[HN Gopher] The hidden cost of air quality monitoring
___________________________________________________________________
The hidden cost of air quality monitoring
Author : ahaucnx
Score : 554 points
Date : 2023-06-27 23:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.airgradient.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.airgradient.com)
| przmk wrote:
| I had my eyes on some AirGradient kits but it seems like you
| can't buy them in the EU directly and, unfortunately, customs
| fees are way too high for it to get shipped. Does anyone know
| where I could find them or if there are other open alternatives?
| ahaucnx wrote:
| We currently sell only out of Thailand but most of our
| customers in the EU and the US do not get charged any custom
| fees.
| przmk wrote:
| That's interesting. How does that work? Since July 2021
| (iirc), customs fees are mandatory for every single purchase
| made out of the EU.
| teekert wrote:
| I thought this was going to be about "mental cost" of opening the
| iOS weather app and seeing that you are breathing bad air day in,
| day out.
| accrual wrote:
| I was thinking about getting a SAF Aranet4 recently but looks
| like you're tied to their app to viewing the data. This article
| helped me second guess my choice.
|
| I would much rather such a nice looking device have a simple API
| that some docker container can query and present a UI for, and/or
| would integrate with HomeKit or HomeBridge which it looks like it
| does not.
|
| Does HN have any recommendations? Should I even bother with
| optimizing another metric beyond "open the windows every couple
| hours", assuming outdoor AQI is OK?
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Achim from AirGradient here.
|
| The open source nature of our air quality monitor kits give you
| a number of choices for data transfer. You can use the monitor
| and send the data directly to your end point, e.g. through
| ESPHome or just change our default firmware and change the http
| post endpoint to your own server.
|
| Alternatively, if you want to use the AirGradient dashboard, we
| do also have an API that you can access your own data.
| ck2 wrote:
| Achim not sure if you'll see this but an idea to really make
| AirGradient take off in the USA nationally on your
| https://map.airgradient.com/
|
| You should contact the national public WeatherSTEM program!
|
| They have a great open-data network in all kinds of public
| community places like universities and firehouses and such.
|
| But WeatherSTEM does not have air quality sensors! That is a
| huge oversight.
|
| If your hardware can be paired with all their rigs
| nationally, you'd blow away all other services like purpleair
| overnight.
|
| https://www.weatherstem.com/dashboard?public_access_token=e7.
| ..
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Thanks. This looks interesting. I would loved to learn more
| about it. Could you please contact me?
| https://www.airgradient.com/support/
| stavros wrote:
| I got an IKEA air quality sensor for $50. It reports readings
| over Zigbee (PM 2.5 and tVOC, along with temperature and
| humidity), which is great. The PM2.5 reading is within 2-3
| mm/m3 of my laser sensor that I got off of Ali, so quite
| accurate.
| voxelghost wrote:
| >within 2-3 mm/m3 of
|
| .. had me confused for longer than I like to admit, I assume
| you meant mg/m3?
| stavros wrote:
| Oops, yes, thank you.
| mischief6 wrote:
| i have the aranet4. it can be used with HomeAssistant
| (https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/aranet/) and can be
| tracked using ESPHome bluetooth
| proxy(https://esphome.io/components/bluetooth_proxy.html) if
| you don't have bluetooth on your HA machine. using this, i can
| view CO2, humidity, pressure and temperature in HA.
| vosper wrote:
| I have no affiliation with Air Gradient (who wrote TFA) but I
| recently assembled one of their DIY devices (the Pro Pre-
| soldered version) and I'm quite happy with it.
|
| > Since the AirGradient DIY Pro Kits are fully open-cource
| [sic] you can send the data to any server, i.e. Home Assistant
|
| If you can put lego together you can assemble this device, and
| the price is right IMO, especially compared to competitors. I
| don't think it's as compact or good looking as an Aranet 4, and
| it's not portable unless you use a battery bank, but's it half
| the price.
|
| https://www.airgradient.com/kits/
| lxchase wrote:
| I have a Aranet4 linked with home assistant. For quick glances
| at trends though their app is perfectly fine in my opinion.
| tguvot wrote:
| ecowitt wh45. you can read data from it with rtlsdr usb dongle
| and rtl_433 program
| throwaranay4933 wrote:
| You're not limited to the Aranet4 app. The device speaks
| Bluetooth and there are Python and Go libraries for parsing the
| protocol. There is also a Prometheus exporter for it.
| lilyball wrote:
| Home Assistant already has an integration to read from it as
| well.
| secabeen wrote:
| You will need a BT -> HA relay, but you can do that with
| any ESP32 board and ESPHome.
| silversmith wrote:
| Only for huge distances. I have mine connected directly
| to the BT of the mini pc I use to host HA.
| lilyball wrote:
| I'm running hass on a raspberry pi 4 and its built-in
| bluetooth works fine, no extra setup needed.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| These Airgradient blog posts are great marketing because they
| give people like me a chance to talk about how good their
| devices are :)
|
| I put together an Airgradient Basic based on their PCB design,
| a slightly more accurate temp/humidity sensor (in retrospect
| probably not worth it), and the USB-C version of the
| microcontroller they recommended at the time. Soldering
| everything took an hour or so, and I also 3d printer a case.
| IMO the display doesn't look as nice as an Eink would (a la the
| Aranet), but it probably wouldn't be too difficult to mod one
| in.
|
| However I don't actually look at the display much, I have it
| hooked up into Home Assistant so I can check everything on my
| phone. Granted, the main lesson I've learned is the one you
| mentioned: open the windows every once in a while, especially
| if the oven or stove are on. It was also cool to validate that
| my air purifier actually works.
| accrual wrote:
| That validation does sound very worthwhile. Thanks for the
| reply and suggestion!
| r1ch wrote:
| My Aranet4 has been great, the original batteries lasted well
| over a year with even with Bluetooth transmissions enabled,
| which can be read by any BLE application (I use Home
| Assistant). You only "need" the app for firmware updates,
| speaking of which, the most recent firmware update seems to
| have thrown my calibration out of whack as outdoor air now
| reads 600ppm. Hopefully they fix it soon.
| sliken wrote:
| A sadly common patterns, reduced API access, worse free plan, and
| increasing costs. Reminds me of Redhat and Reddit.
|
| I just wanted to mention airthings. Turn key, cloud enabled, and
| "just works". But also has a github repo with examples for
| importing data into graphana, reading data from into a Raspberry
| Pi, etc. Said tools talk directly to the device, so you can skip
| the cloud completely.
|
| I've got one gateway (if you plug in a usb-c power source) it
| reads data from the devices over bluetooth then uploads to the
| cloud. But you can do similar with a Pi. Then distribute the
| bluetooth sensors around the house. I was surprised to get good
| coverage over 3 floors of a house with BLE to a single gateway.
|
| View plus is the gateway (when it has USB-c power, otherwise just
| a sensor), has radon, PM 2.5, CO2, temp, VOCs, air pressure, and
| humidity. It just works. Wave plus is the similar without the
| gateway, it has radon, CO2, temp, VOCs, air pressure, and
| humidity.
|
| Nice quality hardware that "just works" out of the box with a
| free cloud, but you can later import the data directly (not a
| cloud download) into graphana or similar.
|
| The batteries last a year or so, as advertised. The app is
| decent, and there's a web dashboard for more control of the
| presentation.
|
| Github repos at https://github.com/Airthings
| yuuuuuuuu wrote:
| > I just wanted to mention airthings. Turn key, cloud enabled,
| and "just works".
|
| Cloud. As soon as it's in the cloud, it's not yours.
|
| Just a matter of time for the next round of closing some API
| and boom there goes your access to data.
| sliken wrote:
| That's optional, you can skip the cloud and download the data
| directly from the device over bluetooth and dump it into
| graphana or whatever floats your boat.
| chromatin wrote:
| IMO it's absurd that you cannot download over your local
| LAN and have to rig up a Raspberry Pi (or similar) to read
| via BLE. That turned me off, although I'm still looking for
| a sensor with radon.
| somehnguy wrote:
| I have an AirThings Wave+ (CO2, VOC, pressure, radon,
| temp, humidity) that I read from using an esp32 via ble
| (esphome) to bring the data into Home Assistant. All
| local, super easy to setup & 'just works'.
|
| I'm sure you could use a Pi to pull in the data manually
| via ble if you have no other uses for Home Assistant.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > reduced API access, worse free plan, and increasing costs.
|
| Expect a lot more of this over the next year. We've all gotten
| used to generous free plans due to the era of zero percent
| interest and high growth; that era is ending (at least
| temporarily). Almost every SaaS business that has not already
| re-done their pricing tiers since the interest rate hikes is in
| the process of doing so. Oh, and ad-supported plans are going
| to get _way_ more aggressive on the ads.
| DharmaPolice wrote:
| Although the direct effects are awful it feels like we should
| surely (in the long term) _want_ services to be sustainable -
| i.e. the cost of the service to be paid for by its users.
| Where services are not sustainable (and require donations
| /grants) this should be explicit and transparent.
|
| Cheap money lasted for such a long time that we're all used
| to being on economic painkillers 24/7.
| tlavoie wrote:
| Yes, services should be sustainable. That isn't the same
| thing as enabling them to extract as much money as possible
| in a short period of time before selling out, which is
| often the target these days.
|
| Develop a long-term plan that builds a stable business, and
| keeps both the proprietor and customers happy, and I'm
| happy to support them.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > we want services to be sustainable - i.e. the cost of the
| service to be paid for by its users
|
| All of this applies equally to businesses that were
| sustainable (or on a path to sustainability). The amount of
| money a business can responsibly spend on loss leaders like
| a free tier is dependent on growth rate and cost of
| capital.
|
| Now that cost of capital has gone up and growth has gone
| down, the amount you can reasonably spend on loss leaders
| is comparatively tiny.
|
| This does _not_ mean we should expect fundamental changes
| in most business models going forward. Most startups did
| not take the Vision Fund approach to their business model
| that so fundamentally warped a few markets (Uber, WeWork,
| etc.)
| viraptor wrote:
| I hope it's not going to be too bad. We'll have some delay,
| but soon more open source projects should fill the
| underserved spaces. The generous free plans stopped many
| interesting projects from being created, but as a side effect
| that's also going to change.
