Show HN: Air Lab – A portable and open air quality measuring device (networkedartifacts.com)
I’ve been working on an air quality measuring device called Air Lab for the past three years. It measures CO2, temperature, relative humidity, air pollutants (VOC, NOx), and atmospheric pressure. You can log and analyze the data directly on the device — no smartphone or laptop needed.
To better show what the device can do and how it feels like, I spent the past week developing a web-based simulator using Emscripten. It runs the stock firmware with most features available except for networking. Check it out and let me know what you think!
The firmware will be open-source and available once the first batch of devices ships. We’re currently finishing up our crowdfunding campaign on CrowdSupply. If you want to get one, now is the time to support the project: https://www.crowdsupply.com/networked-artifacts/air-lab
We started building the Air Lab because most air quality measuring devices we found were locked-down or hard to tinker with. Air quality is a growing concern, and we’re hoping a more open, playful approach can help make the topic more accessible. It is important to us that there is a low bar for customizing and extending the Air Lab. Until we ship, we plan to create rich documentation and further tools, like the simulator, to make this as easy as possible.
The technical: The device is powered by the popular ESP32S3 microcontroller, equipped with a precise CO2, temperature, and relative humidity sensor (SCD41) as well as a VOC/NOx (SGP41) and atmospheric pressure sensor (LPS22). The support circuitry provides built-in battery charging, a real-time clock, an RGB LED, buzzer, an accelerometer, and capacitive touch, which makes Air Lab a powerful stand-alone device. The firmware itself is written on top of esp-idf and uses LVGL for rendering the UI.
If you seek more high-level info, here are also some videos covering the project: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBltdMLjUyg (Introduction) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tzjVYPm_MU (Product Update)
Would love your feedback — on the device, hardware choices, potential use cases, or anything else worth improving. If you want to get notified on project updates, subscribe on Crowd Supply.
Happy to answer any questions!
206 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 235 ms ] threadTLDR: It compiles the stock firmware to WASM using emscripten. Thus, I did not build all of it in one week and rather just the web app around the firmware.
What you could take from them is how prominent the current measurement is on the screen. I can glance over from a distance and instantly see the number. The colours get inverted if it goes into the red zone, so I can glance at it from across the room without my glasses and still see whether it's bad or not.
From what the simulator shows, with your device I'd need to lean in pretty close to understand what's going on. And blinking light indicators are tricky - you can easily catch it between blinks and look away content that everything's alright.
$230 ain't cheap!
Also, I parsed this as: (open air) (quality measuring device)
Famous HN "but": I find it baffling that by default we are shown this cutesy animation, that gets boring real fast, and actual measurement values in tiny font in the corner, which must be manually switched to for each sensor? Why not just show all sensor values in large font?
And:
> The official firmware for the Air Lab will be open-source and available on GitHub. Extend it and customize it to your needs.
I am curious, what are pros and cons (connectivity, measurement quality) with Qingping Air Monitor 2 (https://qingping.co/air-monitor-2/)?
No bikini models, no pretentious fancy screenshot, no dark patterns. The product speaks for itself.
The thoughtfulness behind the website's UI speaks of who's behind it.
As for vendor lock-in, the basic readings get broadcast over bluetooth advertisments, and you can establish connection to get all the data. I have couple of them working nicely with HomeAssistant.
The cost, yeah, I'd love it to be cheaper.
but i agree with the op that 'looking' at a display already subconsciously tells you something about the air quality and your relation to it. my air quality sensor [0] has a green/orange/red light system though, so i can sometimes just tell that the air quality is bad by a red led flaring up in the corner of my eye.
[0] https://www.tfa-dostmann.de/en/product/co2-monitor-airco2ntr...
previous discussion on the above meter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22764603
https://www.crowdsupply.com/networked-artifacts/air-lab/upda...
[1] e.g. https://github.com/MallocArray/airgradient_esphome
Potential integration: Run HVAC fans and/or an attic fan and/or a crawlspace fan if indoor AQI is worse than outdoor AQI
This says that Air Quality Sensor support was added to matter protocol in 2023: https://csa-iot.org/newsroom/matter-1-2-arrives-with-nine-ne... :
> Air Quality Sensors – Supported sensors can capture and report on: PM1, PM2.5, PM10, CO2, NO2, VOC, CO, Ozone, Radon, and Formaldehyde. Furthermore, the addition of the Air Quality Cluster enables Matter devices to provide AQI information based on the device’s location
/? matter protocol Air Quality Cluster: https://www.google.com/search?q=matter+protocol+Air+Quality+...
