Best indoor air quality monitors?
January 10, 2024 1:54 PM Subscribe
What indoor air quality monitors continuously (and accurately) log air quality in terms of particulates of different sizes and common chemical / non-particulate pollutants such as ozone?
I have noticed periodic episodes of burn-like smells in my home, and the rooms with air purifiers occasionally validate this with their sensors going from "all good" to "there's stuff in the air" without a known cause, like me cooking something or kicking up dust.
The air purifiers don't provide any ongoing information about air quality, and they only light up when they sense particulate matter in the air, but I live in a place with "bad" air in general and am curious about monitoring and tracking other sources of poor air quality, including ozone from the outside and anything that might be originating from inside the house, like sewage gases from plumbing issues.
I'd like to have a better view of when this happens, how often it happens, and what is causing it. Ideally the monitors would be easy to export time-logged data from, possibly integrating with Apple Home or Ecobee, easy to move around a space (between rooms and different locations in the same room), and actually accurate.
What should I get?
I have noticed periodic episodes of burn-like smells in my home, and the rooms with air purifiers occasionally validate this with their sensors going from "all good" to "there's stuff in the air" without a known cause, like me cooking something or kicking up dust.
The air purifiers don't provide any ongoing information about air quality, and they only light up when they sense particulate matter in the air, but I live in a place with "bad" air in general and am curious about monitoring and tracking other sources of poor air quality, including ozone from the outside and anything that might be originating from inside the house, like sewage gases from plumbing issues.
I'd like to have a better view of when this happens, how often it happens, and what is causing it. Ideally the monitors would be easy to export time-logged data from, possibly integrating with Apple Home or Ecobee, easy to move around a space (between rooms and different locations in the same room), and actually accurate.
What should I get?
Airthings is exhibiting at CES, there's been some youtube/ticktokers visiting the booth. It does VOC but I don't see what type of sensor is used.
posted by Sophont at 6:47 PM on January 10, 2024
posted by Sophont at 6:47 PM on January 10, 2024
Check out the South Coast Air Quality District sensor evaluation program.
I’d take any home sensor system with a grain of salt— they’ll give you a relative sense of air quality, but not absolute numbers that are trustable. Even the really good, tuned up professional gear needs to be calibrated against regular samples analyzed in labs.
posted by Headfullofair at 9:58 PM on January 10, 2024 [2 favorites]
I’d take any home sensor system with a grain of salt— they’ll give you a relative sense of air quality, but not absolute numbers that are trustable. Even the really good, tuned up professional gear needs to be calibrated against regular samples analyzed in labs.
posted by Headfullofair at 9:58 PM on January 10, 2024 [2 favorites]
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This is all more expensive than the consumer friendly devices, but it's independent of cloud services. I don't believe the dylos ever had a Designer in its production.
It works very well.
Ed: code to read the serial port https://github.com/pnathan/dylos1100-pro
posted by p_nathan at 4:48 PM on January 10, 2024 [1 favorite]