| hn8305823 wrote:
| > It appears that some sensor manufacturers have a strong desire
| to force people into subscriptions and this is sometimes even a
| metric mentioned in their annual reports
|
| This is a huge problem that goes way beyond the subject of this
| article. Most companies (especially publicly traded ones) want
| recurring revenue on their books, not one-time sales. This is why
| even traditional hardware vendors like Cisco/Juniper try to get
| as much recurring revenue as possible with subscriptions to
| unlock ports etc.
|
| A CFO explained it to me once that "a dollar of one-time sale
| contributes 1x to our valuation while a dollar of recurring
| revenue contributes 17x". I may have translated that wrong but
| you get the idea.
| w-ll wrote:
| the irony on a substack... the hidden cost of me scrolling and
| closing the tab
| seventytwo wrote:
| Sounds ripe for competition
| ZacnyLos wrote:
| Looks like this polish startup Airly: https://airly.org/en/
| tajchert wrote:
| Airly is extremely blocking access to their data. They boast
| with "open data" but their API is extremely restrictive (ToS)
| as well limited (ex. how much data you can get and how often),
| terms of service are very complicated and change often without
| notice.
|
| Airly is exactly a case how we should NOT monitor air quality
| as this company sells cheap stations to (mostly) government
| with then high monthly fees and with closed access to data
| obtained from those stations, while at the same time saying
| words such as "open data".
|
| Source: I'm author of Kanarek mobile app, and had a "pleasure"
| to work with them. https://spidersweb.pl/2018/01/kanarek-airly-
| smog-w-polsce.ht...
| KOTYAR wrote:
| Sorry to bother you, but in AirGradient DIY page you mentioned
| Wemos D1 Mimi clone of D1 Mini - works good with your firmware.
| Is it still true, or would I run into problems should I buy one
| for AirGradient?
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Yes it works good.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The other cost:
|
| Typically the solution to high CO2 in indoor air is to exchange
| it with outdoor air.
|
| Most users will open a window. The energy cost of that is
| relatively huge, when room air is heated or cooled.
|
| In modern eco buildings, there might be counterflow heat
| exchangers - those can recover 80+% of the heat - but still, the
| energy loss through air exchange can quickly add up to be a major
| component of the buildings energy bill.
|
| I believe we should work towards buildings that don't exhaust
| dirty air to the environment. Throwing away contaminated stuff
| and letting nature deal with it is 1900's thinking. We should
| instead break that CO2 back into oxygen, filter the dust, and
| remove VOC's. We should fix the air, not replace it.
|
| So far, to my knowledge, nobody does this except on submarines.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| sliken wrote:
| The main source of CO2 in a home are things that turn natural
| gas into heat, in particular gas stoves, and surprisingly
| common problems with gas water heaters and gas furnaces. Saw a
| study that mentioned during inspections that only 25% of homes
| got rid of the CO2 exhaust to the degree they should.
|
| I personally ended up with crazy high CO2 levels, turns out
| hail crushed the exhaust lid, blocking the airflow, and led to
| scary high levels that were so bad hand writing changed. Took
| awhile to track it down, then I started graphing the CO2
| levels, figured out was going on, and fixed it the same day.
| Fortunately hand writing returned to normal.
|
| Most homes aren't going to have serious CO2 levels from just
| human breathing. Sure modern homes can be so well insulated you
| have problems, but said homes should be engineered for a
| specific airflow exchange rate and use heat exchangers as
| necessary.
| skybrian wrote:
| Air filters seem pretty efficient; it's just a fan and a
| filter. If you exchange the air as well, you're sending _clean_
| air to the environment. (Though it has more CO2.)
|
| For oxygen, fast-growing indoor plants might help a little, but
| apparently you'd need a lot of them. [1]
|
| > Plants produce 22 L for every 150 g of growth (ref 2). They
| would need to increase in weight by 3.75 Kg (8 pounds), each
| day, to produce the oxygen used by one person.
|
| > Keep in mind that plants grow slowly. Adding 3.75 Kg to your
| houseplants every day would require a huge number of plants.
|
| Carbon capture: not as easy as it sounds. You'll need plenty of
| sunlight. Grow lamps?
|
| What would you do with eight pounds of plants per day?
| Hopefully some parts are edible, closing the cycle a little.
|
| I've heard that people growing cannabis will buy CO2, so if
| there were some other way to capture it then they'd probably
| take it.
|
| [1] https://www.gardenmyths.com/houseplants-increase-oxygen-
| leve...
| londons_explore wrote:
| Fractional distillation of air is fairly energy efficient
| (and can get rid of VOC's and give you heating/cooling 'for
| free'), and can very effectively capture CO2 into dry-ice.
|
| Sadly it's currently factory-sized technology, not something
| you can install in the basement.
| djmips wrote:
| Submarines and spacecraft.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Submarines don't turn CO2 back into O2. They "scrub" the CO2
| out using Soda Lime (or similar). They use electrolysis or
| oxygen candles to generate new oxygen.
|
| https://www.analoxgroup.com/blog/how-do-you-breath-onboard-s...
|
| After the soda lime is maxed out, it's tossed. At least so far
| as I understand you can't meaningfully re-use it for scrubbing,
| though there are other industrial uses where it can be re-
| purposed. Also O2 electrolysis takes a fairly substantial
| amount of electricity, which is OK when you've got a nuclear
| generator on your hands.
|
| So.... it's a lot cheaper (and more environmentally friendly)
| to use an ERV system in your HVAC system even at "only" 80%
| recovery. Let the plants do what they are good at and deal with
| capturing CO2 and giving us O2.
|
| The problem is we don't generally build insulated enough or
| tight enough houses to matter. If everything was built to
| passive house standard, we'd save HUGE amounts of energy
| globally.
| rascul wrote:
| > After the soda lime is maxed out, it's tossed. At least so
| far as I understand you can't meaningfully re-use it for
| scrubbing, though there are other industrial uses where it
| can be re-purposed.
|
| Does it get re-purposed? Is there an issue to "tossing" it
| out of the sub while submerged?
| 57FkMytWjyFu wrote:
| The soda lime solution is only used for shipboard
| casualties. The normal service system on a submarine uses a
| regenerative fluid to scrub the air of CO2.
|
| This fluid smells like cat piss.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Interesting. I did more research and there isn't a ton
| out in the public domain, but it looks to be that the USN
| and others are using MonoEthanolAmine (MEA) as a
| regenerative CO2 scrubber. MEA
|
| >Weeks et al. (1960) reported that volunteers who smelled
| MEA vapor described the odor as ammoniacal, musty, or
| foreign; some volunteers were unable to characterize the
| odor.
|
| > Ethanolamine is a colorless, viscous liquid with an
| odor reminiscent of ammonia.
|
| Ammonia is a lot of what "cat piss" smells of, so that
| tracks. Thanks! That was really interesting to read
| about!
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanolamine
|
| * https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/citations/ADA389253
|
| * https://www.sonistics.com/wp-content/uploads/01-KEY-
| DEVELOPM...
|
| * https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/11170/chapter/10
| #197
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| If I remember my chemistry correctly Soda lime + CO2
| results in Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda) and Calcium
| Carbonate. I'm not a submariner, so I have no idea if they
| have re-purposes use for it onboard. I would assume it is
| stored, like all trash/waste, onboard until the sub is
| resupplied.
| [deleted]
| cwkoss wrote:
| Is there anything good samaritan citizens can do locally (on a
| standard residential lot) to improve the particulate pollution
| levels outdoors around their house? (and possibly their
| neighbors' too?).
|
| What are the effects of trees/plants on PM2.5 pollution? Are
| there plants that catch more? Do damp leaves catch more?
|
| Does watering plants with a mist pull extra microparticles out of
| the air vs a stream? (if so, Do plants mind or benefit from the
| extra stuff in their water?)
|
| Are there any "permaculture" solutions for air filtration? Could
| a filter caked with pm2.5 black carbon and whatnot be useful for
| anything else? Can I manufacture a filter that will reduce pm2.5
| using home grown plant materials?
|
| What if I converted a wall of my shed into all filtration
| material, made it airtight, and pushed air out the other side of
| the shed under solar power? How would 100sqft of filter give
| flexibility of filter media?
|
| If I made a giant/parallelized bong in my backyard that
| constantly pulled air through water to try to catch
| microparticles, how big would it have to be to have an
| appreciable effect? Would ground charcoal in the water help?
| jojobas wrote:
| There's another side to it, while pollen is larger than PM2.5,
| in some weather conditions (Melbourne's cool changes for one)
| it will burst into multiple PM2.5 fragments.
| Z_I_F_F wrote:
| [flagged]
| imrehg wrote:
| "Let me ChatGPT that for you" reaction is likely the new "Let
| me Google that for you".
| cwkoss wrote:
| Fwiw: I did some searching and pine had the strongest
| effect on pm2.5 in the study I found.
|
| I found the answer moderately useful.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Except with google you might get an authoritative source...
| where as you have no idea if ChatGPT is hallucinating or
| just plain wrong.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Don't use leaf blowers; those are a huge source of outdoor
| particulates.
| [deleted]
| mfgs wrote:
| Do you mean a petrol leaf blower? Because of the motor
| emissions or the blowing?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's a fair question, and the answer is "I don't know."
| Petrol leaf blowers are typically 2-stroke engines which
| are incredibly polluting (even in an absolute sense
| compared to a modern 4-stroke engine for a mid-sized
| saloon). They also kick up a lot of dust. I'm not sure what
| the balance is. Certainly for e.g. NO2 and hydrocarbons
| switching to electric will be a huge win, but I'm not sure
| how much/long the particulates kicked up by blowing
| contribute.
|
| [edit]
|
| I found a report[1]; on page 22, the median estimated
| "fugitive dust" emmisions of blowing on a shoulder, or curb
| is about 480g (1lb) of PM2.5 per hour. It does note that
| this is a pure calculation and not empirically tested
| though. The entire range of their calculations put fugitive
| dust as higher particulate emissions than the exhaust
| (though the exhaust particulate of a 3hp leaf-blower (i.e.
| high-powered commercial) is already nearly 2 orders of
| magnitude higher than a modern light-duty vehicle and a
| 0.8hp (i.e. typical personal-use leafblower)).
|
| 1: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/Healt
| h%20...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Sales of new gas mowers and leaf blowers are banned in
| California starting July 1st, 2024. "As California Goes, so
| Goes the Nation."
|
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm.
| ..
