Have you ever wondered how to use the RGB LED bulb you have purchased in a more productive way? Sure, you can control the lights via your phone but this is not “smart” plus if you manage your lights with your phone it may take longer to turn off and on a light fixture than just by hitting the switch.

The obvious is to set up a visual (light) indicator each time the air quality is poor in your house, for example, when PM2.5 is high, then the lights flash twice with orange colour. However, the ultimate way to give real value to a smart light bulb is when the combination of an AQ monitor and a light bulb can save your life in a real-life threatening situation. How?

Theory

Smoke particles act as a filter for sunlight or artificial light by scattering shorter wavelengths like green and blue and leaving longer wavelengths of the light spectrum behind. This allows more orange and red colours to pass through and reach your eyes.

As a result, by having red colour lights inside a room and near an exit door when a fire emerges, it will allow you to see better and consecutively find your way out faster.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) among other pollutants like carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter (PM2.5/10) can be a great indicator of a fire inside a house. Typically, a poorly ventilated room will reach ~2,000ppm in an everyday scenario, so we can safely choose a value above 6,000ppm in order to avoid unnecessary alarms. A fire could easily surpass that value. FYI, most CO2 sensors can measure up to 10,000ppm.

Setup

You need two things, an air quality monitor equipped with a Carbon Dioxide (CO2) or a Carbon Monoxide (CO) or Particulate Matter (PM) sensor and at least one Smart Light bulb near the exit of a house/apartment. Both the air quality monitor and the smart light bulb need to support IFTTT or HomeKit/Google Home.

For my setup, I connected Airthings Wave Plus + Hub with a LIFX light bulb (1st generation) via IFTTT, which is a free service. A comment here, the older iOS version of IFTTT used to be much more intuitive and easy to use.

In the screenshot above you can see how I set up the IFTTT applet for my Wave Plus monitor. First, I chose a very high CO2 concentration 6,000ppm, and then I chose all my smart bulbs to Turn ON with 100% Brightness and the colour RED. Super easy!

The same logic applies for other AQ monitors, so I have prepared the same applet for different AQ monitors (Awair & uHoo), see screenshots below. You may need to change some parameters like the name of your AQ device and the light bulb manufacture you use, Philips Hue, Lutron, Sengled, Magic Light, etc. I think, IFTTT allows 3rd parties to search for these applets via the smartphone app.