Category: Air Quality Monitor

In-Depth Review: Wynd Halo 1st Edition Sensors

Sotirios Papathanasiou6 Comments

The Wynd Halo 1st Edition uses a proprietary PM sensor with a blue-light laser instead of a red-light laser, which presumably makes it more accurate and precise. Interestingly, I remember during the Kickstarter campaign of the monitor, backers were asking the company if they will sell the sensor as a component part to third parties, and they said yes because it was about to revolutionize the industry.

Although I don’t have a reference monitor, the comparison I conducted is considered a field evaluation in a real-life situation. AQ Monitors are designed to operate inside apartments and buildings for this reason I personally value more a field evaluation in situ than a lab evaluation where every parameter is controlled.

This kind of evaluation won’t tell us how accurate is the sensor, but it will reveal the correlation against other monitors in order to determine if measure something respectable. For example, there are many field and lab evaluations for the commonly found Plantower PMS5003 sensor that demonstrate a correlation of 0.78 – 0.93 against various reference monitors.

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Study: Taking a closer look at the air quality in classrooms

Sotirios Papathanasiou4 Comments

After almost two months of asking local schools for permission to install air quality monitors in their classrooms, on the 4th of December, a local school decided to grant me access.

In my city, Almeria, Spain, there are about 110 schools. I didn’t apply to all of them because each time I managed to find a way to contact them, I had to arrange a meeting in order to explain to them what I wanted to do, and all this process takes time. I managed to contact nine schools.

For this study, schools didn’t have to pay anything, so money wasn’t the issue for their refusal. They were worried about what will happen if the results were disappointing and negative. I tried to explain to them that the aim of the study is to understand what is going on in the classroom, in real conditions, with real students. I don’t want to discredit the school either the local authorities that manage the budget for the school. For this reason, I will keep the name of the school private.

Monitors

The monitors that I have installed for the study are made by Airthings. There are two Wave Plus, which include a CO2 sensor by Senseair. The sensor is called Sunrise, and it is an ultra-low-power, high precision NDIR sensor. Accuracy (CO2) ±30 ppm ±3% of reading. Finally, it features a self-correction system that allows them to auto-calibrate every 180 hours. I also have included a Wave mini monitor in the teacher’s office room. 

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Air Quality Adaptive Information (AQAI)

Sotirios PapathanasiouLeave a comment

Apple iOS 14 has brought many new features to phones and tablets. For the first time, I enrolled in the beta versions of the operating system for the iPhone just because I wanted to explore the user experience (UX) of the widgets.

Long story short, I really loved them, especially the weather widget because of how intuitive it is about the information that it displays. Generally, we are accustomed to the static widgets that they only update the information every 10 minutes and that’s all, but what Apple did with the weather widget was phenomenal. Depending on the time of the day it is able to display the most important information for users to read and make appropriate decisions.

During the day, you can see the current temperature and weather forecast for the following 6 hours, plus the highest and lowest temperature of the day. However, during the night, it makes a short suggestion about the following day, for example, Warmer tomorrow with a high of 29ºC. It is fantastic because you can plan the day ahead. I call this feature Adaptive Information, and this is what I will value as a user from an air quality monitor or and AQ app.

iOS 14: Left Day | Right Night
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Things no one talks about: Flatulence and Indoor Air Quality

Sotirios Papathanasiou4 Comments

Have you ever wondered if the gases we produce as humans are toxic to those who live with us?

It is a taboo but I think we all have thought about it at one moment in our lives. Scientifically known as flatus but commonly known as a fart, many of us even use funny expressions to cope with this uncomfortable situation they create like Acid-rain maker, After the thunder comes the rain, Baking brownies, Death Breath, Fire a stink torpedo, pass the gas, etc…

Let’s take a step back and analyze the chemical composition of a flatus. More than 99% of the volume of flatus is composed of non-smelly gases. These include oxygen (O2), nitrogen (N), carbon dioxide (CO2) hydrogen (H) and methane (CH4), keep in mind, methane is a colorless, odorless gas and nitrogen is not produced in the gut, but it is a component of environmental air. The remaining trace (<1% volume) compounds give flatus its smell which comes from a combination of volatile sulfur compounds. Hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), methyl mercaptan (CH4S), dimethyl sulfide (C2H6S), dimethyl disulfide (C2H6S2), and dimethyl trisulfide (C2H6S3).Read More »

Review: BRISE C360 Air Purifier

Sotirios Papathanasiou4 Comments

There are a few things you can do to reduce air pollution indoors like keeping things tight and clean, not smoking, using exhaust fans when you cook, and ventilating the rooms, but at the end of the day if the air pollution comes from outside sources then you need to take drastic measures and there is only one solution, investing in an air purifier.

