models that include them and manufacturers will respond to demand. If people don't know about them, or don't perceive any particular benefit, those sensors will remain niche and expensive.

> decibel meter

You have the microphone in your smartphone.

Manufacturers believe consumer sentiment favors cramming more telephoto selfie cams and the like in to phones.

Unfortunately, word on the street agrees. I'd really love CO2, HRV and a physical keyboard, but it's just not gonna happen ever, because we'd end up with the Homermobile.

homemobile was ugly and expensive. if they could be slipped in easily and reasonably cheaply then it might fly.

Same reason I can't have a hardware keyboard on any modern, reasonably priced phone: lack of demand.

You can add these things via USB (not sure about iPhone). If enough people find it helpful, it'll become part of the package eventually.

There are a few lightning adaptors, I have an IR camera for example, however they are talking about the USB C port is going to be proprietary so it will only work for power unless you have Apple approved wiring and chips.

Probably because it would make it cost more than $1000 while not being useful to most people.

Because manufacturers invested a lot in advertising to create demand for extremely high resolution screen and cameras.

Even if air quality sensors would have saved lives (see covid and air pollution) that's not what companies optimize for.

iPhone has a decibel meter

Any phone has a decibel meter, it's the microphone.

However, I can imagine that with Android devices calibration is going to be an issue (with iPhones, you know which sensor is being used)

Depends what "cheap" is. You can get MHZ19 < £20-30 last I checked.

Sensirion SCD40, a good quality compact sensor from very reputable manufacturer, sells for $25 in bulk.

After including all the costs and markups to get it to retail, that would imply an MSRP of at least $200.

Looks like <$30 to buy a single unit on DigiKey with a prevailing price ~$40, but you'd probably need a reflow oven to solder the unit. $60 for an assembled board at retail.

Bulk retail is closer to $20, so OP may not have been referring to negotiated wholesale volume pricing.

https://octopart.com/search?q=scd40&currency=USD&specs=0

$60 for an assembled unit at a retail store when the sensor alone is $20-$25 in bulk?

I toyed with something like this a few years ago. Never really built the thing, but you can actually do this with a Rasberry Pi and a couple of attachments.

Normally a high CO2 level will go hand in hand with the air feeling stuffy from other pollutants that build up at the same time, so there's hardly a need to continuously use a CO2 meter as you can easily notice when the air "goes bad". CO2 buildup is quite predictable in most closed rooms based on the number of people inside, the room volume and the ventilation as well, so you can just work out a ventilation schedule and stick to that instead. Common sense often beats smart gadets.

Personally I have a CO2 meter in my tiny office room but I don't need to look at it as I pretty much know that it will be in the red after being in the room for a while with the door closed.

Thinking about CO2 levels isn't common sense until after you've been keeping an eye on one of these gadgets. After sitting in a meeting room for an hour, people may find it feels warm or stuffy or notice a slight headache, but they won't necessarily draw the connection that they really ought to open a window or door or adjourn the meeting for a few minutes. The importance of breathing fresh air becomes much more common sense after you've learned to tell the difference.

walking outdoors seems the perfect formula

For now. As we keep burning fossil fuels the air outside will be like a stuffed meeting room.

nah, gladly indoor air is still much worse :)

As someone who worked too long at an office with non-existent ventilation and a fetish for long, closed door meetings, my motto became:

“Take a break. Go outside. Walk around the block. Never come back.”

I bet walking while talking is great once people get used to it.

I can't feel the difference between 1500ppm and 500ppm CO2 levels, yet 1500 is above recommended limits.

It's actually quite difficult to keep it below 1000 for us, and getting these sensors in every room has been quite the 'curse' :D

I've wondered about this. If I install an air monitor in my room, what do I do if it shows low quality? Open my window in below-freezing winter temps? Hire someone to overhaul my furnace and vents?

If you aren't willing to do anything about it then why bother with the air monitor?

If you only have a single room then your options are limited, however moving rooms or opening a door to a different room and turning on a fan to increase circulation?

If it is CO2 then you could invest in a houseplant or two.

Houseplants do not exchange anything near significant amounts of CO2 for this purpose.

The long term answer is to improve the HVAC: reconfigure for more external air mixing (commercial), or find a way to install an HRV or ERV, or open a window, but that can be expensive or impossible depending on the situation.

The houseplant was just the cheer them up while they slowly suffocate since they weren't going to do anything about it.

Like a button that does nothing.

I'm currently renovating a house in The Netherlands, we're installing a heat pump and to make the place more efficient we also replaced the glass with triple glazed (but without vents in the frames as they let heat escape). Given that we were effectively making our house a "sealed envelope" we had to add mechanical ventilation (ERV) to ensure proper airflow around the property. As you can imagine, retrofitting ducting around an old house required a LOT of creative work!

> If it is CO2 then you could invest in a houseplant or two.

This seemed wrong to me, so I checked and it seems like you'd need hundreds of houseplants to make any significant difference: https://www.realhomes.com/news/do-house-plants-remove-carbon...

