this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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Have you got any air quality sensors? Particulates, CO2, VOCs, CO, Radon, there’s a while bunch of sensors, and a variety of DIY projects to put them together.
It also has the practical benefit of maybe improving your health.
Do you have a suggestion for a good air quality sensor (especially for CO2 and VOCs) that outputs reliable results, works over ZigBee and is preferably battery powered? I had a CO2 sensor once but that needed to be calibrated outside really frequently so I stopped using it.
The CO2 sensor calibration thing is inherent in the technology. They drift, a lot, and without occasional reference to a known standard, there's no way to know whether "1000" is really 1000, or 500, or 2000, but exactly how that gets implemented seems to vary a lot. I have an SCD30 board from Adafruit, which internally records CO2 minima and, over the course of week or so, adjusts its calibration so that minimum is 420. That means no special calibration procedure, but it does have to be somewhere that it gets periodic fresh air exposure.
There's a newer, photoacoustic sensor technology that doesn't seem to require continuous recalibration, but (at least this one: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/22956 ) require an extensive initial calibration.
Sorry for the late reply. That photacoustic one looks interesting. I have no issue with an extensive initial calibration when it then just works without me needing to take care of it regularly. Thank you :)