There are many air purifiers on the market for all types of budgets but you shouldn’t expect a cheap air purifier to offer the same features and purification results as a high-end purifier. By the way, air cleaners and air purifiers are the same things.

BRISE C360 is a high-end purifier capable of purifying up to 95 m2 or 1022 ft2 room and rated CADR at 390 m3/hr or 230CFM. It is recommended for medium size rooms and it packs a ton of features.

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Review: Airthinx IAQ for Businesses

Sotirios Papathanasiou3 Comments

In a previous post, I presented Airthinx IAQ for Homeowners and how an advanced AQ monitor can be used for indoor environmental monitoring. In this post, we will explore how we can use the same monitor but in business environments (offices, industrial buildings, food supply chains, etc).

We will focus on the tools present in the dashboard as it is one of the best dashboards you will find in the market, and we will learn how to get the most out of it.

Let’s begin with the Dashboard – Home. Here we can create various types of widgets and arrange them according to our preference. First, you can see that I have created a column with all the current measurements with small graphs of the environmental parameters. Right next to it, I always watch for the general AQ, PM2.5, and Humidity. Below I have more widgets with other graphs and values that I want to have a glance.

Dashboard – Home

Next, we can see the Map tab. Here we can locate all the available monitors in a high precision as the monitors come with a GPS module, however, we will see later that we can manually set the location of the device.

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Outdoor Air Quality Monitors 2020Q4

Sotirios Papathanasiou10 Comments

Since my last update of the outdoor (ambient) air quality monitors list back in 2018, new products have been released into the market for various purposes and different budgets. Air quality monitors for professional use in cities and industrial sites and homeowners who want to supervise the ambient air quality outside their houses/apartments.

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Fitness Air Quality Monitor, is that possible?

Sotirios Papathanasiou5 Comments

Over the years, I have spoken with many companies in the field of air quality and once in a while, companies will tell me that they want athletes to purchase their devices in order to improve performance. I am always skeptical about this because I haven’t seen any integration of fitness data with the AQ monitors so far that could give some possible adverts or ways for the athlete to improve their performance. You don’t expect people to make assumptions you have to give them results and guide them in the right direction.

During covid-19 lockdown, I worked out at home and as I have access to a lot of data (fitness and air quality) I decided to make some experiments and see how my body reacts to poor indoor air quality and good indoor air quality and if the whole hypothesis works.

Smartwatches are very common these day and all of them feature a heart rate monitor and many more sensors. Recently, Apple and Fitbit released pulse oximeter sensors in their latest wearables. These new sensors in the smartwatches could unlock many more potentials and provide us with data that could save lives.

Let’s continue with the argument of what current AQMs could do if they combine fitness data. First of all, there is a possible problem. In case the monitor is stationary then it won’t be able to tell if the user was near the device or not during the workout session but this could be addressed as most times fitness data come along with GPS coordinates. By allowing the device to access the location data only when the user is in the same location as the AQM (home, gym, etc.) we solve the issue. Another possible solution is if the monitor comes with a Bluetooth/Ultra Wideband chip then it can easily sense the presence of the athlete/individual.Read More »

Air Quality Monitors – Comparison List 2020 Q4

Sotirios Papathanasiou23 Comments

It has been a while since the last time I updated the list with all the air quality monitors in the market. Just to be clear, there are a lot more Chinese knockouts that I haven’t included because they don’t have any support from the companies either they offer something unique.

This time the list includes some Pro-level indoor AQMs like the elichens
Indoor Air Quality PRO Station and the NEMo XT – Indoor.