Seems like there'd be a market for a CO2 > O2 exchanger of some sort. I don't know enough chemistry to recognize why this is probably too difficult for commercial viability.

if you keep the window open all year, dress appropriately and avoid heated buildings you don't notice how cold it is. I switch it on a few years ago because my cat is getting really old. I now feel cold if its 17 C or below.

That is an extraordinarily climate-specific recommendation. It’s currently a fairly mild 30F/-1 C outside my house and even that is obviously way too cold to go without heat completely.

You are conditioned to think you are and feel cold. Look how cold some countries and regions get? The people working outside there are not a different species. The trick is to get used to it gradually. I didn't say it was fun or easy.

I spend a good bit of winter working outside but with physical activity it is much easier.

Do you have other ideas? I mean, it would be nice? I cant think of anything else besides migration.

>Look how cold some countries and regions get?

As someone from said countries and regions, people living outside freeze to death here. Long before you get to that point your water pipes will freeze, leaving you without running water. The pipes will then burst and flood your house if you don't address it quickly enough. You can certainly heat it to a lower temperature and occasionally crack open a window for some fresh air, but there's a difference between conditioning yourself to be comfortable at 17C and -30C.

Open the window. In my apartment I keep a single open somewhere between a millimeter and a centimeter when it's below freezing, depending on the temperature and wind. That's enough to keep my CO2 sensor happy (try to keep it around 550), and it (shockingly) doesn't seem to affect my heating bill all that much. There's a cold corner of the room next to that window, but the rest of the apartment stays just as warm. (I have a thermostat that controls heating.)

I also keep a humidifier running full blast (silently) because otherwise it will get crazy dry on some days.

> I also keep a humidifier running full blast (silently) because otherwise it will get crazy dry on some days.

Heh, I usually keep the dehumidifier running, I don’t think I’ll ever need a humidifier. Currently, 80% RH (7g/m³) outside, with indoor levels all slightly above 60%.

That cold corner risks becoming a condensation point and so developing mold.

It doesn't though. The relative humidity at 70°F is only 30-35% with the humidifier running full blast. Because it's often 7-15% without the humidifier. Because the air coming through the window is bone dry.

The problem in the winter here is keeping enough humidity in the air. It would be nice if I ever had to worry about condensation. ;)

So, this works with temperatures down to freezing and below (don’t know what the cut off is, maybe there is none given this planet’s temperature range) and if you heat and dress appropriately (i.e. not up to super high temperatures – around 20°C or so – and if you have a sweater or jacket on or can put one on).

Obviously you also need the appropriate building for it. (So no fancy passive house. No fancy air conditioning – which is quite uncommon where I’m from anyway.)

Generally, if you only open the windows for five minutes or so the air will cool down substantially (the right moment to pull on that sweater) but everything else (walls, furniture) will not really cool down that much, meaning the room will be quick to be back at an appropriate temperature.

We learned and did this in school, often do it in offices and meeting rooms and also at home. Though, admittedly the temporary unpleasantness does frequently lead to people postponing opening the windows forever and ever. (Once every 90 minutes in a classroom setting might not be enough.)

In those settings a CO2 traffic light as an obvious visual indicator would be super helpful.

I imagine people are mostly perceiving humidity and heat when they notice a room getting stuffy.

FWIW, the frustrations of not being able to change high CO2 levels was just a topic of discussion over on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34648021

> Normally a high CO2 level will go hand in hand with... other pollutants that build up at the same time

No, I think you've got that backwards. It's other pollutants that may (but also may not) go hand in hand with CO2.

CO2 is the only pollutant constantly produced by people and that works as the main indicator of air quality.

Things like PM2.5 or VOC levels, if they are being produced at all, will also be trapped in stale air. But my apartment, for example, generates virtually none of those, except for when I'm cooking, when it generates massive quantities of PM2.5.

I use a CO2 monitor in my living room and I adjust the crack in the window several times a day to keep it around 550 without wasting too much on heating. It's not even remotely common sense, you absolutely need a sensor.

> I use a CO2 monitor in my living room and I adjust the crack in the window several times a day to keep it around 550 without wasting too much on heating. It's not even remotely common sense, you absolutely need a sensor.

It's more efficient to air out by opening the windows fully and creating a draft for a few minutes several times a day than to leave the window cracked when it's colder outside.

That's not adequate, at least for me as a relatively average sized man in a relatively average sized living unit. My respiration is sufficient to raise CO2 levels indoors to over 800ppm from background levels within an hour without constant ventilation.

No it's not.

CO2 levels build up higher than I want within half an hour so I'd have to be doing that all day long. And it would result in a periodically freezing apartment.

It's much more efficient for me to keep it open a crack.