|
| > Brand new gas-powered leaf blowers and lawn mowers will
| soon become scarce in California. In October 2021, Gov. Gavin
| Newsom signed a law banning the sale of gas-powered lawn
| mowers and leaf blowers, as well as any other equipment using
| small off-road engines, also known as SOREs. These engines
| traditionally power equipment used in lawn care and
| landscaping.
|
| > Small engine-based tools are a surprisingly large source of
| carbon emissions and air pollution. According to the
| California Air Resources Board, just one hour of gas leaf
| blower use is the equivalent of driving 1,100 miles. Running
| a gas lawn mower for the same period equates to a 300-mile
| drive.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/home/yard-and-outdoors/loud-gas-
| belchin...
|
| https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/msprog/offroad/sm_en_fs.pdf
|
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/04/30/gas-
| le... ("Gas leaf blowers and lawn mowers are shockingly bad
| for the planet. Bans are beginning to spread.")
|
| (electric landscaping tools are at parity, check out the EGO
| brand for an example: https://egopowerplus.com/)
| rascul wrote:
| > electric landscaping tools are at parity
|
| For most homeowners. Not for commercial usage. There's that
| battery charge issue still. There are workarounds that can
| help though.
| 83 wrote:
| Ego commercial blower: 170mph 600cfm (only during turbo
| boost, unclear how long that can last)
|
| Stihl gas blower: 239mph 912cfm
|
| Not even getting into weight, cost, or refuel times -
| that's extremely far from parity.
| throwoutway wrote:
| The person you are replying to did not mention gas (just
| lead blowers in general) but your post seems to only focus
| on gas leaf blowers. California did not ban electric leaf
| blowers did they?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Electric leaf blowers are annoying, but not burning fuel
| with zero emissions controls such that gas landscaping
| appliances are, hence bans on the gas versions causing
| wild amounts of pollution for the amount of fuel burned.
|
| There is a reason combustion vehicles are mandated to
| have a catalytic converter, and why diesel vehicles must
| filter particulates.
| jrflowers wrote:
| What's the difference between electric and gas leaf
| blowers with regard to particulate matter in the air?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I found a CARB report[1] that addresses this. TL;DR:
| nobody's directly measured the particulates ("fugitive
| dust") kicked up, but the estimates made from back-
| calculating measurements of dust present on road services
| suggest that the majority of PM10 and PM2.5 from a leaf
| blower are due to fugitive dust, and therefore will still
| be present in electric leaf blowers.
|
| There isn't a lot of data on how much the chemical makeup
| of particulates affects health, nor on what the makeup of
| particulates likely to be kicked up by a leaf-blower are.
| At least some of the particulates from two-stroke engine
| emissions are known to be _really bad_ (e.g. partially
| combusted lubricants). So the jury is out on if the
| particulate related health risks are dominated by the
| engine or the dust. If you think "all PM2.5 is bad" then
| it's almost certainly dominated by the dust though.
|
| 1: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/Hea
| lth%20...
| jrflowers wrote:
| Thanks!
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| a bunch of nitrogen oxides that are pretty bad for
| people, a bunch of Co2, and a bunch more noise.
| nelsondev wrote:
| The gas leaf blower also is also burning gas, and hence
| adding that particulate matter in addition to what gets
| stirred up.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| It's not just burning gas; as a 2-stroke engine, it's
| burning a gas/oil mixture that is even dirtier than
| burning just gasoline.
| jrflowers wrote:
| That makes sense. I am curious as to _how big_ the
| difference the power source makes for a machine that's
| purpose-made to kick up particulate matter up into the
| air from the ground.
| roywiggins wrote:
| 2-stroke engines in general are _awful_ for air quality.
|
| https://phys.org/news/2014-05-two-stroke-scooters-super-
| poll...
| jrflowers wrote:
| I believe that! I am curious as to how big the difference
| the power source makes for a machine that's purpose-made
| to kick up particulate matter up into the air from the
| ground though.
| Fomite wrote:
| Purely anecdote, but my neighbor uses a gas leaf blower
| and we use an electric one, and our yards are broadly
| similar. The difference is notable.
| jrflowers wrote:
| How?
| 83 wrote:
| The electric blower yard probably still has leaves on it.
|
| I'm all for electrifying yard tools, but electric blowers
| still aren't anywhere near a high end Stihl or Husqvarna
| in performance.
| Fomite wrote:
| We both kick up a fair amount of fines, but there's also
| a noticeable amount of fairly dirty output from the gas
| blower.
| comedowntous wrote:
| It's in that CARB report posted above: https://ww2.arb.ca
| .gov/sites/default/files/2018-11/Health%20...
|
| Compare Table 3 to Table 5. PM emissions from exhaust are
| on the order of 1 gram per hour. Whereas fugitive dust
| emissions, depending on the surface, are 100s or 1000s of
| grams per hour.
| ztrww wrote:
| Did anyone imply there was a difference (besides electric
| ones possibly being less powerful)?
| jrflowers wrote:
| If you scroll up this thread you will see where the
| discussion began.
|
| Edit: For example, you'll see where I asked my initial
| question here
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501689
| alach11 wrote:
| > Small engine-based tools are a surprisingly large source
| of carbon emissions and air pollution... just one hour of
| gas leaf blower use is the equivalent of driving 1,100
| miles
|
| Perhaps this is true for certain types of air pollution,
| but there's no way it's true for carbon emissions. CO2
| emitted has to be proportional to gasoline burned. And
| there's no way a leaf blower is consuming 25 gallons of gas
| per hour.
| bronco21016 wrote:
| I'm not an expert in the chemistry at all but how does
| the 2-cycle oil added to the fuel contribute to carbon
| density of the fuel?
| margalabargala wrote:
| It's denser than octane but doesn't meaningfully close
| the gap.
|
| To drive 1100 miles, the commenter above gave an
| extremely generous 25 gallons of gas (likely closer to 40
| for a non-Prius).
|
| One gallon of gas produces about 20 pounds of CO2, which
| is about 73% oxygen (from the atmosphere) by weight. The
| remaining 27% of the weight comes from carbon.
|
| So, one gallon of gasoline provides 20*0.27=5.4lbs of
| carbon to the CO2 produced. Multiply by 25, and you're
| looking at over 135lbs of carbon alone coming from your
| source when 25 gallons of gas are burned.
|
| Considering that the amount of weight carried around by
| the user of a leaf blower is on the low tens of pounds,
| and not hundreds, it seems ludicrous to presume that a
| leaf blower produces anywhere near the amount of CO2 in
| an hour as does a car driving 1100 miles.
| Earw0rm wrote:
| It doesn't. This is about particulate pollution and other
| directly toxic nasties, not CO2 or climate.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| It basically doesn't.
|
| Even without the oil - 2-stroke engines will run on
| straight petrol, albeit briefly - they still emit an
| obscene amount of unburnt fuel.
| ammar2 wrote:
| The source might be "A REPORT TO THE CALIFORNIA
| LEGISLATURE ON THE POTENTIAL HEALTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL
| IMPACTS OF LEAF BLOWERS" found here: https://ww2.arb.ca.g
| ov/sites/default/files/2018-11/Health%20...
|
| This is the table in the source: +-------
| -------------+-------------------+-------------+---------
| ------+ | | Exhaust Emissions |
| New vehicle | Older vehicle | +--------------------
| +-------------------+-------------+---------------+
| | Hydrocarbons | 199.26 | 0.39 |
| 201.9 | | Carbon Monoxide | 423.53
| | 15.97 | 1310 | | Particulate
| Matter | 6.43 | 0.13 | 0.78
| | | Fugitive Dust | 48.6-1031 | N/A
| | N/A | +--------------------+-----------
| --------+-------------+---------------+
|
| and the accompanying text:
|
| > Another way to visualize the data is to compare
| emissions for a given amount of leaf blower operation to
| miles traveled by car. The Air Resources Board regularly
| publishes such emissions benchmarks. Thus, for the
| average 1999 leaf blower and car data presented in Table
| 9, we calculate that hydrocarbon emissions from one-half
| hour of leaf blower operation equal about 7,700 miles of
| driving, at 30 miles per hour average speed. The carbon
| monoxide emission benchmark is signficantly different.
| For carbon monoxide, one-half hour of leaf blower useage
| would be equivalent to about 440 miles of automobile
| travel at 30 miles per hour average speed.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| For those not reading closely note that Hydrocarbons !=
| Carbon. A New vehicle will burn fairly completely (if you
| include the cat as part of the process), leaving a
| miniscule amount of hydrocarbons (incompletely burned
| fuel) and a small amount of CO. The catalytic converter
| will oxidize hydrocarbons, CO and NO2 leaving almost
| entirely N2 CO2 and H2O (and in fuels with significant
| sulfer, hydrogen sulfide which has its own issues).
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| > New vehicle will burn fairly completely (if you include
| the cat as part of the process), leaving a miniscule
| amount of hydrocarbons (incompletely burned fuel) and a
| small amount of CO
|
| So will old ones, if you run them on the right fuel.
|
| My 25-year-old Range Rover has a 4.6 litre engine adapted
| to run on propane which is - under the right
| circumstances - a *negative* emission vehicle. It can
| have measurably less CO and HC in the exhaust than in the
| intake air (city air heavily contaminated with CO and HC
| for example from bus engines).
| gwill wrote:
| I found a 2001 study that says 1 hour of lawn mowing is
| equivalent to 100 miles. either a mistype, wicked game of
| telephone or nefarious act has taken place. https://www.s
| ciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010529234907.h...
| exhilaration wrote:
| Fixed link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05
| /010529234907.h...
| cma wrote:
| No catalytic converter and it makes sense. It is talking
| about traditional pollution and not CO2.
| joelcollinsdc wrote:
| Yeah I am assuming that they are talking about the
| pollutants that are normally burned up in a catalytic
| converter. Still confusingly worded.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I've found in general people and even regulatory agencies
| play fast and loose with comparing GHGs and pollutants.
| In this case, including CO in "carbon emissions" makes
| the statement technically true but pretty misleading
| since most people see "carbon emissions" as an equivalent
| or shorthand to "GHG ermissions"
| ewoodrich wrote:
| Even if gas leaf blowers weren't terrible as far as
| emissions they are a weekly menance for apartment dwellers
| so I am hoping they will be banned where I live eventually.
| Electric is somewhat annoying but tolerable.
