256dpi

Thanks tomhow! The idea for building the Air Lab simulator was very much inspired by the feedback I got from you. Here is a bit of background for the other readers:

I reached out to HN by mail (as suggested on their tips page) to gauge whether my story/product was allowed to be posted as a Show HN post. They pointed out that HN requires a more "direct" demo of things. Their suggestion was to create a "raw" video showing how the device works and feels. It made a lot of sense to me. However, as a designer by training, it’s hard for me to produce something like that, as I naturally gravitate towards polishing it too much. When discussing this dilemma with my colleague, we remembered an idea I had some time ago about creating interactive renderings for the Air Lab website. Quickly, we agreed that this would be worth testing, as the whole goal of the video was to give the HN community a feel for the device.

As mentioned in my comment and the Crowd Supply update, I used emscripten to compile the stock firmware to WASM. Luckily, by that time, I was already mostly done with extracting a hardware abstraction-layer from the firmware. This meant that I already had a nice API that I needed to ”mock” and connect to the fake sensors and controls on the website. So most of the work for that week was to actually build the simulator app using Ember.js around the compiled firmware and integrate it. By doing that, I also found a couple of bugs in the firmware itself that have been much easier to debug with the simulator than with a real device.

I can recommend to anyone to reach out to the HN moderators and validate their post. Especially, if it is not a software thing that one can immediately try out. But also then, I think most posts/projects could profit from a more interactive demo.

Dear HN community, thank you for the great feedback on my project! All comments, from honest remarks on the price to personal anecdotes on handling air quality issues, will help me, and others in this space, improve the product and raise awareness for this important global topic. Enjoy the weekend!

We'll definitely look into supporting Matter in the future, as it would allow integration with the most common home automation platforms/apps out there.

We love indoorco2map.com and would be happy to ensure that data from the Air Lab can be exported to it! We plan to expose simple BLE characteristics for all sensor values (similar to the Aranet). On top of that, we already have an API that would allow reading the full history from temporary storage (timestamped). Keep an eye on our website; we'll soon add a manual section with more details on that.

We have not integrated compensation of CO2-readings yet, but will certainly look into it before shipping the device.

You can easily hook a PM sensor like the SEN54 to the extension port at the back. We're also thinking about offering an "upgrade kit" to match the design.

As the sibling commenter pointed out correctly, there is no PM sensor built-in at the moment. However, we added an extension port at the back that allows connecting PM sensors like the SEN54. We also plan to support this natively in the firmware and perhaps even offer a kit sometime soon that matches the design language.

Thanks! The SCD30 is a great sensor and obviously better than the SCD41. But we did not look at it in more detail, as we chose the SCD41 primarily for its small size. We believe that an accuracy of +/-50ppm is enough for a device like the Air Lab. Also, we'll actively look into reminding the user to take the device outside if automatic calibration is used. On top of that, it's our plan to either factory calibrate the devices and/or offer manual recalibration that should extend beyond the 1-week interval with automatic calibration.

Uff, that's hard! I'm sorry to hear that. What projects is yours?

We have not tested this properly (see my other comment on lab testing), but so far we have observed no effect during normal operation and only saw a slight increase when charging the device (~1°). We took great care to move the sensors far away from power management. Luckily, the display cutout also helps here.

You can find more infos here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/networked-artifacts/air-lab/upda...

I'm curious, what's the range/variability you're seeing?

Thanks and good question! We have planned to do a proper lab test soon. The Swiss Federal Office for the Environment is a project partner and has such equipment. During the design phase, we used a software to model the air flow and particle movements through the enclosure. Until then, we can only state what is already specified in the SCD41 and SGP41 datasheets.

We're always looking for beta testers and would be happy to send you a device. Find your contact details here: https://networkedartifacts.com/about

Thanks! AirGradient is great! They do a very good job and served as an inspiration to us!

On CO2-Sensor Accuracy: Based on AirGradients own research[1], the SCD41 (which Air Lab uses) and SenseAir S8 (which AirGradient uses), compare well indoors. In outdoor environments, the AirGradients sensor is generally better. As the Air Lab is primarily focused on indoor environments, we chose the smaller SCD41 to fit the portable design. But yes, If you're looking for an outdoor air quality monitor, AirGradient will be more accurate.

[1]: https://www.airgradient.com/blog/co2-sensors-photo-acoustic-...

Not yet. Unfortunately, these are usually quite big, and we didn't want to sacrifice the portability. But you can add a PM sensor through the extension port. We'll document this in our upcoming manual.

A fellow Crowd Supply project, Polverine[1], uses a new Bosch sensor that is very small. If we do a refresh of the device, we'll certainly look into adding it.

