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.
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?
Here is the thread I created for this. I have even tweaked it a bit since this so I can send updated to AirGradients dashboard as well as Hubitat. So far it seems to work well.
I'm not super satisfied with my Frient sensor. Maybe I'm wrong but it should be reporting a number between 1-5 as AirQualityIndex, but it sometimes goes up to 18. Can anyone help with how to translate that number to the 1-5 scale ?
The AQI can be calculated different based on your region. If you are in the US it can go up into the hundreds. Here is a link to a table that will give you a basic idea of what each one means. Keep that is for the US though so if you are in a different region you may need to look your region up.
-- This table you sent is great! thanks! just hopingt that the number I get from my device is according to this table
another interesting question is, why is this difference between US and EMEA ? or between country to country. I was contacting the vendor, they said I have to ask the developer of the driver. now I don't know if I can trust the device or not at all.
The problem is each country can have their own way of calculating the AIQ and use different items to calculate it. So the US way could be fairly off for your local region to the point it wouldn't make sense.
I would do 2 things. First i would look up what is the proper way to calculate it for your region/country and then if using the built in driver open a new thread and link support to help with it.
