AirGradient Indoor and Outdoor Air Quality Monitors

AirGradient started as a volunteer project to help a school in Northern Thailand monitor the air quality in classrooms during the highly polluted “burning season.” From these humble beginnings, AirGradient has gone on to design and build air quality monitors for customers all around the world with a focus on open designs, long-lasting hardware and affordability.

AirGradient makes all of its hardware designs, electronic schematics, firmware code, CAD files, etc, available for free under a Creative Commons license and openly publishes its extensive research so others can benefit from it.

AirGradient reached out to us and sent us two of their current air quality monitors to take a look at. The “AirGradient One” is for indoor use, and the “AirGradient Open Air” is for outdoor monitoring.

Both devices come with a raft of built-in sensors for monitoring the air quality in your surroundings. They are open-source, so they can be extended for use in different applications or software packages. As the devices are wi-fi connected, they upload the readings taken to the AirGradient Dashboard which is an online interface where you can view current and historical data from the devices.

There are two options available to you when purchasing one of these monitors. The AirGradient One and AirGradient Open Air can both be purchased from AirGradient directly, fully assembled, tested and certified, or you can purchase the monitors as a kit with all the parts required to build the monitor yourself or use how you see fit.

AirGradient also have an online support forum where users of the monitors can look for assistance with their products or discuss them with other users.

AirGradient One

The AirGradiant One is capable of measuring PM1, PM2.5, PM10, CO2, TVOCs, NOX, Temperature and Humidity. There is a small LED screen on the bottom right corner, which gives you current readings from the sensors, as well as 11 RBG LEDs in a strip across the top giving you a colour-coded indicator of how your air quality is currently.

There are slots around the side of the device which allow air to pass through the sensors, and on the back, there is a USB C port for powering, some groves for cable management, and screw holes to allow for mounting if you require. The device also comes with a clip-on stand.

Everything feels solid and well put together. It is a functional design, and that is the aim here.

The setup of the device is pretty straightforward. You can set the monitor up from pretty much any device, but we found an Android phone to work the best.  There are a couple of QR codes on the back of the device. One of them allows you to add the device to your current wi-fi network, and the other then allows you to add the device to the AirGradient Dashboard. You need to register an account for the Dashboard, and once that is done, you can access all of the data that is being picked up by the monitor.

Once you are at this point, it is a case of waiting for some data to build over a period of time. You can then use the Dashboard to analyse the trends from each sensor and try to match periods where the air quality degraded with events that were happening there at that time.

With a little effort put into watching the trends from the sensors and matching them to events, some patterns become clear, and it is easy to try and implement some changes to mitigate them.

In our office, it became clear that the main issues we were seeing with air quality were related to the number of people that were in the office at that time, the activities that were happening, such as people coming and going, having lunch or cleaning activities that were happening.

With more people in one space, you get a build-up of CO2 without correct ventilation. Cleaning activities such as vacuuming seemed to spike CO2 readings too. Likewise, temperature and humidity are effected by people and electronic equipment generating heat.

In most cases, it is quite simple to change these things. Opening a door or window at either end of the office to allow cleaner air to flow through has immediate positive effects. We are lucky that our office is located in a place that has very clean air, but if you are in a built-up city, replacing the air in your office or home with cleaner air is going to be more difficult than just opening a window.

The trends available in the dashboard also show you that it is something that needs ongoing efforts to keep in check. If you open a door and allow clean air in, if you can’t leave that door open then the air quality quickly degrades again.

Also, while not so much of an issue right now, Ireland’s damp climate leads to a lot of issues with humidity during the colder months so I fully expect to see undesirable results in the dashboard as we head towards winter again.

The Airgradient Dashboard is a powerful tool for analysing the data and will be more than enough for most users, but you can also put the data to use in other software, as I mentioned before, as everything is built from an open-source footing.

AirGradient Open Air

The AirGradient Open Air is an equally well-made device as the One, but as it is aimed at mounting outside, it doesn’t come with a screen or LED indicators. Similar to the One, it is USB-C powered and has mounting holes on the back.

The setup is also identical. Add to a wi-fi network and add to the Dashboard and you are up and running.

The AirGradient Open Air also monitors PM1, PM2.5, PM10, CO2, TVOCs, NOX, Temperature and Humidity, and once you have started collecting data can be used as a comparison to the Indoor readings you are getting in the Dashboard.

It was refreshing to see our outside air quality was excellent but we are not located in a very built up area. The data from the outside monitor became an excellent baseline to judge the indoor air quality readings from and we had peace of mind knowing that the air we were introducing into the office was going to have the desired effect of improving the indoor air quality.

It would be easy to see how poor indoor air quality accompanied by poor outside air quality would leave you in the situation of having to invest in air filtration systems or, in the long run, would at least make you consider relocating. Continuously breathing in poor air is linked to many adverse health conditions, and it is quite easy to be in a situation where you are unaware of just how bad your air quality is, so affordable monitors such as those from AirGradient are a very useful too in identifying this.

You can find out more about both monitors, the company and their research by visiting their website which I would highly recommend doing if you have an interest in this. There is a lot of information there which includes global maps showing air quality readings from around the world:

https://www.airgradient.com/