[1]: https://www.crowdsupply.com/blackiot/polverine

This has been very tricky to navigate for us. We almost launched the campaign right before the Tariffs got announced. Luckily, we had the opportunity to wait it out. While CrowdSupply is an awesome platform, and I would use it again, the requirement to export everything to the US is a problem in such situations.

Good catch! Unfortunately, we realized a bit too late that we flipped the standard console layout (e.g. Game Boy). Luckily, most people that notice get used to it quickly.

Thanks for the feedback that I can totally understand! We hoped to offer the product at a lower price, but as I mentioned in other replies, it's hard to be competitive when planning for small quantities. That said, I can totally see us offering a simplified and cheaper version in the future that is affordable to more people.

OP is probably comparing the ESP32 to a NRF chip. These offer Bluetooth connectivity while running from a coin cell with <1mA power consumption, compared to the ESP32s ~50mA when not sleeping. Luckily, we can stay in deep sleep most of the time to save battery.

We mainly went with an ESP32 because of the great SDK and software support through Arduino etc. That way, people that want to customize the firmware or build their own can get started quickly.

I have written a bit about the process here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/networked-artifacts/air-lab/upda....

TLDR: It compiles the stock firmware to WASM using emscripten. Thus, I did not build all of it in one week and rather just the web app around the firmware.

Sorry to hear that! I'm happy to investigate if you let me know your browser/platform.

Thanks! Our engineer invested a lot of time to get the feeling just perfect! :-)

We added many components that are not strictly needed to measure air quality but make the device an interesting platform for custom projects. Also, the enclosure is more premium, being made from aluminum. Finally, IKEA can leverage economy of scale and probably gets a much better price on most parts.

Thanks! As other commenters suggested, there is a screen saver (after 30s idle) that shows all values (horizontal and vertical) at a glance. The layout is not final yet and something I want to improve (make bigger). You can try it in the simulator.

Thank you! Yes, that's something we'd like to prototype soon for supporting multiple rooms/locations. Integrating with other dashboards including TRMNL would be awesome too.

That's correct if you just look at the component costs. Unfortunately, to make these in a small series, a lot of other costs come together. If we could, we would offer it a better price. Maybe some time soon!

Yes, that's something I want to improve. ATM, if you rotate the (real) device, it will show a vertical layout in stand-by mode that uses a large font to display the values. I still need to add this to the simulator. A horizontal layout with bigger fonts is on the to-do list!

Hi HN!

I’ve been working on an air quality measuring device called Air Lab for the past three years. It measures CO2, temperature, relative humidity, air pollutants (VOC, NOx), and atmospheric pressure. You can log and analyze the data directly on the device — no smartphone or laptop needed.

To better show what the device can do and how it feels like, I spent the past week developing a web-based simulator using Emscripten. It runs the stock firmware with most features available except for networking. Check it out and let me know what you think!

The firmware will be open-source and available once the first batch of devices ships. We’re currently finishing up our crowdfunding campaign on CrowdSupply. If you want to get one, now is the time to support the project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/networked-artifacts/air-lab

We started building the Air Lab because most air quality measuring devices we found were locked-down or hard to tinker with. Air quality is a growing concern, and we’re hoping a more open, playful approach can help make the topic more accessible. It is important to us that there is a low bar for customizing and extending the Air Lab. Until we ship, we plan to create rich documentation and further tools, like the simulator, to make this as easy as possible.

The technical: The device is powered by the popular ESP32S3 microcontroller, equipped with a precise CO2, temperature, and relative humidity sensor (SCD41) as well as a VOC/NOx (SGP41) and atmospheric pressure sensor (LPS22). The support circuitry provides built-in battery charging, a real-time clock, an RGB LED, buzzer, an accelerometer, and capacitive touch, which makes Air Lab a powerful stand-alone device. The firmware itself is written on top of esp-idf and uses LVGL for rendering the UI.

If you seek more high-level info, here are also some videos covering the project: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBltdMLjUyg (Introduction) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tzjVYPm_MU (Product Update)

Would love your feedback — on the device, hardware choices, potential use cases, or anything else worth improving. If you want to get notified on project updates, subscribe on Crowd Supply.

Happy to answer any questions!

I found myself in a similar situation sometime ago with MongoDB. In one project my unit tests started slowing me down too much to be productive. In another, I had so little data that running a server alongside it was a waste of resources. I invested a couple of weeks in developing a SQLite type of library[1] for Go that implemented the official Go drivers API with a small wrapper to select between the two. Up until now, it paid huge dividends in both projects ongoing simplicity and was totally worth the investment.

[1]: https://github.com/256dpi/lungo