|
| A complex pays for regular landscaping services which turns
| into hours of painfully disruptive noise pollution often in
| the early hours for residents.
| foobarian wrote:
| Electric blowers are still very loud and high pitched. My
| dream is an electric backpack blower with a giant
| squirrel cage blower powered by a low rpm brushless
| motor, instead of the high rpm blade fan blower like in
| my current handheld tool.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I got a rechargeable battery powered leaf blower last year
| and love it. Plenty powerful for my needs, and ~10 mins is
| almost always plenty for all I need to get stuff cleaned up.
|
| But i suppose they might temporarily kick up a bunch of dust,
| regardless of power source...
| cowsandmilk wrote:
| > they might temporarily kick up a bunch of dust
|
| To me, this is why raking just makes sense. I can't stand
| the dust from leaf blowers. And often, just mowing over the
| leaves is adequate and better for the environment.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Basically don't use anything with a two-stroke engine, they
| are horrible for the environment. There's an astonishing-but-
| true fact that California's leaf blowers make more
| particulate pollution than all the cars and trucks in the
| state put together because two-strokes are so dirty.
| joelcollinsdc wrote:
| So a four stroke leaf blower would be ok?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| All that weight would probably be bad for your back...
| aerio wrote:
| That's why I dual wield two normal leaf blowers instead!
| enragedcacti wrote:
| they are much better than a 2-stroke but still far worse
| than e.g. a modern vehicle because the emissions
| technology is either much much simpler or not present at
| all.
| cyberax wrote:
| Two-stroke engines are bad not only for the environment,
| but also for the people who operate them.
|
| These engines not only produce a ton of particulate
| emissions, but also a lot of half-burned and unburned
| hydrocarbons. Including formaldehyde, benzene, and all
| kinds of other crap.
|
| You can at least filter out particulates with an N99 mask,
| but it does nothing against hydrocarbons.
| armada651 wrote:
| Not to mention that a lot of people use them without
| hearing protection and given how notoriously loud they
| are they're also giving themselves hearing damage.
| redleader55 wrote:
| I think the source of the PM pollutant is more important than
| the number of particles of a specific size. For example: I
| don't have no data or research on how bad the smoke from the
| barbecue is for your health, but my intuition tells me it's
| probably less harmful than the smoke from an old car that needs
| an oil change, regardless of that the metric says about the
| number of particles.
| pirate787 wrote:
| The primary action of particulate matter is that it gets
| stuck in your body (and tiny PM can penetrate into the brain)
| and is an inflammatory irritant the rest of your life,
| leading to disease. It stands to reason if the PM is also a
| toxic particle, the impact is worse.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Most particles can be removed by your immune system. Things
| like asbestos are bad specifically because the kinds of
| particles asbestos becomes are very difficult to
| phagacytose (and remove).
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Get rid of your car?
| sundvor wrote:
| Quite a few cars these days are electric, some of which may
| even be charged to a high degree by PV.
|
| And people who drive generally have a legitimate need for
| one.
|
| "Make your next car an EV" would be a better statement.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Specifically, the EV should probably be a cargo bike. A
| bucket bike can replace something like 85% of car journeys
| (commutes, groceries, kids to school, etc) with way lower
| cost, upkeep cost, and emissions, and particulates than a
| car. Pretty much every family should have one (and rent a
| car for long distance stuff).
| adrianN wrote:
| I find a trailer to be more convenient than a cargo bike.
| Most of the time I don't need it at all and when I need
| more capacity than it offers I recht a cargo bike.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| A decent amount of PM comes from tires and brake pads...
| Nasrudith wrote:
| "The free vegan snacks aren't gluten free, the
| bastards!". Seriously, it seems that any time there is
| any improvement made people complain about it more than
| the prior much worse state.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| sundvor wrote:
| Yeah, I see I'm being severely downvoted to the point of
| (dead) for speaking to the benefit of EVs in a thread
| about air pollution..?
|
| As a somewhat serious cyclist (I have 4 bikes - two for
| the road, two for MTB), I know which kind of car I would
| rather ride behind. (I have gone through a number of
| respro filters over the years..)
| brenns10 wrote:
| I think especially in cities, people don't like the idea
| of replacing one problem with another.
|
| Sure, ICE cars cause more air pollution than EVs. But
| things like public transit tend to create even less,
| since there's not a need to have one vehicle per person.
|
| Since public transit makes so much sense in dense cities
| compared to EVs, I think a lot of the frustration and
| down votes you face are due to that issue: why replace
| one known evil with another, when we have much better
| options available??
| sundvor wrote:
| Thanks; good response.
|
| Yes you got to push alternatives.
|
| But at the same time, at least 90% of the cars - and near
| 100% of buses - that are still going to be sold (no
| matter how one might wish for new cars not to be needed)
| should be _electric_ ones.
|
| I live in a sprawled out city (Melbourne, AUS), where,
| especially if you have kids, a car is close to a darned
| necessity. So those cars are still going to be sold, and
| far too many of them are dirty gas guzzlers.
|
| I like to walk and ride as much as possible, but after
| making the move to an EV myself (near 100% solar powered
| for half the year, then coal the other half - still way
| better than oil if you look at the whole CO2 emission
| chain) it's amazing how sensitive I've gotten to petrol
| and diesel fumes.
|
| We have one electric bus in my area. Absolutely awesome
| to see this first step. Yet a significant number of our
| trains are still using diesel - their fumes on that
| (Spencer Street) main connecting station are ridiculously
| toxic. There's just so much work to do..
| skybrian wrote:
| A bit drastic. Avoiding driving on days when air quality is
| bad would also do.
| lucasjans wrote:
| That's every day in much of the world. I lived in Southeast
| Asia for 8 years and 9/10 days the air was unhealthy.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| What city? It is too generic to say "Southeast Asia".
| Most of it is rural. And what is meant by "unhealthy"?
| What measurements? I cannot believe that 90% of days were
| unhealthy. Why? Rainy season is never polluted -- I know
| from experience in Hongkong and Singapore. Once a day or
| more, you get a huge downpour that takes most pollution
| out of the air. (This is partly why Seattle fairs very
| well in clean air measurements... it rains so damn much.
| Scottish cities, too.)
| mcmoor wrote:
| I recently bought an air purifier for my house and it's
| constantly red when used in living room that has outside
| windows. In other words, air quality around my house is
| constantly bad. By the end i moved it to an isolated room
| where at least we can enjoy clean air there.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Maybe consider a boxfan+furnace filter for the living
| room - if air quality is always bad you don't really need
| the sensor switching
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Not being sarcastic, what level of effort are we talking
| about valuating clean local air at? Only actions that cause
| no inconvenience? Using monetary value of pollution related
| production vs health care costs?
|
| It would be not that inconvenient to not drive for local
| trips but very inconvenient for longer trips? Or vice versa
| depending on where you live
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I'm an environmentalist, and I agreed with a
| recommendation for the 2 stroke engine thing... but when
| I saw someone say 'quit smoking', it made me realize how
| small fries I am.
|
| People are cooking over coal/wood around the world, that
| is far far far worse than everything I've read(and that
| doesnt include industrial pollution). (Although 2 stroke
| engines and their byproducts are cancer causing, so...
| that is still valid)
| twothamendment wrote:
| There are still areas in the USA that heat their homes
| with wood. I live near one, luckily just far enough away
| that I'm not sitting in the haze of smoke. I don't know
| how anyone can live in this town in the winter.
|
| As for 2-storkes, I can't stand them, but they are still
| a necessary evil in many situations. I have gas and
| electric chainsaw. The electric doesn't compare in power
| and capability - but it is also my favorite, so I use it
| when I can. I love not smelling like 2-stroke exhaust,
| the electric always "starts" too. Then a larger tree dies
| or a dozen blow down at once and I have to break out the
| gas saw...
| skybrian wrote:
| In my neighborhood, if we got to the point where there
| was a car in every garage instead of 2-4 cars per house,
| we'd be doing great.
|
| (Also, if it stays in the garage most of the time, it
| doesn't really harm anyone. I think that's only common
| for retired people, though?)
|
| I don't know how to price it. Most people don't really
| think about it that way.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Is there anything good samaritan citizens can do locally (on
| a standard residential lot) to improve the particulate
| pollution levels outdoors around their house? (and possibly
| their neighbors' too?).
|
| The most important thing is: Don't use any kind of 2-stroke gas
| engine powered appliances. Leaf blowers, bush trimmers, mowers,
| cheap electricity generators... they aren't covered by usual
| emission regulations and thus have barely any exhaust
| filtering, leading to emission of _insane_ amounts of all kinds
| of toxins. On top of that they 're all _very_ bad for the local
| ecosystem - mowed grass tends to dry out faster, leaf blowing
| (or removal in general) kills safe spaces for small lifeforms.
|
| The next major pollutant are all sorts of furnaces and cooking
| appliances. Be it a wood pellet, gas or oil heating system, a
| gas stove, or the once-every-weekend BBQ... it all shows up on
| air quality sensors. Get a heat pump for heating (there are bi-
| directional air conditioners that can heat in the winter and
| cool in the summer), take care to not overheat oils in pans
| (decomposing oils are quite toxic!), and for heavens sake cut
| back on the BBQs if you value your lungs and those of your
| neighbours.
|
| The last part is to quit smoking.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Just to put some numbers to how bad 2-strokes are:
|
| > The two-stroke leaf blower was worse still, generating 23
| times the CO and nearly 300 times more NMHC than the crew cab
| pickup. Let's put that in perspective. To equal the
| hydrocarbon emissions of about a half-hour of yard work with
| this two-stroke leaf blower, you'd have to drive a [Ford
| F150] Raptor for 3,887 miles
|
| https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/emissions-
| test-...
| stewx wrote:
| Not mowing your lawn and stopping cooking on an outdoor grill
| are non-starters for most people.
| alistairSH wrote:
| A few points related to lawns...
|
| The stereotypical American lawn is a fairly new thing,
| basically "created" by Scott and the rest of the fertilizer
| industry in the 60s and 70s. Prior to this, lawns were
| mixed plants, and not expected to be nearly 100% grass.
| They were generally more drought tolerant and needed less
| maintenance (both water, fertilizer, and mowing).
|
| Electric mowers (battery) are sufficiently good today that
| we really should phase out the sale of gas mowers. At least
| for "normal" sized lawns. Mechanical push mowers are also
| an option for small enough lawns.
