I researched the best outdoor air quality monitors to find the perfect device for keeping track of air quality in my surroundings.
I am having trouble deciding which one would best suit my needs. I mainly want the monitor for outdoor air quality awareness and occasional indoor use. Accuracy, battery life and ease of use are important factors for me.
What does any of that have to do with developing Arduino related hardware?
I am building an Arduino logger for outdoor AQI, temp, and humidity, and I need a trusted commercial monitor to calibrate my sensors and check drift over time. I’m choosing between the IQAir and Airthings units as that reference device, so I’m after firsthand accuracy and usability feedback. That’s the link to Arduino hardware—thanks for the heads up.
Since only the second has a warrentee, That would be my choice!
Achim from AirGradient here.
We produce open source air quality monitors and test each of them against a Palas Fidas reference instrument. I don’t think Airthings or IQAir do this.
In general, I don’t think you need a low cost monitor to test it. Better try and locate it close to an official government reference station and then compare the data. This will be more reliable in my opinion.
I like this Dylos unit:
What exactly is an air quality monitor?
I've worked a lot with water quality monitors in the past and these tend to be collections of discrete sensors.
The sensors would be chosen according to what type of water is being monitored.
Drinking water might typically be monitored for temperature, conductivity, pH, turbidity, colour, chlorine.
Waste water, often poorly monitored, might include temperature, conductivity, turbidity. Larger treatment works might include ammonia, phosphate and oxygen demand, but all need calibration and regular specialised maintenance. Expensive to buy and operate.
In both cases, a far wider range of parameters would be measured in labs.
On-line monitoring for water, especially waste water, is notoriously difficult because of difficulties with fouling.
What would you want from an air quality monitor? Dust and particulates? Specific pollutants like hydrocarbons, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides. In critical industries you might want oxygen level, flammables, toxics like hudrogen suplide, carbon oxides levels.
In every case, quality control of measurements is crucial, particularly calibration and use of standards.
Going to be difficult at less than professional level.
Unless you are satisfied with one-time, stagnant air measurement, you will need a fan to bring new air to your air quality measurement.