Category: Air Quality Monitor

Smoggie-PM + Thank you

Sotirios PapathanasiouLeave a comment

Choosing the 5 volunteers was a very difficult task because I had to take into consideration many factors. I wish I had as many monitors as the people (+150) that emailed me. The finalists are from Belgium, Uganda, Azerbaijan, the USA, and Spain.

The second Call for Volunteers was even more successful than the first one and I had the chance to learn from you a little more about the problems of air pollution around the globe and the situation each one of you faces. From Nepal, Poland, Netherlands, Australia, Azerbaijan, India, Romania, Italy, France, Kenya, Belgium, Greece, Denmark, UK, the USA, Finland, Serbia, Mexico, Spain, Israel, Ireland, and many many other places.

I want to THANK YOU all, it really means a lot your offer to raise awareness on such an important problem. I will follow closely the measurements from all 5 locations in order to understand better the impact air pollution has in the communities.

Remember, you can always purchase the inexpensive Smoggie-PM here.

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Review: XT Mini by Ethera Labs

Sotirios Papathanasiou1 Comment

Managing air quality monitors (AQM) in buildings is not always an easy task especially if you have deployed a lot of them. When there are many rooms that you have to take into consideration it can become very costly, very fast to equip all those rooms. Is there a way to monitor rooms without an AQM?

Well, it turns out there is a way to monitor the environmental and air quality conditions in rooms that do not have physical monitors nowadays. How?

Ethera Labs, which is a French company, with over 10 years of experience in professional IAQ solutions has integrated powerful Machine Learning (ML) algorithms that predict the conditions in rooms where air quality monitors are not installed, yes that’s right, you have read correctly. They have trained special neural networks by taking a lot of parameters into consideration in order to predict accurately the conditions and alerts users in case they need to take actions or even address an AQ/Environmental incident automatically.

By connecting the station to BMS, they manage to achieve energy efficiency while directly managing the ventilation system, as well as portable air purifiers or giving building operator the right information in advance so they can take action at the right time. They achieve two goals, great air quality and energy efficiency.

Hardware-wise Ethera Labs offers an arrange of monitors that can address different building specifications and needs. In this article, I will review the Mini XT Basic (MX-KIT020) and the NEMo Cloud/Supervision Cloud platforms.

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uRADMonitor SMOGGIE-PM | Call for Volunteers Take 2 [Ended]

Sotirios Papathanasiou14 Comments

Back in 2019 uRADMonitor and I organized a “Call for Volunteers” where we gave away 10 monitors all around the world.

Once more we are looking for five volunteers who want to receive a Smoggie-PM monitor. The new version comes with new transparent icy look case and visual indication of the pollution concentration thanks to the LED light.

Volunteers all around the world who are willing to install an Air Quality Monitor in their backyard or balcony or window or any other outdoor environment in order to build a better air quality network and to help you raise awareness in your neighborhood/community.

The only requirement from your side is to have a good Wi-Fi internet connection 24/7 and keep the device on constantly in order to broadcast the measurements to an open map. The WiFi signal must reach the monitor outdoors.

Just email or tweet or DM me on any social media platform, tell me where are you planning to install the monitor and why should I choose you.

What is SMOGGIE-PM?

Smoggie-PM is an ultra low-cost high performance Air Quality Monitor, with Wi-Fi connectivity and a laser scattering sensor (Plantower PMS5003) that measures Particulate Matter PM1, PM2.5 and PM10 and makes it available on your phone or laptop in real time. Also, it is equipped with a Temperature/Humidity/Pressure sensor (Bosch BME280).

Smoggie is an automated, fixed, Air Quality monitoring station. It has WiFi connectivity to send the air quality measurements to the uRADMonitor Cloud in real time. It needs 5V to run, powered by a standard micro-USB cable (the same your smartphone uses in order to charge it). The new versions have a color LED light that reflect the pollution levels in real-time.

Let’s talk: IoT Wireless Network Protocols for Air Quality Monitors

Sotirios Papathanasiou4 Comments

The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the network of electronic devices (air quality monitors, purifiers, motion detectors, cameras, etc.) that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices over the Internet.

In this article, I am going to describe some of the available networks and physical layers that are used by Air Quality Monitors (AQM), mainly for consumer-based products, and discuss which technologies make more sense in 2021+ for Smart Homes/Buildings and Businesses.

Wi-Fi IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11 is part of the IEEE 802 set of local area network (LAN) protocols and specifies the set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) Wi-Fi computer communication in various frequencies including 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6GHz.

IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n

This standard wireless network protocol is among the most common protocols for communication between the devices and the internet/cloud. Most devices even today use the ~20 years old 802.11b or 802.11g with a linkrate between 1 to 54 Mbit/s and a frequency of 2.4 GHz for power conservation reasons and good wall penetration. The 802.11n transmits the highest data throughput, but at the cost of high-power consumption at 5GHz.

IoT AQMs do not need a high-speed data throughput because the information they transfer is very little and in the range of a few kilobytes. So protocols like the IEEE 802.11ac and IEEE 802.11ax don’t make a lot of sense because they demand energy and they don’t offer good wall penetration in order to cover an entry house/apartment.

IEEE 802.11ax aka WiFi 6 or 6e

There are some claims that IoT devices will adopt the new WiFi 6e (e stands for enhanced) but I don’t think we will see that happening as bandwidth isn’t relevant for AQMs but the range is more essential and the WiFi 6e is designed to cover approximately 30m/98ft indoors. The 6e operates at 6Ghz, as a result, the highest the frequency the shortest the distance a signal can travel within walls. A positive feature of this protocol is that it supports a Low Power Indoor (LPI) mode. In the multi-user scenario, the WiFi 6 module consumes only one-third of that of the Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) module and they achieve that by shortening wake-up time.