|
| And aside from inertia, there's no good reason that most
| yards need to be predominantly grass lawn. I've found that,
| at least for my small yard, hardscape, shrubs, and other
| plants are lower maintenance (twice annual pruning, monthly
| weeding during the grow season). I only water when I
| add/replace plants or particularly hot/dry weeks. And I've
| cut out all fertilizer. I've cut the amount of grass by
| about half and will likely cut it by another half at the
| end of this season. All my lawn tools are now battery
| powered as well.
| namdnay wrote:
| you can mow a lawn with either an electric mower or an
| unpowered mower, the former can be found for any surface,
| the latter are great for surfaces up to about 100m2
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Many Americans (and for that matter, many people in other
| Western countries) won't have another choice. Green,
| maintained laws aren't sustainable any more - they use too
| much water, provide zero habitat for insects and other
| wildlife, and mowing during times of drought is harmful for
| the grass as well [1]. Regular BBQs aren't sustainable as
| well, the amount of water, crops and land used for feeding
| cattle is just way too high.
|
| The problem is that there are political parties that make a
| political platform out of green lawns and BBQs all while
| knowing that they're deluding their voters and sending them
| off to catastrophe.
|
| [1] https://www.rhs.org.uk/lawns/drought-care
| MisterTea wrote:
| I suppose it depends on where you live but in the USA at
| least most, if not all, mowers and generators are 4 stroke
| engines.
|
| 2-stroke are awful because they do not have oil sumps - the
| oil is mixed into the fuel and drawn into the piston through
| the crank case where some of the oil sticks to the moving
| parts to lubricate them. The rest is burnt and emitted as
| that awful blue smoke.
|
| They're kinda clever as they can operate in any orientation
| thanks to the lack of the oil sump which makes them ideal for
| portable power tools which have to operate at a variety of
| angles. They also have no valves so are less complex and
| easier to maintain and have a pretty good power to weight
| ratio. They are valued in developing nations because of this
| so they are hard to get rid of.
| alistairSH wrote:
| New mowers and generators are mostly 4-stroke. But anything
| smaller is probably 2-stroke. And, unless regulations have
| tightened up in the last 10-15 years, those 4-stroke mowers
| still don't have full emissions controls - at best they
| might have a "dumb" catalytic convertor (but generally not
| fuel-injected).
| MisterTea wrote:
| > New mowers and generators are mostly 4-stroke. But
| anything smaller is probably 2-stroke.
|
| New as in the last 40-50 years? Can you please give me
| examples of recent 2 stroke mowers and generators
| available in the USA? I haven't seen a 2 stroke generator
| or lawnmower in all my years and I used portable
| generators a bunch at my old job (Coleman, Generac,
| Honda, etc). However Ive seen plenty of small 2 stroke
| motors on hand held lawn and garden tools, chain saws,
| boat engines and dirt bikes.
|
| The only 2-stroke generator I can think of are those
| really small antique 500W generators that I think Coleman
| made in the 1960's or 70's?
| weberer wrote:
| >Be it a wood pellet, gas or oil heating system, a gas stove,
| or the once-every-weekend BBQ... it all shows up on air
| quality sensors.
|
| Wood and charcoal, yes. But natural gas and propane are clean
| burning. The difference between them are several orders of
| magnitude.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| For heating system, you're assuming that the burner unit is
| regularly maintained (i.e. cleaned of soot) which is a
| pretty far stretch - most people don't do anything until
| the unit breaks down, usually because the flame-out
| protection sensor is so covered in soot that it can't
| detect the presence of the flame any more.
|
| For stoves, gas stoves are being banned for new
| construction because they don't burn as cleanly as once
| thought [1].
|
| For BBQs the heat source used doesn't matter (with the
| exception that coal units should never ever be used
| indoors), they all emit tons of toxic and highly odorious
| particles from all the oil and fats decomposing.
|
| [1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/have-a-gas-stove-
| how-to-...
| burnished wrote:
| I like your energy, I hope you consider applying for a research
| grant or maybe just asking Adam Savage nicely for money to
| perform some experiments.
| mesarvagya wrote:
| > Is there anything good samaritan citizens can do locally (on
| a standard residential lot) to improve the particulate
| pollution levels outdoors around their house? (and possibly
| their neighbors' too?).
|
| I would say electrifying your home would be a good first step.
| For example, we could replace following at home starting with:
|
| Gas Furnace & AC -- Heat pump
|
| Gas cooktop -- Electric cooktop
|
| Gas Blowers, Mowers -- Electric versions of same
| rascul wrote:
| > If I made a giant/parallelized bong in my backyard
|
| Can I come hang out for a bit?
| cwkoss wrote:
| As long as you help staple filters to the wall of my filter
| shed!
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Is there anything good samaritan citizens can do locally (on
| a standard residential lot) to improve the particulate
| pollution levels outdoors around their house? (and possibly
| their neighbors' too?).
|
| This is a specific case, but in a mid-sized town where I lived,
| they opened up a BBQ restaurant with massive outdoor grills.
| The grills were fired up 5 times a week, evenings and
| afternoons. While it was fun times with friends at the
| restaurant, the entire neighborhood smelled of BBQ. Worse, you
| could literally go on the PurpleAir US map and see the giant
| visual of where the smoke was going.
|
| I cant imagine how the property values fared for nearby homes.
|
| I dont know anything about restaurant regulations, but it seems
| that if BBQ was allowed at this scale and allowed on a daily
| basis, there should be some sort of filtering requirement for
| exhaust. Good samaritan citizens' strongest chance for such
| local issues is probably voter turnout at local elections.
| crystaln wrote:
| More evidence that the VC model is broken. If every investor
| wants to 10-100x, every company eventually needs to compromise
| any semblance of values in order to redeem their latest
| investors.
| ImaCake wrote:
| You don't need the pressure of VC capital to have greedy
| business owners try to do vendor lock-in.
| crystaln wrote:
| No you don't. However the VC model will prevent less greedy
| business owners from not doing vendor lock-in.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Isn't this just an example of "Internet of Shit" gadgets? On the
| venue subscription based cat feeder.
|
| Like, the gadget could just as well run a web server accessable
| on the wifi or maybe Bluetooth.
| ImaCake wrote:
| >the gadget could just as well run a web server accessable on
| the wifi
|
| Yes. Consumers with IoT devices know this too - my LIFX bulbs
| use this trick basically seamlessly. There is vendor lock-in
| with the LIFX app but you can also use it through home
| assistant etc.
| [deleted]
| kimi wrote:
| This one is an EU-sponsored open-source platform:
| https://airsenseur.org/website/
| bumby wrote:
| What the article laments seems to be the same business model that
| building automation systems have been operating under for decades
| and not specific to air quality. The commercial version usually
| has the additional downside of very expensive service contracts.
| [deleted]
| crazygringo wrote:
| So who is the "one of the largest air quality monitoring
| manufacturer in the world" they are referring to but not by name?
|
| Awair seems to be the best-known consumer brand (?). I use an
| Awair Element which works great and has no subscription fee for
| the associated app or local API functionality, so it doesn't seem
| like it could be them?
| psyklic wrote:
| This post suggests that Awair might not retain the data >1
| year:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Awair/comments/ys14fk/awair_just_ch...
|
| My biggest complaint with Awair is they only let you download
| the last month of data easily from the app. That said, they are
| hacker-friendly otherwise -- for example they offer a local
| API!
| wingworks wrote:
| Awair recently discontinued support (turned off the servers)
| for there v1 customers, so anyone who had a v1 device now has a
| paper weight...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Awair/comments/y7i5ku/awair_discont...
| rev_d wrote:
| Shortly afterwards, they rolled out a local non-cloud API for
| any non v1 devices.
|
| Unfortunate that older devices didn't get it, but at least
| they're following future-proof best practices going forward.
| roseway4 wrote:
| PurpleAir?
| wheelie_boy wrote:
| I would have thought that purpleair was the best-known consumer
| brand. It looks like this May they introduced API pricing? But
| honestly, it still seems very reasonable
|
| https://community.purpleair.com/t/api-pricing/
| [deleted]
| benwr wrote:
| Maybe IQAir? They do have paid plans, it looks like.
| jrockway wrote:
| I have an IQAir monitor, but their whole system seems like a
| PurpleAir copycat. Right now, most of the data on their maps
| comes from PurpleAir sensors, and it's likely that it's
| PurpleAir that doesn't care for that.
|
| That said, IQAir is kind of crazy to me. They launched a new
| dashboard which has a "view as TV dashboard" button, but
| doesn't let you click it unless you upgrade your plan. The
| local data access situation is also unclear to me; I bought
| the sensor after reading that it has a Samba server, but it
| requires the indoor monitor to display the password to you. I
| opened a support case to get the password for local analysis,
| but am beginning to feel like they're not going to give it to
| me. (Who wouldn't want an indoor air quality monitor? Well I
| already have one. I've cared about indoor air quality
| forever, but after wondering for two days why the sky was a
| weird shade of yellow, I wanted to keep an eye on outdoor air
| quality as well.)
|
| In that case, it will be UART time. It's definitely Linux
| running an out-of-date unpatched Samba. Won't be at all
| difficult to get my data, I'm guessing. The question is...
| why do they think there's money in a cloud service that shows
| you dashboards of your own data? They should be bending over
| backwards to accommodate anyone that wants to contribute to
| their public site; they are way behind PurpleAir there.
|
| TL;DR I'm certain that PurpleAir is the unnamed company in
| this article. IQAir is too new to be relevant in the space.
| tedeh wrote:
| This comment saved me from just ordering a IQAir outdoor
| monitor. Great timing. I'd like an outdoor unit that
| supports PoE (which the IQAir monitor has) because I'm
| definitely not going around replacing batteries all the
| time, but that seems hard to come by, so I might have to
| give up my attempts at measuring air pollution from the
| side of my house.
| jrockway wrote:
| Yeah. Send me an email if you want the outcome of my
| support ticket or attempts to hack the device.
|
| Ignoring the software, the device itself is great. Two
| sensors compare their outputs to figure out if it's valid
| or not, and the case seems quite protective from the
| elements (and easily mounted to my weather station pole).
| I didn't need POE, I have AC out there, but overall it's
| a good way of supplying power to something like this.
| pridkett wrote:
| They may be referring to the changes to PurpleAir API [0] that
| introduces paid requests that you can rip through quickly when
| doing large scale analysis.