  • Prices may vary during time.
  • Some Companies don’t specify on their data sheet if their devices are capable to measure PM2.5 or PM10 and they just mention the word dust.
  • Some other companies say: Our product goes beyond CO₂ by analyzing substances that directly affect your well-being by measuring VOCs. They aren’t clear if their devices have CO₂ sensor.
  • Some of the devices are AQI Monitors and Air Purifiers Combo. On this list you can only read the features as an AQI monitor.

Review: SPARROW W500

Sotirios PapathanasiouLeave a comment

We have discussed a lot of times how air pollution can affect human health in the long-term. However, there is one pollutant that can have a severe impact on our health even in small concentrations in the short-term: Carbon Monoxide (CO).

Carbon Monoxide is a colourless, odourless toxic gas. Carbon monoxide poisoning is the most common type of fatal air poisoning in many countries around the world because it is hard to detect with our senses and it is classified as highly toxic.

About half of the carbon monoxide in Earth’s atmosphere is anthropogenic from the burning of fossil fuels (diesel and gasoline), oil, paraffin, propane, natural gas, trash, and biomass.

Here comes SPARROW W500 Air Quality Monitor by ECO SENSORS, a small portable monitor that can follow you anywhere. It is designed to alert you when high CO concentrations are present.

Hardware

  • Carbon Monoxide Sensor by SPEC Sensors
  • Humidity Sensor
  • Temperature Sensor
  • Alarm (audible buzzer)
  • Multicolour LED Light
  • Bluetooth Connection
  • Micro-USB port

SPARROW is super small  5.6cm x 3.3cm x 1cm and super light as it weighs 18g/0.03 lbs. You can pair it with a smartphone (iOS and Android) but also it can operate on its own as the buzzer and the Yellow/Red/Purple LED light can notify you when there are significant CO concentrations around. When the CO concentrations are safe the Green LED light will always flash once per second, except when charging, after all it can inform you about the CO concentrations without the need to launch the app or take your phone into your hands.

The battery will last 2 plus weeks, which is great for those who don’t want to charge one more device every day or so. I have set it with a 1 minute data log rate. The device has a button that you need to press every-time you want to connect it with the phone, that way the Bluetooth connection is established at the moment, otherwise the SPARROW would have to be in a mode where it was always broadcasting for Bluetooth signal, which is a huge power drain for both devices, phone and the air quality monitor.

Fortunately, my house is CO free as I don’t burn anything but we all travel and for those with a garage it is a mandatory device to have. In the picture below you can see the device inside a closed jar with smoke from a burning match as I wanted to stimulate the sensor and simulate the CO concentrations. I must say the CO sensor is a lot more stable and cross-sensitivity proof which means other gases won’t affect the measurements.

SPARROW_Jar CO

SPARROW comes with a carabiner clip but there is an option to attach it on the back of a phone case with a special mount system the case maker OtterBox has developed and they support many cases for iOS, Android phone, and tablets.

SPARROW Animation Case

The App

Visually, the app is not pretty but it does the job. There are a lot of options to tweak and to adjust the app and device to your needs but it lacks a better user experience UX though a better user interface UI. Of course, this is something that can be fixed with future app updates.

You can share the measurements (data Log file) via email which is a neat feature but they go a step further and you can connect the device with the micro-USB cable to your computer and enable direct communication, however, this is an advanced feature.

The app allows you to select different data log rates between 1 second / 10 seconds / 1 minute / 10 minutes / 1 hour / 1 day. There is another cool option to enable if you want  the device not to keep low CO concentrations in the log file, that way you don’t have a huge  amount of data entries to process later on, like in my case.

Literally, you can customise the device to your needs even by changing the Sensitivity mode for different thresholds. You can measure in parts per million (ppm) or milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m³). You can set up emergency messaging by allowing SPARROW app to send messages to emergency contacts when very high concentrations are detected.

Premium mobile phone screen mockup template

 

Conclusion

Breathing CO can cause a series of health issues. Unknowingly, exposure to moderate levels of CO over long periods of time has also been linked with an increased risk of heart disease. If your environment is surrounded by vehicles (suitable for #VanLife) or other sources of burning fossil fuels then having such a device that can guard your health is worth investing in. SPARROW W500 is one of them.