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Comment by kayson | Hacker News Reader

Wish I had seen this before I bought all the constituent parts on sparkfun! Though I do have some concerns about the accuracy of the PM2.5 sensor (mainly because the data sheet isn't exceptionally clear).I ended up getting the Sensirion equivalent over this one even though its quite pricey.

Every all-in-one air quality monitor I've seen except one omit some fairly important metrics - NO2 and hydrogen sulfides. I'm guessing it's because the sensors are extremely expensive (I got quotes for $90+/ea from one vendor). I ended up finding a startup, SPEC Sensors, that has much cheaper screen-printed sensors, and if their data sheets are to be believed, they're more than sufficient.

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We have made very good experience with the Plantower PMS5003 PM sensor and thousands of them went through our test chamber. The plantower has also shown one of the best accuracies for low-cost sensors compared to reference stations in various studies.

I agree that the data sheets from Plantower are not great. Unfortuntately this is often the case from Chinese manufacturers.

I second Plantower (I've only used a few PMS7003), it allows you to build a really high quality sensor while being really a beginner project using some arduino and LCD. Note that this is only for particulates in the air.

Btw, why thousands? And any reasons for not using CCS811 for TVOC and HDC1080 for temp while you're at it? Sounds like you have tons of experience and it's not easy to find reviews which properly test these.

No specific reasons other than that we are pretty happy with the quality from Sensirion and thus like to use their sensors.

That's good to know! Have you published your testing results anywhere?

Pimoroni's Enviro and Enviro+ use it. I build two. Fun stuff.

I made something similar

https://dheera.net/projects/airmonitor/

I used a PMSA003I and had major problems with it -- it was always reporting 0 for AQI if the actual value was anywhere below ~100. It wasn't sensitive to low levels of pollution. Is the PMS5003 any better?

We also used the A003 in the past and were not happy with accuracy and quality. We had quite a number of them failing early. The 5003 is a lot better in my opinion.

thanks!

I've been using three PMS5003 for years. It is sensitive to minute deviations in PM concentrations. Since I live in a very polluted area, I try to stay within one room as much as possible with a purifier running on full blast. Opening an inside door for a second lets a small amount of pollution in, which the sensor notices right away (it may be only half a microgram per m³, but it always goes up reliably).

I manage to keep indoor PM2.5 levels within 1% of what's happening outside, which the sensor also tracks as expected (so if outside it's 100 µg/m³, the indoor sensor shows 0-1 µg/m³, when the outside level rises to 250, my sensor starts showing 2-2.5 µg, and so on).

would love a blog post / tutorial for this set up including the expensive sensors. I think a lot of us who care about air quality don't mind spending a few hundred dollar for cool new data

I can do that. Might take a while though

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