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Review: HA500 Air Purifier by Healthy Air Technology

Sotirios Papathanasiou13 Comments

It is not always an easy task to keep indoor air free from pollutants, especially, when Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2) is present in indoor environments. In most cases, there is little you can do to eliminate NO2 and other gases like Sulphur Dioxide (SO2), Formaldehyde (TVOC), or even pathogens like H1N1 Influenza A virus (pandemic flu), and Staphylococcus aureus (or similar bacteria).

Here comes the HA500 Air Purifier by Healthy Air Technology which is able to eliminate all of these pollutants/pathogens from indoor environments. It does that thanks to the triple-layered system with a primary filter, HEPA 13 filter, and Pollution Eraser DNO filter. DNO means D-Orbital Nano Oxide which is made of two parts. 

1st part: The Carrier – Activated charcoal. The material that is used in military gas masks, and captures pollutants within the pores of the charcoal.
2nd part: The Transition metal oxides – Transition metal oxides are coated in the activated charcoal to form catalysts, and these catalysts break down pollutants and toxic gases into harmless chemicals and then release these harmless materials back into the atmosphere like water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, etc. The DNO is invented by the founding CTO of Oxford Catalyst plc (a leader in novel industrial catalysts).

HA500 Control Panel and Display
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Clarity Node-S Remote Calibration Process

Sotirios PapathanasiouLeave a comment

When you use low-cost monitors for professional reasons, you need to calibrate them in order to obtain the best possible measurements. This process makes data less vulnerable to environmental conditions and more valuable to scientists and policymakers.

Clarity takes this process really seriously, and they dedicate a lot of resources to making sure their devices will measure accurate data (for more on how to assess air quality sensor accuracy, see this blog). I ask Clarity to perform a remote calibration on my Node-S and guide me through the entire the process.

I have discovered something interesting during that process about the local air quality station.

As you may already know from my previous articles, my local air quality station ES1393A is placed inside a park and it is almost surrounded by trees. Trees act as a barrier, and they block pollutants from reaching the monitors. The Clarity team told me that this was an especially complicated calibration. I suspect it has to do with the location of the station and how trees may interact with low-cost sensors.

The type of trees in my city is a variation of a ficus called ficus retusa l. var nitida. These trees release a resin from their leaves which can create interference to the low-cost sensors that do not have a filter to keep them out as the scientific-grade monitors do. Most outdoor scientific-grade monitors come with a debris screen inlet or an Inlet Heater which may capture the resin from the trees.

The problem is not the trees but the location of the air quality station that shouldn’t have been there.

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Shopping Guide: Air Quality Monitors

Sotirios Papathanasiou15 Comments

As you already know, I receive messages from readers of my blog almost every day. Their most common question is which air quality monitor should they choose. Most of the time in their message, they tell me that they go through Amazon to find a product, but they are confused from their reviews.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Monitors are a big hit nowadays due to the pandemic and because they are great tools at helping us understand indoor ventilation in order to mitigate the spread of the virus. Many new CO2 monitors pop up every day like mushrooms. Are they good, well …. you have to be careful!

No offense to Amazon or AliExpress or Facebook but most of their products are garbage for two reasons. Firstly, they are cheap products that come from China but without any quality control. Apple products come from China too, but Apple controls the quality of the shipping products. I have reviewed some cheap air quality monitors here on the blog just to justify their low price tag. Secondly, companies that sell these products don’t offer any kind of support nor updates. If the product has a small bug, you will stick with it forever. Many times the language they come with is badly translated or they come in Chinese if you are not careful enough during the purchase process.

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How to Use CO2 Monitors

Sotirios Papathanasiou2 Comments

I see a lot of pictures on social media platforms where people measure Carbon Dioxide (CO2) concentrations in indoor environments incorrectly.

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AQ Monitors meet Apple HomeKit

Sotirios Papathanasiou4 Comments

I really like to have all AQ Monitors and other devices connected to one place in order to make my life easier when I try to figure out what is going on in my house. I am an iOS user which means this post doesn’t concern Android users, however, I will advise you to stick around and read the benefits of having Apple HomeKit.

Not all AQ Monitor manufacturers support HomeKit and here comes HomeBridge which is a platform to bring non-supported devices to Apple’s ecosystem. There are only a few AQM manufacturers that officially support HomeKit, like Kaiterra, Eve and QingPing.

The community of the HomeBridge has allowed others to take advantage of the platform and make the user experience even better by porting many more AQMs into HomeKit.

Which AQMs support HomeBridge?

  • Airthings
  • PurpleAir
  • Awair
  • Sensor Community (aka Luftdaten)

How to set up HomeBridge?

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Review: Kaiterra Sensedge Mini for Business and Green Buildings

Sotirios Papathanasiou7 Comments

There is a demand for Green Buildings lately, which focus on the comfort and health of the building’s occupants. Energy efficiency was the original target for most of the green buildings certifications programs, but they have evolved, and they now focus on many more aspects of the indoor environments. Indoor Air Quality has become the number one priority for many green building certifications, and in order to be certified, there are strict rules for ventilation and AQ monitoring.

Here comes Kaiterra Sensedge Mini, which is a RESET certified indoor air quality monitor. The Sensedge Mini is a calibrated real-time monitor that has to be placed in buildings that wish to obtain a Green Buildings certification.

The Sensedge Mini uses two removable sensor modules to replace the traditional, costly calibration processes for long-term accuracy with minimal maintenance.

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