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Measuring air quality and temperature

JaapPeltJaapPelt Member
in Devices
Greetings, 

To my surprise, Germany has no building regulations for ventilation. As a result, our brand new apartment is nearly air-tight. Apparently, it is common to just open a window to refresh the air. To avoid any unneeded exchange of cold winter air with warm indoor air, I'd like Homey to tell me when it would be a good time to ventilate. 

The first step would be to compare the outside temperature with the indoor temperature to determine when it would be a good time to ventilate. Unfortunately, I cannot upgrade my thermostats because each room has one or even two floor heating thermostats. It would be too expensive to replace them with smart thermostats.
Secondly, I'd like to get some indication of the air quality. CO2 levels might be good enough.

I'd like 2 or 3 temperature sensors spread around in the house. One option would be to combine the temperature sensor with a motion sensor like with the Fibaro motion sensor or Aeotec multisensor 6. Determining the air quality seems to be more difficult and more expensive. I have been unable to find a compatible air quality sensor. I'd like to measure both humidity and CO2 levels in addition to the temperature.
 
Do any of you have experience with temperature or air quality sensor which are or could become compatible with Homey?  
Any recommendation regarding this topic are of course also welcome. 




Comments

  • casedacaseda Member
    i'm using netatmo for this (had the exact same idea for when to ventilate), it's not the cheapest but it works like a charm with homey (and it is including humidity and CO2 like you want)
  • JaapPeltJaapPelt Member
    Do I assume correctly that the Netatmo weather station is needed and that the smaller indoor station is not supported  standalone?
  • casedacaseda Member
    edited September 2016
    That's correct, they use 868 mhz, but i believe it's encoded so homey is unable to read the information.
    But might be possible in the future:
    Quote from the website:
    Can I access data directly from the devices?
    It is not possible for the moment. The only way to access the data and the devices is via the cloud APIs.
  • JaapPeltJaapPelt Member
    @caseda Do you happen to know if the temperature sensor in the Fibaro motion sensor works?

  • casedacaseda Member
    @JaapPelt ;
    I only have the Normal Z-wave version myself so i can't say for sure for the Z-Wave+ (plus) version.

    But indeed it works pretty good when you set the proper settings.
    By default temperature will only report every 1 degree difference (no time interval), i don't find that's often enough.
    Settings i use for temperature:
    900 seconds for report
    the amount of temperature (1 degree) and measurement (900 seconds) i kept default,
    now the temperature gets send every 900 seconds (15 minutes) even if the temperature hasn't changed.

    Small disclaimer, i have not tested since .10 update, human error made me delete all fibaro devices (woopsie :blush:) had not included them yet.
  • vanillasskyvanillassky Member
    just a tip:

    I have an awair air quality monitor (getawair.com) It measures temperature, co2, Volatile organic compounds (VOC's, which are basically harmful pollutants) and the amount of dust and the humidity in the air. As ventilation is not only about co2 and temperature i think this sort of air quality monitor gives a better overview of the air. When I for example spray a deodorant in my room the VOC indicator almost instantly goes up and can stay high for hours after if I do not ventilate enough. The same goes for certain cleaning products, new furniture etc you would be suprised how bad your air is sometimes. anyway this device has a nice app and can communicate with ifttt which is in turn compatible with homey. There is no homey app or something, someone might be able to create one if the makers open their api (I don' t know if it is open or not). Id myself like to communicate directly with homey as fibaro etc can, but for my health i do not care that much about temperature or humidity as much as I do about those toxic gases and c02... 
  • vanillasskyvanillassky Member
    Oh and awair has some nice tips to improve your air quality based on the situation of your air its pretty neat, i bought myself some air filtering plants ^^  
  • JaapPeltJaapPelt Member
    @caseda and @vanillassky : thank you for the detailed responses. Thus helps a lot.

    Await defiantly looks like a very good device. It is worth considering even without Homey integration.

