Question: Low-cost air quality sensors to measure PM2.5, PM10?

bigmit37 is asking a question about air-quality
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by bigmit37 | August 18, 2018 18:48 | #16958


I currently live near a busy intersection and I wanted to some for of measurement of PM2.5, PM10 as from what I've read, car pollution are the main culprits of these particles. I then wanted to try to reduce then via air purifiers and see if it makes a difference.

I'm seeing a lot of inexpensive detectors on AliExpress, but I'm a little overwhlemd with the choices.

I also saw these on amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/product-Thermometer-Humidity-sensitive-Detector/dp/B079N33W91/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&qid=1534615644&sr=8-20&keywords=SNDWAY

https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Detector-Temperature-Humidity-Function/dp/B077QS61K7

However, they seem to be using the same sensors, so not sure what the reason for the price difference is.

Any recommendations?

Thank you.



7 Comments

Hi- Great question! There are a number of options for this type of monitoring, and I agree, it gets really overwhelming. Can you tell me more about how you want to use the data? That might help to figure out what tools might work best. In the meantime, here's a wiki to check out on this topic https://publiclab.org/wiki/pm

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HI. It seems I didn't notice that I got a reply. I mainly want real-time readings or real-timeish, so I can check my working environments and see if I can reduce particle pollution via filters.

Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

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@bigmit37 PurpleAir is a popular one. Read about it here

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@jiteovien It seems there are three versions, two for outdoors and one for indoors? Does the indoor one also require Wifi?It seems the outdoos one do.I may not have Wifi connection in on of the areas. From the description, it reads that the indoor version only uses one sensor as opposed to the top-end one which uses two. I wonder if there is big difference in terms of accuracy.

Thank you!

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@bigmit37 I can't answer that for sure but I would recommend getting the one designed for outdoor use. I'm not sure if there are any differences in the enclosure but if you're going to use it outside, you want something that won't be easily affected by the elements. Also, there should be a version that uses an SD card for those who do not have wifi. But, of course, the caveat with that is that you will not be able to get real time updates on the PurpleAir map. You would have to get the data off of the SD card and graph the data yourself

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There's been some strong interest in the Plantower PMS5003 which is the sensor in the #purpleair -- in case it's interesting -- https://publiclab.org/questions/warren/10-26-2018/how-can-we-connect-a-pms5003-dust-sensor-to-an-arduino

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