Do you have central air, and keep the fan running? I've experimented with this at our place and doing a full cycle for 5 minutes, then turning the fan to "on" rather than "auto" and closing all doors and windows will keep it below 700 everywhere for about 6 hours. Otherwise the second floor climbs into the 1000's while the first floor stays around 500

I mean efficient in terms of heating/energy, not CO2 levels.

I got the window unit version of https://www.openerv.org and it is better than leaving the window open.

>Normally a high CO2 level will go hand in hand with the air feeling stuffy

I bought my Dad a NetAtmo weather station one part is outside and one is inside.

During Christmas with guests over I looked and saw the CO2 was 1000ppm it felt very stuffy (no air handler in an old house). I opened a window and let some fresh cool air in and CO2 out. It felt so much better.

It was nice to know why it felt stuffy. It wasn't just all the turkey and potatoes that I had eaten.

> Normally a high CO2 level will go hand in hand with the air feeling stuffy from other pollutants that build up at the same time, so there's hardly a need to continuously use a CO2 meter as you can easily notice when the air "goes bad"

Strong disagree based on direct experience. I have a HEPA unit that keeps air in the entire living unit clean (from VOCs, particulate matter, NO2, etc.) but doesn't alter CO2 levels. There is little to no human-detectable effect from CO2 levels rising up to 2500ppm (according to my separate CO2 monitor).

HEPA filter does not do much for VOC. VOCs, because they are gases, are about 1000 times smaller than what HEPA filters can capture. You need carbon-based filter to neutralize them.

My unit has both HEPA and carbon-based filters. The point is, my CO2 levels rise independently of any other pollutant and it's not reliably detectable by a human as far as I can tell.

How often do you swap the carbon filter?

My understanding, admittedly driven by 3D printing, is that they only last about a week before the substrate degrades. Fortunately activated carbon is cheap.

Variable, between 6 months and a year, per the manufacturer's recommendation and unit's ability to sense when the filter needs replacing. It seems like you're saying yours only last a week because you're constantly generating fumes from 3D printing? I don't do anything like that. I would be curious to get some kind of independent measurement of effectiveness of a new filter over time (and I suppose I will from my air monitor next time I replace). But again, the point is my separate air quality monitor shows increases in CO2 that are not associated with rise in any of the other 4 detectable pollutants it measures.

What I’ve been told is that the carbon filter will stop absorbing VOCs after a week, regardless of how much I use the printer. Considering that some of them are carcinogens, I’m not taking any chances.

Presumably this should also hold for other carbon filters, then, but I don’t know how I would verify that.

I find stuffiness feeling correlates mostly with humidity.

No it does not.

This is from experience.

The CO2 level in my bedroom gets high whilst I sleep.

I open the window and the CO2 drops quickly but the pollutant levels rise.

No it does not.

This is from experience.

The CO2 level in my bedroom gets high whilst I sleep.

I open the window and the CO2 drops quickly but the VOC pollutant levels rise.

I went to a lot of trouble to install an ERV — a Panasonic model. Brought my CO2 levels down from consistently over 1200ppm to ~500ppm with people in the house. Hot/humid areas make it difficult to bring in fresh air since the moisture in the air can lead to all sorts of issues and obviously it's very inefficient to have 100 degree air coming into the house when you're seeking mid-70s temps indoors. ERVs are designed to address these issues.

Check out a video here to see how these things work (this demo is an HRV, so it doesn't help with humidity, but you can see how well it works when there is a big temperature difference between indoors and outdoors).

https://youtu.be/QOSelUK6dpQ?t=436

That's really neat. Haven't seen something like that before, thanks for sharing.

For those, like me, who didn't know:

ERV == Energy Recovery Ventilator

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_recovery_ventilation

Sensirion makes a decent photoacoustic-based sensor called the SCD41. It's about 30 bucks in volume.

Other models are laser based (NDIR) and more expensive.

There's also eCO2 which is estimated based on VOC levels and basically useless.

So in other words, adding real CO2 would increase the price a lot. At least double it (since the sensor cost isn't the only factor obviously)

This would totally change the value proposition and target market. I guess they did their research and decided against it. There's other devices that do CO2 for around $100.

The SCD40 series is a pain to calibrate - it will drift out of calibration unless it's left outside at some points. It's not ideal for consumer electronics.

This is not unique to the SCD40 series. This applies also to NDIR based sensors. They also need to 'see' outside air on a weekly basis.

It's just the way CO2 sensing tech works.

Not necessarily. The SCD series can have auto calibration turned off. You take it outside once and baseline that to 400ppm. The drift on the sensor is rated very low (+-50 ppm over the sensor’s lifetime). This is what I do with my SCD30.

Interesting, I didn't know that, I've only used them in auto mode. I also have SCD30s, the 40s are a pain in the ** to solder and they were hard to get because they are new.

I wonder why they don't just calibrate them off the factory line then? I mean, 50ppm is not much. In auto mode you won't get much better accuracy than that because you don't always air the house well enough to get down to 400 (let alone in a city's CO2 bubble).

Note, the IKEA sensor does NOT monitor CO2.