Build an air quality sensor using a Raspberry Pi, a few lines of code, and a particulates sensor SDS011

Particulate matter is fine dust or very small particles in the air. A distinction is made between PM10 and PM2.5: PM10 refers to particles that are smaller than 10µm; PM2.5 refers to particles that are smaller than 2.5µm. The smaller the particles — i.e., anything smaller than 2.5µm — the more dangerous they are to one's health, as they can penetrate into the alveoli and impact the respiratory system.

The Air Quality Index indicates how “good” or “bad” air is based on its particulate measurement. Unfortunately, there is no uniform standard for AQI because not all countries calculate it the same way.

This particular build is extremely simple in that you are just adding the sensor and then using any browser on the same network to read the air quality from the Pi. One could take this further by adding a dedicated small screen to the Pi and making the whole thing portable. Many of the cheap air quality sensors bought online are a commercial boxing of exactly this. But this article is a good place to start to just measure air quality at home, at school, or at work.

See https://opensource.com/article/18/3/how-measure-particulate-matter-raspberry-pi

#technology #environment #airpollution
#^How to measure particulate matter with a Raspberry Pi

Learn how to build an air quality sensor with these two simple, hardware devices and a few lines of code.

source https://gadgeteer.co.za/build-air-quality-sensor-using-raspberry-pi-few-lines-code-and-particulates-sensor-sds011