Indoor air quality monitoring & health

[gwern]

Looks like http://aircasting.org/ is expanding into a Kickstarter: http://www.wired.com/2014/11/goofy-wearable-tracks-air-quality-around/

The AirCasting platform was built as an open-source, end-to-end solution for collecting, displaying, and sharing health and environmental data using your smartphone. The platform consists of wearable sensors that detect changes in your environment and physiology, including a palm-sized air quality monitor called the AirBeam, the AirCasting Android app, the AirCasting crowdmapping website, and wearable LED accessories...Currently, the AirCasting platform connects a series of wearable devices to a network, notably an Arduino-powered, portable, palm-sized air quality monitor called the AirBeam. The AirBeam measures fine particulate matter, also known as PM2.5. You may be saying to yourself, “Why is this important?” Answer: The US Environmental Protection Agency monitors and regulates six criteria air pollutants, one of which is PM2.5, and the EPA’s measurements indicate that PM2.5 levels pose a substantial health risk in cities across the country... The AirBeam uses a light scattering method to measure PM2.5. Air is drawn through a sensing chamber wherein light from an LED bulb scatters off particles in the airstream. This light scatter is registered by a detector and converted into a measurement that estimates the number of particles in the air. Via Bluetooth, these measurements are communicated approximately once a second to the AirCasting Android app, which maps and graphs the data in real time on your smartphone. At the end of each AirCasting session, the collected data is sent to the AirCasting website, where the data is crowdsourced with data from other AirCasters to generate heat maps indicating where PM2.5 concentrations are highest and lowest. As an open-source platform, modifying our components to take other measurements and or transmit the data to other websites or apps is easy and encouraged. We’ve even included an expansion port on the AirBeam to make adding sensors as simple as can be...As a backer receiving an AirBeam, you will be helping to lower the costs of producing the AirBeam, enabling us to reach more students. Getting to scale would push the cost of making an AirBeam from $800 down to $200 and reduce assembly time from 7 hours to 7 minutes. We are aiming for an initial goal of $50,000 to pay for the enclosure molds, bring down costs through bulk orders, and cover FCC certification.

There's no mention of recording any data besides PM2.5 in the Wired article, the Kickstarter page, or the Kickstarter comments. Wearable is nice, especially for people who travel around a lot or live in a city, but $200 is still a lot to pay for a single metric...

[himynamesdave]

The AirBeam could be good at home, although at $200 is placed in the premium end of the market. Would anyone really wear this though?!?!?

[gwern]

If you look at their KS page, it seems at least 110 people do believe they will wear it.

[gwern]

http://www.wired.com/2014/11/clarity-wearable/ "This Wearable Detects Pollution to Build Air Quality Maps in Real Time":

The device clips onto your bag, your belt, or your bike, and every once in a while, it sucks up a bit of the air around you and uses an optical sensor to count individual pollutant particles, including PM2.5, volatile organic compounds, nitrogen dioxide, and ammonia. At the same time, thanks to separate sensors, it measures temperature and humidity. Via the smartphone app, you can check your exposure whenever you like....The device is intended for users who live not only in China, but other badly polluted places, such as India and Mexico. Lu and company plan to launch a marketing campaign in China by May, and if all goes well, they’ll ship to consumers by August. The price tag will likely be somewhere between $50 to $75. It’s way cheaper—and more portable—than other efforts that have gotten attention in the past, including AirBeam. ...The system will create a stamp of the date, time, geographic location, and air quality data, and when it’s connected to the net, it will upload the data to the cloud service. This information wouldn’t be associated with a user’s identity, but collectively, it can provide a better indication of air problems across large geographies.

This sounds far more promising than Airbeam: 6 metrics, not 1; and a quarter to half the price? Sign me up!

[ejain]

Here's another wearable environmental monitor project on Kickstarter: http://www.mytzoa.com/.

This device has sensors for UV, light, humidity, temperature and air quality. The only drawback is that air quality is measured using PM2.5/PM10, which may not make much sense for indoor measurements. Also, doesn't look like this device will ship anytime soon.

[himynamesdave]

If you look at their KS page, it seems at least 110 people do believe they will wear it.

True, but it can also be used in the home as a standalone device too. It is hard to tell the intended use from this number alone.

[QuantifiedBob]

The AirPi has one of the better suites of sensors fully-loaded but it also omits CO2 and putting it together may be very challenging for a novice like myself.

Regarding the AirPi, I've had similar frustration after building my own - while it works great, my biggest issue is the lack of sensor calibration and conversion of readings to something human-readable. For example, for carbon monoxide or nitrogen dioxide readings are shown in ohms (raw sensor value) and no one has converted these readings to PPM. Likewise, noise level is simply mV instead of dB (and to your original point, it does look like people have added CO2 sensors to their AirPies).

You'll see that the temperature reading is about 15 degrees F higher than it should be - this is a design flaw with the AirPi. The sensor is picking up heat from the circuit board when soldered directly to it so needed to be separated by about 6" of wire.

Something more "out of the box" that looks promising is Foobot (formerly "Alima" and before that "AirboxLab") - http://foobot.io/ . I inquired about API access and was told there will be one available when the units start shipping early next year.

