Issue 21 HackSpace magazine: Air quality monitor by @ben_everard #Adafruit #AdafruitIO #Python @HackSpaceMag @Raspberry_Pi

The new HackSpace Magazine Issue 20 highlights an air quality monitor build using a Raspberry Pi 4 and air quality sensor. The project is programmed in Python 3 with the Adafruit Adafruit IO data service (free at io.adafruit.com) holding data and providing status.

Air is the very stuff we breathe. It’s about 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% argon, and then there’s the assorted ‘other’ bits and pieces – many of which have been spewed out by humans and our related machinery. Carbon dioxide is obviously an important polluter for climate change, but there are other bits we should be concerned about for our health, including particulate matter. This is just really small bits of stuff, like soot and smog. They’re grouped together based on their size – the most important, from a health perspective, are those that are smaller than 2.5 microns in width (known as PM2.5), and PM10, which are between 10 and 2.5 microns in width. This pollution is linked with respiratory illness, heart disease, and lung cancer.

The data is sent to Adafruit IO:

You can use any data platform you like. We chose Adafruit IO because it’s easy to use, lets you share visualisations (in the form of dashboards) with others, and connects with IFTTT to perform actions based on values (ours tweets when the air pollution
is above legal limits).

You can read Ben’s full tutorial in Issue 21 of HackSpace Magazine (PDF pages 94 to 97).