|
| In the United States, AirNow.gov includes most PurpleAir
| sensors, although they are annotated differently than "higher
| quality" sensors (I was going to say than government sensors,
| but here in Connecticut, the state has a number of PurpleAir
| monitors deployed and rapidly deployed more when stuff got bad
| due to Canadian wildfires a few weeks ago).
|
| Fortunately, for local users, you can hit your own sensor and
| grab the data however often you want. I even wrote a tool to
| help out and drop it into influxdb and post it to MQTT[1]. They
| still support local fetching of data. However, many default
| integrations from tools like Home Assistant could be affected
| as they use the cloud integration.
|
| [0] https://community.purpleair.com/t/api-pricing/4523
|
| [1] https://github.com/pridkett/purpleair2mqtt
| modeless wrote:
| Wow, I hadn't seen PurpleAir's new pricing. I made
| https://aqi.today years ago when the API was free and now it
| seems like its API usage will cost over $100 per day. But
| they haven't even notified me about this yet. Strange.
| ndom91 wrote:
| Funny this popped up on HN. I just went down this rabbit hole a
| week or two ago and settled on a Nettigo DIY kit. You solder a
| few of these sensors together, flash an opensource firmware on
| the Wemos D1 running the thing and you're good to go. Works out
| of the box with Homeassistant as well. Looks very similar to this
| airgradient one.
|
| The unit I got has a heating element to combat condensation and
| the like for outdoor use, humidity and temp sensors, air
| pressure, and PM2.5 + PM10
|
| https://nettigo.eu/products/nettigo-air-monitor-0-3-base-kit
| hettygreen wrote:
| I live in an area where there is no air quality monitoring
| stations nearby, and was thinking about setting up my own little
| station to contribute the data.
|
| I mostly look at aqicn.org and wondering if the airgradient kits
| can share data with that website?
|
| I think I need someone to explain to me how some of these open
| source air quality monitors share their data and what websites
| can use the data.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| We are currently integrating our data with openAQ [1] and then
| people can opt in to share data with openAQ and many map
| applications use that data.
|
| [1] https://openaq.org/
| Havoc wrote:
| I managed to find some cheap <20 SDC41 sensors on aliexpress
| (they're normally closer to 50).
|
| True co2, not equivalent like say the bme680. Previously used
| equivalent ones and the data is tangibly better. Highly
| recommend.
|
| Can't figure out a good way to do pm2.5 without a whiny fan
| though. The unit I've got has a barely audible high pitched whine
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| My home brew weather/air quality station is seemingly totally
| silent, though the PM sensor does have a fan. I've never heard
| it.
|
| https://partofthething.com/thoughts/weather-and-air-quality-...
| djmips wrote:
| off topic - did you get your geiger counter wired in?
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Not really. I did do enough work to be able to read count
| rate from a ESP8266 [1] but never actually installed it in
| the weather station. Since then, I got a scintillator
| detector [2] with a USB soundcard interface which would be
| way better for a weather station since it could actually
| identify isotopes in addition to count rate. So you could
| get alerts like "oh dang, I-131 detected in the air, take
| shelter."
|
| [1] https://partofthething.com/thoughts/making-true-random-
| numbe...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxXnUXrditI
| breput wrote:
| I have built CO2 monitors using MH-Z19B, Senseair S8 (same
| detector used in the AirGradient kits), and the SDC41 modules
| and my favorite is the S8. It seems equally accurate to the
| SDC41 and is easier to keep calibrated.
|
| It also has a pin that is enabled when the CO2 level exceeds
| 1000 ppm so you can build a useful monitor using nothing more
| than an LED and an old USB power adapter.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Yes I agree. The SenseAir S8 is probably the best of the
| three. The SCD41 gives similar values indoors but at lower
| concentrations outdoors it seems to become less accurate. The
| MH-Z-19 is also pretty good but I think the S8 has a better
| built quality and less noise in the measurements.
| currio wrote:
| Can you post links here. I bought one in AliExpress and the
| readings were highly variable when there was no change in
| quality (as far as I can tell. Outdoor weather hasn't changed.
| I didn't cook, etc..)
| djbusby wrote:
| This was the coolest one on Pi I saw http://airpi.es/
|
| Had a cool hw kit but sadly not anymore. All the specs are
| published so clones are trivial.
| throwoutway wrote:
| Looks like the APIs are down too. Clicked several and they are
| all responding with:
|
| > Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Undefined constant "php" in
| /home/public/feed.php:1 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in
| /home/public/feed.php on line 1
| vba wrote:
| Air quality is something I've been thinking about more and more.
| I'm currently mostly in Bangkok and now I check the air quality
| (aqair) before I exercise outdoors, and often end up skipping.
| Though I haven't looked into it deeply, I'd love to see some
| trustworthy conclusions about how I'm affecting my future health
| by living in Bangkok. I've really come to miss the Pacific
| Northwest partly because of the clean air (except, of course,
| during the wildfire seasons)
|
| I'm building a house in Bangkok and up in Chiang Mai of all
| places (see the company is from there) and was thinking of adding
| some air quality sensors there so will definitely check
| airgradient's out.
|
| If I may ask Achim, do you manufacture in Thailand? What kind of
| scale you at? No promises, but I have access to some decent sized
| factories and given your mission, there might be something we can
| help with.
| mikeytown2 wrote:
| Is there a way to get air quality via an api in the US that
| doesn't require api keys? weather.gov is one example of what I'm
| sorta looking for. I have a shell script [1] that gets weather
| and solar radiation from free and open APIs. Adding in some sort
| of air quality index would be great.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mikecarper/bondhome/blob/main/weather.sh
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Maybe https://open-meteo.com/en/docs/air-quality-api
| mikeytown2 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing that! I think it'll work
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| These don't need to be cloud services. Don't connect shit to the
| internet, and then the manufacturer can't disable it.
| lumiukko wrote:
| Or use open solutions that you can connect to any service on
| the internet you want, even your own. As my citizen science
| example somewhere.
| lumiukko wrote:
| It seems this wasn't mentioned before, but in Germany some
| communal open data labs created instructions on how to build an
| air quality sensor setup and a corresponding map visualizing the
| results (all over the world by now).
|
| https://sensor.community/en/
|
| Original page (only in German?) https://luftdaten.info/
|
| Map: http://deutschland.maps.sensor.community/
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Achim from AirGradient here. Nice to see my blog post getting
| some attention.
|
| I think the underlying picture here really is that I and my co-
| founder are both heavily affected by air pollution in Northern
| Thailand and are seeing how it affects the health of thousands of
| people.
|
| We believe strongly that air quality monitoring should be
| affordable so that people from poorer regions and countries can
| afford air quality monitoring and thus protect their health by
| knowing when the air quality turns bad. This is one of the
| reasons why we open-sourced our air quality designs [1] and are
| working with many NGOs and Universities to bring accurate low-
| cost air quality monitoring to underserved communities around the
| world.
|
| Since we are a self-funded company we do not have pressure to
| maximize profit but can work under the mantra "Impact first (and
| profit will follow if we do a good job)."
|
| By the way, if you work in air quality research, we are currently
| running a global co-location test program and are interested in
| additional partners [2].
|
| [1] https://www.airgradient.com/kits/
|
| [2] https://www.airgradient.com/research/
| kodah wrote:
| Do you have any plans to do Radon monitoring? I currently use
| AirThings Wave+ because of a radon monitoring requirement.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| We are not aware of any suitable radon module on the market
| that we could easily integrate. I think airthings use their
| own developed module.
| artemonster wrote:
| Is it hard to skip MCU and output to raspberry?
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| Interesting none of the kits from AirGradient seem to do PM0.3,
| which is the big thing I want (due to smoke).
| standard_man wrote:
| [dead]
| lwouis wrote:
| Hello,
|
| Thank you for sharing this.
|
| I'm genuinely wondering how our nose is not a good enough
| sensor. Are there common cases that affect large areas like the
| one you live in, where the pollution is not smellable?
|
| Thank you
| olyjohn wrote:
| I never could smell the pollution in Bangkok. I don't think
| people in LA could smell the smog. Certainly when we had
| wildfire smoke here near Seattle a couple years ago, I could
| not always smell it. Sometimes when it was heavy, you could
| smell smoke right when you went outside, but not always...
| and your nose gets used to it really quickly. But like, that
| was pollution you could see, the skies were dark and orange.
| Not really typical pollution levels that people live in every
| day.
| gbajson wrote:
| In my area in the winter you _always_ sense air pollution.
|
| But with just a nose it's hard to say if it's 100 mg/m3 of or
| 200 mg/m3 of PM2.5.
| supermatt wrote:
| Just want to say - I received mine yesterday. I was expecting
| it to be held up in customs but it arrived with no hassle
| whatsoever via the postal service.
|
| I got the presoldered version, kind of expecting it to be 100%
| assembled, but it was even better that I had to to "plug" the
| sensors and microcontroller in! It made me feel like I had
| achieved something myself, and gave an appreciation of how it
| works :)
|
| The quality of the product looks excellent - inside and out.
| Although maybe some snap-in transparent plastic in front of the
| display would protect it from accidental damage? Not that there
| is any reason to ever touch it, so I guess its not really that
| important. It certainly doesnt detract from the overall build
| quality.
|
| A minor niggle on adding the sensor to the online app - i
| didn't get any feedback that it had added, and when i tried a
| second time it told me that it was already added. Also, I cant
| see a way to add/edit places other than creating the one during
| setup. Probably a few other minor UX niggles I can send an
| email if desired? But overall it looks great!
|
| I am very interested to see how the air quality changes during
| the next kiln firings. Thanks!
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. We are working on making the
| onboarding easier and also improve the UI in general. Please
| get in touch with us if you have more feedback (you can use
| the support form on our website).
| xctr94 wrote:
| Looks like a great concept! I found the price relatively high
| compared to other solutions on the market, aren't you concerned
| that you're touting "affordability" as a selling point?