[himynamesdave]

Regarding the AirPi, I've had similar frustration after building my own - while it works great, my biggest issue is the lack of sensor calibration and conversion of readings to something human-readable. For example, for carbon monoxide or nitrogen dioxide readings are shown in ohms (raw sensor value) and no one has converted these readings to PPM. Likewise, noise level is simply mV instead of dB (and to your original point, it does look like people have added CO2 sensors to their AirPies).

You'll see that the temperature reading is about 15 degrees F higher than it should be - this is a design flaw with the AirPi. The sensor is picking up heat from the circuit board when soldered directly to it so needed to be separated by about 6" of wire.

Nice! I could never get mine to work :(

[portphillip]

hi I am using AdvancedSense IQ 610 to analyse my indoor air quality . I always monitor room temperature , humidity level inside the room. I am using this from past 1 year and is working fine for me.

[gwern]

NYT article which mentions a few of the air quality sensors: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/experimenting-at-home-with-air-quality-monitors.html

[ejain]

NYT article which mentions a few of the air quality sensors: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/experimenting-at-home-with-air-quality-monitors.html

Products:

• Speck
• Dylos

Projects:

• Quantified Plant
• CITI-SENSE

[uxgreg]

Awesome thread to find! I've been keeping an eye on AirPi, but I'm concerned about the soldering requirements, bugs, and lack of calibration.

I did a bunch of research today on alternatives, and it looks like Netatmo is the current best, at $145 for CSV export and the critical sensors (temperature, humidity, CO2) plus pressure, sound, and IFTTT support.

Foobot would be second, since it has more sensors (temperature, humidity, CO2, CO, tVOC, PM2.5) for $199... Unfortunately, it doesn't have any export, nor an API, nor IFTTT support.

Is there anything on the market that's better than the Netatmo, and still under $200? (Everything else from @gwern's post on 2014/9/29 is either unavailable or more expensive.)

[QuantifiedBob]

Foobot would be second, since it has more sensors (temperature, humidity, CO2, CO, tVOC, PM2.5) for $199... Unfortunately, it doesn't have any export, nor an API, nor IFTTT support.

Actually, looks like Foobot now provides API access - http://foobot.io/support/ (scroll down and click "API for Developers").

[QuantifiedBob]

I've just written a post about my recent indoor air quality measurement experiments (focusing on my bedroom):

http://www.quantifiedbob.com/2015/11/understanding-my-indoor-environment-part-1-air-quality/

As I mentioned in a prior reply, I began by using AirPi, but then switched to Foobot (formerly Alima), which has an API so I can create graphs like these:

Unfortunately, neither device provides all of the readings I am looking for, so in the near term I will need to pull in/combine data from both devices.

[gwern]

Anyone else want to weigh in on Foobot, especially comparisons of accuracy with other sensors? As far as $/sensors go, it seems to be the best available, but the Amazon reviews are extremely polarized between love and hate, with the haters citing both bugs in the apps (not too relevant to us since we'd be using the API, I suspect) but also claiming inaccuracy (a big concern).

[gwern]

New project I missed: the 'Mpod'/'MAQS'. Homepage: http://maqs.pbworks.com/w/page/43556955/FrontPage Calibration/evaluation paper: http://www.atmos-meas-tech.net/7/3325/2014/amt-7-3325-2014.pdf Does not seem to be commercially available.

Also of interest: snuffles.org is a wiki attempting to collate air quality sensor data: http://www.snuffle.org/doku.php?id=m-pod&do=index Does not seem well organized so there's no page listing just devices.

[gwern]

In a LW discussion of possible CO2 effects on cognitive performance, one user reports using a CO2/humidity/temperature meter. It doesn't have data logging, but there is a $170 version, the "TIM12 Desktop CO2 & RH/T Monitor/Data Logger" (data sheet). This is not as good a deal in terms of price per variables as some of the others, but perhaps it's worth the premium?

[gwern]

One downside to Foobot on closer inspection: they claim to measure CO2 but apparently it's actually just algorithmically estimated from the VOC sensor (http://help.foobot.io/hc/en-us/articles/205890791-Foobot-s-sensors). Which is no good if you want to do something like correlate fluctuations in CO2 levels with cognitive performance...

[QuantifiedBob]

That's correct. The same sensor is used for both VOC and CO2. I asked the Footbot folks about the VOC/CO2 and how to obtain CO readings a few months ago and this was their response:

CO is included in VOC's measurements, so there's no reading you can get for it. Regarding VOC/CO2, there's no specific CO2 sensor as it's a value deducted from VOC measurements and complex algortihms. I must tell you that CO2 isn't a pollutant - if not in too much quantity - but is a confinement index. So when it rises, it simply means you need to open windows.

Not ideal, so if you want to dig deeper into VOCs you may have to combine the Foobot with some additional sensors.

[Ismaelqutub]

I recently started getting worried about indoor air quality too. My brother smokes when he comes over and I can notice the significant difference of the air quality after he leaves. I literally JUST bought this monitor off of Indiegogo. It's called iBaby Air : https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ibaby-air-smart-air-quality-monitor-ion-purifier#/

I'm hoping they ship it fast, it was only $79 so I thought why not? I bought this other little device called Atmo Tube, it's pretty cool and small but it doesn't offer air purifying, this iBaby Air has air purifying.

Any other suggestions for now? What can I do to improve the air quality for now? I sometimes wake up coughing a lot, then the cough goes away once I leave to work.