Specs:
- Microcontroller: ESP32-S3
- Air sensors: SCD41, SGP41 & LPS22
- Display: 296×128 e-paper
- Battery: 1500 mAh Li-Po
- Anodized aluminium enclosure
- Real-time clock
- Accelerometer
- Wi-Fi & Bluetooth LE
- ~7.5 days of battery life
Later on I talked to people working in the hardware industry for small production scale, and pretty much told me that a fair pricing is usually 5x to 7x the total BOM (bill of materials).
After going through that experience myself, I couldn't agree more. This device in particular has some extra well thought design and style which might be worth a premium (on top of that 5x/7x multiplier).
My understanding (which may be wrong, so I am open to being corrected) is that the greatest power consumption you'll see from ESP32 is connecting to a network and uploading data, the idea being less connections mean less power consumption. The ePaper display should be nice and low power consumption, too. I'd expect a common pocket battery bank to power it for a few weeks if one were using it to gather data for later use.
Again, happy to be corrected. It's really fortunate that this post showed up on HN since just last month, I ordered a few components to start making my own air quality sensors, the goal being to create some units that I can strap on my car and gather data while I travel for work (personal curiosity, mostly). There's tons of great projects and info being referenced in this thread.
We mainly went with an ESP32 because of the great SDK and software support through Arduino etc. That way, people that want to customize the firmware or build their own can get started quickly.
Your NO₂ measurements make it a really interesting device compared to most alternatives that only measure particulate matter. All gas sensors that are theoretically possible for me to obtain cost hundreds of dollars by themselves.
That said, looking at the main active components that are listed, we have -
ESP32S3 IC : $4 retail, SCD41 Sensor : $21 retail, SGP41 Sensor : $8 retail, LPS22 Sensor : $4 retail
Which is very hopeful, in the sense that some key functionality of this kind of device could potentially be open sourced and pared back to a minimal cost where hobbyists could build versions suitable for the economics of developing countries.
CrowdSupply ships everything via Mouser US - so if you are outside of the US you need to export your products to Mouser. That hits you with tariffs and the tariffs are charged on what CrowdSupply are paying you for the products.
If the majority of your product is manufactured in China (e.g. PCBA) then it's very likely that the COO for your product will be China. So, you will get stung with whatever crazy tariffs are currently in place.
I'm seeing if I can argue for a UK country of origin. But also, I want to get the boxes shipped and out to people - so think I'll just swallow it.
I am not an expert but if I get these components, how easy would it be to build a hacked version out of these?
I’m not in the US and unaffected by the tarrifs.
There are libraries which make it extra-easy:
SCD41: SparkFun_SCD4x_Arduino_Library.h
SGP41: SensirionI2CSgp41.h
LPS22: Adafruit_LPS2X.h
Take a look through the past HN discussions of this and similar air quality monitors. Can also search HN for chip names themselves (like 'SCD41'). Many people note that the sensors drift over time, and buying "calibration bottles" of low-concentration CO2 is a slight hurdle for many - they're not that crazy expensive, but they're expensive enough to be a bit of a block for some.
I’ll give it a try and see how far I go. Do you know any discord channels where such folks hang out?
P.S. Apt username BTW.
Programming libraries contain the basic functions necessary to access to sensors' readings with simple lines of code.
But the devil is in the details - to go from that to an actual practical, working model and physical build is quite a lot of work. Expect months, in hobbyist terms.
[1] https://www.airgradient.com/documentation/overview/
Additionally, the OLED screen needs to shut down in the dark. I added a VEML lithgt sensor to my devices for that.
The LEDs and screens can be adjusted (or turned off) on a schedule with the latest firmware.
MIT Licensed: https://github.com/AurelWu/IndoorCO2AppMAUI
PS: do you use the air pressure to correct the CO2-readings like the Aranet4 does or would users need to manually recalibrate when the move to higher/lower elevations compared to when the sensor was calibrated?
We have not integrated compensation of CO2-readings yet, but will certainly look into it before shipping the device.
[0] - https://www.open-seneca.org/