    Netatmo is a nice product for a attractive price. It does not measure as much, but I could place several units around the house. I would have to rely on relative measurements based on co2 rather then all the different dust and gas particles.

    I'm leaning toward the Netatmo because of the Homey integration and because I could afford to measure in two rooms rather then one, but I will give it some thought this weekend.

  • vanillasskyvanillassky Member
    Yeah unfortunately awair is pretty expensive to place in multiple rooms. And if your co2  levels are too high there is a pretty big chance the voc' s are too high as well, as there apparently is not enough ventilation, so you could use that as an indicator as well. 
  • GeurtDijkerGeurtDijker Member
    edited October 2016
    I have a NetAtmo with onew extra indoor sensor for my bedroom, and a wind and rain sensor extra. 
    The Netatmo App works good, I don't  use them in flows at this moment but I get good info from the insights.
    The default outdoor unit doesn't measure co2, but both indoor do. You can add  up to 3 extra indoor modules to one base station. Only the Base has an usb power supply all others are battery powered. The Base is WiFi connected to the clips service. I connected IFTT Thermosmart thermostat and Homey to the Netatmo api.
    This is my co2 insights

  • pngoossenspngoossens Member
    I've (pre-)ordered one of these: Sensly – The Smart Air Pollution Sensor, a small device detecting several gases + particles and provides an open API. Unfortunately I haven't received it yet therefore I cannot share my experiences with you. Since it's a Kickstarter-project I suspect the product won't be completely finished when it reaches its customers. If you want a more mature solution I would go with the NetAtmo. 
  • bvdbosbvdbos Member
    I ordered that one too... Should be shipping (should be....) before the end of the year...
  • vanillasskyvanillassky Member
    For the record, just had contact with the people behind awair, they have an api that can be requested, so the awair option with homey is really cool, will look into it further. 
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    You.could also check https://minut.com/ . The points will check air quality, noise, presence and an api is available. 
  • bvdbosbvdbos Member
    hnijveen said:
    You.could also check https://minut.com/ . The points will check air quality, noise, presence and an api is available. 
    They're not really open about what they measure? something called Air Quality (?), temperature, pressure, humidity and sounds up tot bat-level frequencies (a microphone which measures to 25KHz or perhaps 120 KHz?)
    Point includes sensors to measure air pressure and quality (using our own patent pending sensor), a microphone array measuring sounds from sub-hertz to bat-level frequencies, a humidity sensor, a temperature sensor and two processors for analyzing the data.

    "Funny" to see they have to same problems with Wifi as Homey:
    Many modern routers offers both options simultaneously. If this is the case, it is important that Point can see and connect to the 2.4GHz network. Sometimes these networks use the same name (called SSID). If you have trouble connecting your Point, it may help to change the name of one of the networks so that Point can find the 2.4GHz network specifically.
    and
    It does not currently support networks with proxy servers, WPA2 Enterprise-secured wireless networks, WPS configuration or networks using statically assigned IP addresses.

    They do have an API but air-quality isn't in it?
    https://api.minut.com/draft1/docs
  • yemoHyemoH Member
    vanillassky said:
    just a tip:

    I have an awair air quality monitor (getawair.com) It measures temperature, co2, Volatile organic compounds (VOC's, which are basically harmful pollutants) and the amount of dust and the humidity in the air. As ventilation is not only about co2 and temperature i think this sort of air quality monitor gives a better overview of the air. When I for example spray a deodorant in my room the VOC indicator almost instantly goes up and can stay high for hours after if I do not ventilate enough. The same goes for certain cleaning products, new furniture etc you would be suprised how bad your air is sometimes. anyway this device has a nice app and can communicate with ifttt which is in turn compatible with homey. There is no homey app or something, someone might be able to create one if the makers open their api (I don' t know if it is open or not). Id myself like to communicate directly with homey as fibaro etc can, but for my health i do not care that much about temperature or humidity as much as I do about those toxic gases and c02... 
    Thank you for sharing your experience with Awair. Were you able to connect Awair and Homey with IFTTT?
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