Winter is coming and looking to measure Indoor Air Quality

With winter fast approaching (ouch!), I'm looking to get an Indoor Air Quality Monitor. Any suggestions on a reliable monitor that works with Hubitat directly?

I'm at the other end of the weather spectrum, though they say we are likely to have a wet Summer, so nothing a long way from what we had during Winter... Probably just Hot and Humid, rather than cool and humid....

Anyway, back to the tech.... I did lash out and unnecessarily purchase a EcoWitt Air Quality Sensor to connect to my Gateway. It works with my (Mirco's) drivers, and likely with others that are around.... I don't tend to be too detailed in my critiques of products, so never feel overly comfortable recommending something.

@kahn-hubitat - I believe you also bought one of these....? What do you think?

The winter is coming and so are Frient built-in drivers :wink: Ask @rlithgow1 what he thinks about their air quality sensor. I don't think he'll mind sharing...

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I just got it working today so I'll report in on it in a few days

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I can comment on this. I have the Develco/Frient working with zigbee2mqtt and also the ecowitt. They're both decent devices, but very different.

The Develco/Frient is a passive sampling device that does VOC, temp, and relative humidity. Air Quality seems to rely solely on VOC variations and matches up closely with a similar device from Xiaomi/Aqara.

The ecowitt device is a particle sensor, so it does PM2.5, PM10, CO2, temp, and relative humidity. It is an active sampling device.

So they are very different. If someone has COPD (or other breathing difficulties), I'd recommend the ecowitt device to monitor PM2.5/PM10 over the Frient. But for most of us, the Frient will suffice.

It would be ideal if ecowitt added VOC detection to their sensor lineup.

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I have recently acquired a Air Gradient DIY Pro Kit.

It includes pm2.5, pm10, CO2, Temp and Humidity. It has a option to add TVOC if you want. Since it is a DIY kit you can also potentially add other sensors as well if you want.

It has a little display to show the values, but also has the ability output to a programmed endpoint. This should allow easy integration directly into hubitat with Maker API which is what i am going to be attempting to do. I haven't gotten their yet though.

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What in particular were you hoping to measure @bptworld ? Or were you just looking for a general gauge on the Ai Quality?

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I use a homemade bme680 based sensor + their proprietary BSEC library to calculate IAQ + esp8266 to MQTT. Works well. Cost <$20 to make - so I made 3x of them for different parts of my house.

How accurate? Dunno. It goes up when I think it should (heavy cooking, intentionally breathe on it, etc), and goes down when I think it should (turn on vent, etc). Past that, I won't vouch for accuracy.

I also use a PM sensor (1.0/2.5/10.0) in my laundry room to control the vent on/off (also homemade to mqtt).

All of those I brought into Hubitat (I flip flop between doing so via the hubitat node-red nodes, and the various mqtt solutions in hubitat itself).

ESPhome also supports bme680 sensor + BSEC library, so could also do sensor to Home Assistant to Hubitat very easily.

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And it looks like it does active sampling for PM2.5/PM10 - which is excellent.

Would any of these sensors monitor radon?

No. That needs an alpha particle detector.

if you can find a DIY sensor for it you may be able to add it to the Air Gradient sensor. It has a few extra connection points for sensors.

How dare you! :rofl:

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Thank you everyone! Great information. Now I have some reading to do. :wink:

I have 3 of the ecowitt. Two 2.5 only and one of the newer pm 10..they all work good and are similar but

The newer model also measure co2 which is very useful. None of them work if the humidity is too high. Ie in the rain etc.

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Thanks for the info. I just ordered one. We live in a newer house that is well insulated. Air quality is an area that builders can easily skimp on, especially on spec houses. I think it's pretty likely we'll invest in ERVs. This device should help figure if we should.

The Frient reads VOC. I've only had it going today. I'm gonna try to set up a gauge in addition to announcement rule based on it's output. I'm gonna tag @AABfrient in this is as well. I'd like to see an updated version that does more than just VOC, maybe c0 and Radon?

The AirThings reads Radon. I have 2 and like them, but there is no HE integration built for them yet… :frowning:

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Those Airthings look really nice!

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I just posted directions for how to integrate a Air Gradient with HE wasn't to bad at all. FYI AQI on it seems to be based on PM and TVOC