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Comparable products are typically 3x or more the price. A lot
| of costs are not BOM related, e.g. costs for tooling (e.g.
| plastic mold), certifications, testing & calibration etc.
| yardie wrote:
| What AQMs are you finding for <$100?
| ra wrote:
| Sub $100 USD is a pretty good price. What comparable products
| have you seen for less?
| throwoutway wrote:
| This looks really cool! Could you confirm one thing though,
| which I can't find on your site after ~5 minutes of searching?
| Do your PM2.5 sensors truly measure PM2.5 or is it doing an
| approximation based on factors (many sensors supposedly do
| this).
|
| If it's the former, it might be useful to make that more clear
| on your site as I could not confirm it.
| jauer wrote:
| Their website mentions the sensor they use directly on the
| kits page. It's a Plantower PMS5003 which does actually count
| particles: https://www.aqmd.gov/docs/default-source/aq-
| spec/resources-p...
| dhhagan wrote:
| While the spec sheet does say that, it's not actually true.
| The PMS5003 is a truncated nephelometer
| (https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/15/655/2022/) that
| measures the total scattered light from all particles with
| diameters less than ~1 um. This single scalar value
| (proportional to the total scattered light, as collected
| across a wide viewing range) is then correlated to a
| reference measurement of PM2.5 and typically correlates
| quite well in most urban areas where PM2.5 and PM1 are
| highly correlated. For more info on the difference between
| particle counters and nephelometers in this context, see
| https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/13/6343/2020/.
| honk wrote:
| Relevant disclaimer: I work for QuantAQ, another distributed
| Air Quality Monitoring company, my opinions are my own.
|
| With proper calibration, the PMS5003 sensor AirGradient uses
| is a real and fairly good measurement of PM1 (<1 micron),
| which is often fairly correlated with (and makes up much of)
| PM2.5. However, the sensor cannot really see particles larger
| than 1 micron, which sometimes matters for PM2.5 (when the
| PM1:PM2.5 ratio changes, like wildfires), and very much
| matters for PM10. That's why QuantAQ uses a PMS5003 combined
| with a different sensing technology (an optical particle
| counter) to actually measure PM2.5 and PM10, not just
| extrapolate from a PM1 measurement.
|
| We have a blog post here explaining more: https://blog.quant-
| aq.com/can-your-plantower-pms5003-based-a...
|
| I love the work that AirGradient is doing making AQ sensing
| technology open and accessible, especially to hardware
| hackers. The BOM cost of the OPC sensor we use alongside the
| PMS5003 is more than the cost of the entire AirGradient kit,
| so it is valuable to have options in the market depending on
| application.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Excellent overview; I think the space for air monitoring is
| only going to grow as time goes on, especially after COVID
| and with increased awareness of the downsides of airborne
| particulates and high CO2 exposure.
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've been setting up PM sensors in my home since
| installing a log-burning stove last winter; I've found a
| couple of interesting things thus far; Notably, despite
| the FUD, air quality _in_ my home isn't affected by it.
|
| What does affect air quality in my home massively, are
| the people parking their vehicles surrounding my home
| morning and afternoon as they drop off and pick up their
| children from the nearby school. I see a 10x ambient
| measure at these times. I was starting to think about how
| I could use BLE monitoring to track this somehow (the
| other thing my home is surrounded with at these times is
| devices broadcasting Bluetooth "beacons"(?)); could be an
| interesting experiment.
|
| The next step for me is really knowing what and how
| something can be done about the pollution (generally
| speaking); Monitoring is great, but what's the next step?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Monitoring is great, but what's the next step?"
|
| Short term: install air filters
|
| Long term: banning ICE cars
| electriclove wrote:
| Long term: move to a different home
| fragmede wrote:
| Longer term: move to a different planet.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, I did. But not everyone can. And long term it would
| be nice, if the cities would have breathable air again.
|
| Also where there is good air, there ain't so many people.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. Are you using the AlphaSense
| OPC?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm just going to take a minute to be happy to see this
| friendly exchange of information in public between two
| people who are both knowledgeable about the subject and
| competitors.
| PantaloonFlames wrote:
| How much would it cost me to install a modulair-PM on my
| rooftop, assuming I did the work? I'm just an individual, i
| just want transparent information. I don't want to "contact
| sales" as it says on the link from that blog post.
| honk wrote:
| Thanks for the interest! We have transparent pricing
| here: https://quant-aq.com/pricing
|
| Short answer, $1500 + $300 annually (includes cellular,
| realtime data calibration in our cloud, and full API
| access).
|
| Relevant to the topic above, we are building for a
| slightly different market than AirGradient, and want to
| make sure we're an appropriate solution for potential
| customers -- you might genuinely be better served by a
| different product! As such, we're currently not optimized
| for low touch single sales to individuals, but it's
| something we'd like to improve in the future.
|
| If you do contact sales, and we end up being a good fit
| for what you're looking for, we'd love to help!
| pbronez wrote:
| I'd be interested in a prosumer version of this that
| ditches the LTE and cloud system for wall power + WiFi or
| (ideally) PoE with a fully local backend via home
| assistant
| ahaucnx wrote:
| I am curious, how do you do real-time calibration in the
| cloud?
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| You could buy a Bosch BME680 or similar for $20 and add
| it to a Pi or Arduino.
|
| A commercial model is around $200.
|
| There are a lot of options so decide if you want to build
| it or buy it and plug it in!
|
| Then you can list your data on a site like
| https://explore.openaq.org/
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Very impressive. I looked up that Bosch device:
| https://www.bosch-sensortec.com/products/environmental-
| senso...
|
| Then, I found a board from Adafruit. The chip is so tiny
| in the Adafruit photo!
|
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/3660
| tlavoie wrote:
| The BME 680 does temperature, humidity, barometric
| pressure, and VOC gas sensing. Maybe there's something
| reasonably-priced that does particulates, but this
| doesn't seem to be it. What's a good alternative?
| Eisenstein wrote:
| https://www.adafruit.com/product/4632
| tlavoie wrote:
| That looks awesome, thanks! I already have some ESP32
| devices acting as weather sensors that log to a Raspberry
| Pi over MQTT. I might have to add this too.
| cloudripper wrote:
| I'm a big fan of QuantAQ. Speaking from a PM10 perspective,
| your monitors perform on-par with high-cost regulatory
| monitors in a much smaller package and far lower cost. I
| also love the open API. That said, I would love to see a
| locally-hosted variety for environments where LTE/cloud is
| not accessible/preferred.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| We use the Plantower PMS5003 sensor for PM2.5. This sensor
| has been extensively tested and is one of the most accurate
| low cost sensors.
|
| All low cost sensors are using the laser scattering technique
| and thus do approximate the mass and not a direct
| measurement.
|
| However tests show that PM2.5 is the most accurate and often
| PM10 in these sensors is not very good.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Congrats on doing important work!
|
| I grew up in Southern California back when it was hard to see
| the mountains ten miles away on bad days.
|
| I lived in Bangkok for two years. At the worst of the year I
| still wandered around maskless, thinking "feels like my
| childhood!" So for me it really didn't seem that bad, but I'm
| glad people are taking it more seriously now.
| hosteur wrote:
| Hello. I would love to buy your products. However, I am stopped
| by the fact that I have to enter email and agree to terms
| before I can even see shipping options and costs. Please
| consider making the shopping process easier and more pleasant.
|
| I am in EU and concerned that it might not be feasible for me
| to order your products due to high import fees, tax, customs,
| VAT, etc. that I would probably need to handle myself. Do you
| plan on establishing a dealer in EU or a shipping site in EU
| such that items can be shipped from within EU without customers
| having to deal with the customs, tax, etc?
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Currently we ship all kits from Thailand but setting up some
| fulfillment in the US and EU could be something we might do
| in future. Currently most customers do not get charged
| customs and VAT.
| louison11 wrote:
| Please do! Maybe Amazon is the easiest way to do so? On top
| of reducing delays, you'd reduce uncertainty. Here in
| Portugal, the problem isn't really custom fees - but
| customs completely blocking/losing/returning the product.
| Really hard to get packages from abroad to get through our
| super incompetent custom services. But that's not a problem
| if it comes from within EU.
| lokar wrote:
| You want counterfeits? Selling/buying on Amazon is a good
| way to get them.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Amazon is terrible for small companies. Sure, it boosts
| your income and customer reach, but that's just the
| cheese to get you in the trap.
|
| After you are locked into their ecosystem, they prevent
| you from selling for less elsewhere, even on your own
| site, they coerce you into paying them ad fees to boost
| your listing in their search results, and if you don't
| pay them enough they will put your competitors above you
| and redirect searches that are specifically for your
| product to other similar items.
|
| Then, if despite all of that you do well, they will find
| some company in China to make an "Amazon Basics" version
| of whatever it is that you're selling and then undercut
| you on price and boost their listings above yours.
|
| You might even say that this is a win for consumers since
| they get fast cheap access to products, but the product
| quality is always a race to the bottom and because this
| happens so often it results in the death of product
| innovation from good companies because they have to spend
| so much brainpower and energy keeping the Amazon machine
| happy while it consumes them.
|
| Ebay is a little better, but that is also rapidly
| enshittifying as well.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Even if all that's true, Amazon let's me buy things
| knowing when I'll receive it and with the confidence that
| I can return it (and always for cash) without jumping
| through hoops.
|
| That makes it better than buying from indie sites just
| about every time.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I've heard that you should vote with your wallet for what
| is important to you.
|
| Whatever Amazon has to offer is not worth what it costs
| to me, so I vote in other ways by shopping elsewhere, and
| should I have something to sell I will use other means to
| sell it.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > I am in EU and concerned that it might not be feasible for
| me to order your products due to high import fees, tax,
| customs, VAT
|
| EU dealer would have to pay the same import fees and VAT. It
| would be less of a hassle, but probably not cheaper.
| hosteur wrote:
| > EU dealer would have to pay the same import fees and VAT.
| It would be less of a hassle, but probably not cheaper.
|
| In my country (and I guess many other EU countries -
| although it varies from country do country), it is a huge
| hassle and expensive too. And if you make any mistakes in
| the red tape you get hit with all sorts of ridiculous fees.
| Also, the package is usually delayed in customs for weeks
| or months. Whereas packages shipped from within EU
| typically arrives within next business day of them arriving
| in the destination country.
|
| So avoiding the hassle is well worth it in order to get to
| the EU market.
|
| Also, it may actually be cheaper. In my country, the local
| post office adds a "handling fee" of 30 EUR just for the
| service of informing you that you need to pay customs, VAT,
| etc. on the item. At least this is 30 EUR that can be saved
| on each item.
| tda wrote:
| On a side note, I recently upgraded my airgradient-pro to and
| esp32 s3 based board (forgot which one but it is pin compatible
| with the esp8266 it came with).
