Home›Forums›In Chengdu›Chengdu Air Quality Worse Than Beijing in June›Reply To: Chengdu Air Quality Worse Than Beijing in June
July 2, 2014 at 9:08 pm
#41220

Keymaster
Would love to have my own sensor to experiment with to get a better idea of how the values can be affected by different variables.
I was researching this a few months ago. Here’s what I found:
- At the low end for very cheap you can get something like this (which I mentioned in the comments in the Smart Air interview post). It only shows current and average pm2.5 levels (in microns per square meter, which is different from AQI). I have a review of this which I will publish soon, I’ll link to it here. The data that this collects is rudimentary, but works good enough to tell you if your in-home air purifier is working.
- The next level up is basically something like the Dylos 1100 (or the newer model, the Dylos 1700). This is far more advanced than the Samo Air and also costs ten times as much, but provides much more accurate pm2.5 and pm10 data. The upgraded 1100 or the standard 1700 have PC interface ports so you can collect and automatically chart changes in air quality over time on a graph (this is what Smart Air uses on their Particle Counting blog). You could use this to chart interesting things like see how the air quality changes over the course of the day, when it begins or stops raining, when you open a window, etc.
- Two students in England made a custom air quality and weather monitoring device called the AirPi and offer it for sale. I tried to get one to install it on my roof and have it provide live data on weather and air quality on CL. I got on the Tindie wait list and never heard anything – then I contacted the creator and pitched the idea of setting on up in Chengdu to gather data and got no response. The project has basically been neglected seeing as the creator is a young adult probably pursuing other things. This would be a really cool thing to have, though.