|
| I got everything to work with ESPHome, except for the BSEC
| version of the BME680 driver (I added a BME60 because I had one
| lying around. It worked fine with BSEC and ESPHOME on the
| ESP8266). I was thinking of sharing my experience, but I never
| got to it
| pbronez wrote:
| What benefit does the esp32 provide over the esp8266?
| tda wrote:
| I wanted to show some simple graphs on the display, but
| this quickly became too much for the esp8266
| cloudripper wrote:
| Thank you for sharing more about AirGradient and its origins. I
| appreciate the impact-driven mission. I will checkout the
| details of your co-location program and may have a few sites
| that would be a good fit.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Great! Please get in touch with us via the support form on
| our website if it is a fit.
| MegaThorx wrote:
| Thanks for the awesome DIY version of the air quality
| monitoring solution. Due to this nice guide I already built 3
| of the basic sensors and I just purchased one pro to support
| your cause.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Thank you!
| stinos wrote:
| Just wondering, do you have any comments on
| https://smartairfilters.com/en ? The premise is a bit similar
| as yours.
| itronitron wrote:
| I agree with the mission of your company and hope you find
| success, however after reading your website's Privacy Policy
| regarding the sharing of personal information I don't expect to
| ever revisit your site.
| charcircuit wrote:
| I don't see anything unusual there just google analytics and
| that they comply with law enforcement.
| itronitron wrote:
| The site doesn't provide an option to opt out of
| advertising/marketing cookies.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| We currently don't do any paid advertising at all. But
| good point, we will look into this and it's definitely
| something we can improve.
| [deleted]
| kingsloi wrote:
| I run a lil air quality sensor in the Miller neighbourhood of
| Gary, IN. I started off with a PurpleAir II, then higher tech
| monitor from AQMesh for a few months, and now I operate another
| higher tech monitor from a local company in Valparaiso, IN called
| Sensit Technologies, which they generously donated.
|
| I also operate a AIS boat tracker from FleetMon. I did track
| aircraft flying to/from ORD/MDW/GYY, and also the local train
| operator SouthShore line have an open API (I wish the other
| tracks, Norfolk Southern, would have an API!)
|
| I built a crappy lil frontend/api using Express and do plan to
| continue to work on it and track more stuff, hopefully more
| people with use it. Hopefully it convinces some more citizen
| scientists to run their own (bring your own cloud & hardware)
|
| https://millerbeach.community
|
| It's actually had a lot of visits recently due the the BP oil
| refinery leaking SO2 after a recent storm [1], and now the
| Canadian wildfires bringing that PM our way, our air quality is
| the worst it's been since I've started to track it.
|
| I was hoping to figure out how to turn the years of data into an
| infographic, or use AI to digest the data and generate a bunch of
| useful data points/stats. If anyone knows of an easy way, rather
| than creating the queries by hand!
|
| https://github.com/kingsloi/community-airmonitor
|
| [1] https://abc7chicago.com/sulfur-smell-indiana-bp-refinery-
| whi...
| [deleted]
| symlinkk wrote:
| Holy shit dude you live in Gary? Isn't that one of the most
| violent cities in the country, with a ton of abandoned
| buildings?
| kingsloi wrote:
| Beauty is in the eye of the beholder! Gary is home to some
| beautiful flora and fauna, we have miles and miles of
| beautiful Lake Michigan shoreline, the 61st National Park.
| I'm at 990~ miles of biking in/around Gary and I've took some
| really beautiful photos, which I'm hoping to compile into
| something like blog post "1000 miles in/around Gary" or
| something.
|
| Everything else is just like everywhere else. Poverty.
| throwaway24124 wrote:
| This is an awesome project, I would love to do something
| similar for my community. Great UX design too. FYI, the trends
| and weather modals aren't loading data (possibly because of the
| darksky.net API cutoff?)
| kingsloi wrote:
| Hey I appreciate that, just been tinkering with it as I added
| more to it... it's came a long way from when I ran a simple
| PurpleAirII!
|
| Yeah I'm working on the Darksky replacement, but the trends
| issues is because of another hidden cost of air quality
| monitoring: lots of data! My mongo queries aren't the most
| efficient and for the past week or two I must have topped a
| Mongo/RAM issue and my DO box is running into memory issues.
| I'll hopefully get that fixed soon! Especially now, it's a
| cool lil feature as you can see around what day/time we first
| started to get hit with the CA wildfire smoke.
|
| Feel free to pull it and add to it as you want! You could
| probably just use a PurpleAirII monitor near you and use that
| as for your AQI until you get something else, and disable all
| the other stuff (boats, advisories, etc), and keep traffic,
| planes, air quality. That's kinda how I've been doing it
| anyway.
| ck2 wrote:
| There needs to be open-source air quality monitoring in every
| public K-12 nationwide in the USA and the data should be
| available in realtime to everyone.
|
| Kind of like this but way way way more sensors and data
|
| https://www.purpleair.com/map?opt=1
|
| Feds need to fund this pronto.
| m463 wrote:
| > The Questions You Should Ask
|
| Very carefully chosen questions that tiptoe around the elephant
| in the room
|
| "Does my data stay local, and do I opt-IN to sending it to your
| servers?"
| autoexec wrote:
| My rule is: "Never buy hardware that requires an app or the
| cloud in order to be functional"
|
| I'm sure someone somewhere has some weird specific case which
| requires an exception to that rule, but I sure don't.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| On the kits page it says
|
| >24 months AirGradient data platform (or connect it to your own
| server, e.g. home assistant)
|
| and
|
| >Fully open-source code so you can easily make adjustments
|
| So clearly you do have the option.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I dont need oled display, data platform or any kind of
| connectivity. How much such stripped down version would cost?
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Without display and any kind of connectivity, how do you know
| the air quality data then?
| cuu508 wrote:
| I think parent means they do not need _OLED_ display. There
| are cheaper display types.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| yes. any cheap low power usage display would do.
| hsjqllzlfkf wrote:
| [flagged]
| deadonarrival wrote:
| capitalism is functioning as designed
| vba616 wrote:
| Why don't you go harass capitalism instead of people?
|
| I question whether a constant barrage of "everything is bad,
| and you should feel bad about it" is really that profitable
| or if there is some other reason for it.
|
| I used to think, well, this is the world adtech has built, I
| blame GOOG, but I'm not so sure any more. Aren't people
| getting desensitized?
| autoexec wrote:
| Why are you upset that people keep reminding you about how
| bad things are instead of being upset that things are bad?
| If you're sick of hearing about it, why do you think it's
| the people who point out the badness who are the real
| problem that needs solving?
|
| The entire article here is about how companies are screwing
| over users who were conned into buying bad products. I'm
| not blaming the person who wrote the article tho. In fact,
| I hope there are more articles about this problem so that
| people can learn about this problem and take steps to
| improve their situation. In this case, they might do that
| by refusing to buy things like air quality sensors that
| require apps and cloud services. I'm grateful that people
| are pointing out the problems and failures around me, not
| because I want to "feel bad" but because I want to be
| "informed and aware and inspired to look for solutions"
| vba616 wrote:
| If you care about anything, you work on it and you
| develop knowledge and positive emotions so you can
| recruit others.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Plantower PMSnnnn modules are pretty damn cheap, easy-to-use, and
| have had the same interfaces for decade+. The issue is that end
| consumers downstream aren't demanding cloudless/optional and FOSS
| solutions, and so are buying their own latent footguns and
| landmines. This seems a perfect area in r2r, privacy, and fair
| play for regulators to insist on stable consumer interfaces,
| documented formats, circuit schematics, and repair parts
| available to all to level the playing field and reduce e-waste.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > consumers downstream aren't demanding cloudless/optional and
| FOSS solutions
|
| Are we surprised?
| purpleidea wrote:
| If it's not PoE, I'm really not interested. Nice idea though. I'd
| love something with an open, local API, that looks as nice as the
| awair products, but not cheaper and PoE!
| throw9away6 wrote:
| Poe would really be a nice touch but I don't think the
| microcontroller is setup for that. You would need a different
| microcontroller
| FloatArtifact wrote:
| It's a shame you can't buy there pro circuit board. It's
| temperature monitoring is more accurate to the replacement of the
| sensor.
| ahaucnx wrote:
| Achim from AirGradient. Please contact our support. We will
| make it available soon.
| tivert wrote:
| It's not capitalism if someone's not trying to suck you dry.
| milofeynman wrote:
| I've been thinking about getting one of these kits for a long
| time. I was going to buy a kit but they're not on Shopify and I'm
| in a hurry. I'll buy one tomorrow.
| hillacious wrote:
| Does anybody know of something similar but for water quality
| monitoring?
| moneywoes wrote:
| Good example of content marketing
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This reminds me of how Strava encourages users to tick the "share
| my data with city transportation planners" box and make it sound
| to users like they're awesome dudes who share this data to be
| great citizens helping out The Cause for alternative
| transportation.
|
| ...and then I talked to an urban planner who told me that:
|
| * Strava's data was worthless to them, mostly because the vast
| majority of transportation riders do not even remotely care about
| mapping their transportation riding so there isn't much data and
| it has a huge skew toward the riding habits of white, wealthy,
| tech bros and social media gals. The kind of people who are
| already well-represented at community meetings, emailed surveys,
| and traffic counts centered around 9-5 commuters. It's the
| "invisible" commuters - migrant, blue collar, service industry -
| especially shift workers - who are difficult to try and
| find/count. They can't afford to show up to 4pm city hearings,
| may not speak english, or it simply never occurs to them to look
| for any of this and bike advocacy orgs have historically done a
| terrible job of outreach (many are aware of this and have been
| trying to work on it, or at least try to account for the bias.)
|
| * The data isn't provided free of charge, and in fact its
| provided at prohibitively expensive rates compared to other data
| sources, even for a relatively small city. I don't remember the
| exact figures, but I believe for a east coast small city it was
| "approaching a mile of bike lane" costs, ie tens of thousands of
| dollars.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Mentioned open data exchange: https://openaq.org/
|
| https://explore.openaq.org/
|
| EPA.gov: A Guide to Siting and Installing Air Sensors
|
| https://www.epa.gov/air-sensor-toolbox/guide-siting-and-inst...
| DannyBee wrote:
| SCAQMD actually does independent field/lab evals of sensors.
|
| http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec
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