Air Quality Meter

"There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all."
- Robert Orben

Detects air particulate matter (PM - pm1, pm2.5, pm10) concentrations with a Plantower PMS5003ST sensor and sends data to an MQTT topic.

An alternative firmware for ESP8266 devices like the NodeMCU board written for Arduino on PlatformIO

Disclaimer

We don't take any responsibility nor liability for using this software nor for the installation or any tips, advice, videos, etc. given by any member of this site or any related site.

Hardware

NodeMCU

An opensource IoT platform, tiny and powerful, based on the ESP-12 module.
It's very affordable (you can buy them for a few bucks) and you can develop custom firmwares like this one using Lua scription language or in C/C++ with the arduino tools!

NodeMCU on Wikipedia

Plantower PMS5003ST

A digital particle concentration sensor that count the number of suspended particles in the air using a laser and the scattering principle and output them as digital data.
It's not expensive and you can find it on almost every marketplace like AliExpress.

The ST version that I used works differently from the PMS5003 standard because has also a formaldehyde, temperature and humidity sensor so it needs to transfer more data.

Installing / Getting started

A quick introduction of the minimal setup you need to get all up and
running. Remember that you can do all the setup steps without the PMS sensor connected!

Get PlatformIO up and running

If you are used to this kind of software you already know how easier is to manage project dependencies, custom build routine, etc but if you are not don't worry! It's really easy and this can be a good starting point to learn something new :) You only need to install it for your favorite IDE between Atom and VSCode.

[NOT REQUIRED] - Edit the configuration file

If you would like it you can edit the data/config.json configuration file to preload all parameters and skip the access-point mode configuration step later.
If you want you can configure only some of the parameters. Remove the property or leave it empty to use default project values.
Then you will need to upload this file into the SPI filesystem using the PlatformIO command:

pio run -t uploadfs

or by using the IDE top menu: "PlatformIO" >> "Run other target..." >> "PIO Upload File System Image"

Flash the module

Connect the NodeMCU via usb and from the top menu press "PlatformIO" >> "Build" and hopefully that's all!

Initial Configuration

After being flashed this application needs almost no configuration. Just to setup the desired wifi network.
To do that power the device up using the module micro-usb port. It'll boot in Access-point mode and a new wifi ssid will be available:

ssid: AQM-xxxxxx
pass: stop_air_pollution

Connect to that and a configuration page it will be displayed to you. If it'll not happen just open the browser and go to http://192.168.4.1

Follow the instructions and you will configure the sensor "everyday" network!

If you want you can skip this part using the data/config.json configuration file. If you are interested in it check [this paragraph about]([NOT REQUIRED] - Create configuration file)

Usage

This are the minimal wiring that this project needs:

(fritzing schematics attached)

(extra) HomeAssistant

I personally collect all these data on my HomeAssistant instance. It's an opensource home automation software that runs perfectly on micropc like RaspberryPI or local servers (NAS, nuc, etc)

Take a look at https://www.home-assistant.io/

This is the sensor configuration:

homeassistant:
  sensor:
    - platform: mqtt
      state_topic: "my_house/entryway/air_quality_meter"
      name: "air_quality_meter"
      value_template: '{{ value_json }}'
      json_attributes:
        - pm10
        - pm25
        - pm100
        - pe10
        - pe25
        - pe100
        - pt03
        - pt05
        - pt10
        - pt25
        - pt50
        - pt100
        - hcho
        - tem
        - hum

    - platform: template
      sensors:
        air_quality_pm10:
          friendly_name: PM1.0
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pm10 }}'
          unit_of_measurement: 'μg/m3'
        air_quality_pm25:
          friendly_name: PM2.5
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pm25 }}'
          unit_of_measurement: 'μg/m3'
        air_quality_pm100:
          friendly_name: PM10
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pm100 }}'
          unit_of_measurement: 'μg/m3'        
        air_quality_pm10_env:
          friendly_name: PM1.0 (atmospheric environment)
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pe10 }}'
          unit_of_measurement: 'μg/m3'
        air_quality_pm25_env:
          friendly_name: PM2.5 (atmospheric environment)
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pe25 }}'
          unit_of_measurement: 'μg/m3' 
        air_quality_pm100_env:
          friendly_name: PM10 (atmospheric environment)
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pe100 }}'
          unit_of_measurement: 'μg/m3'

        air_quality_pt03:
          friendly_name: Particles > 0.3um / 0.1L air
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pt03 }}'
        air_quality_pt05:
          friendly_name: Particles > 0.5um / 0.1L air
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pt05 }}'        
        air_quality_pt10:
          friendly_name: Particles > 1.0um / 0.1L air
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pt10 }}'
        air_quality_pt25:
          friendly_name: Particles > 2.5um / 0.1L air
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pt25 }}'        
        air_quality_pt50:
          friendly_name: Particles > 5.0um / 0.1L air
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pt50 }}'
        air_quality_pt100:
          friendly_name: Particles > 10.0um / 0.1L air
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.pt100 }}'        

        air_quality_temperature:
          friendly_name: Temperature
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.tem }}'
          unit_of_measurement: '°C'  
        air_quality_humidity:
          friendly_name: Humidity
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.hum }}'
          unit_of_measurement: '%'       
        air_quality_formaldehyde:
          friendly_name: Formaldehyde
          value_template: '{{ states.sensor.air_quality_meter.attributes.hcho }}'
          unit_of_measurement: 'mg/m3'

and this is an example Lovelace UI view:

title: Home
views: 

 - title: Air quality
    id: air-quality
    icon: mdi:speedometer
    cards:
    - type: glance
      title: Concentration Units (standard)
      show_header_toggle: false
      entities:
        - sensor.air_quality_pm10
        - sensor.air_quality_pm25
        - sensor.air_quality_pm100
    - type: glance
      title: Concentration Units (environmental)
      show_header_toggle: false
      entities:
        - name: PM1.0
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pm10_env
        - name: PM2.5
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pm25_env
        - name: PM10
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pm100_env
    - type: glance
      title: Number of particles
      show_header_toggle: false
      columns: 6
      entities:
        - name: "> 0.3μg"
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pt03
        - name: "> 0.5μg"
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pt05
        - name: "> 1.0μg"
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pt10 
        - name: "> 2.5μg"
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pt25
        - name: "> 5.0μg"
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pt50 
        - name: "> 10.0μg"
          entity: sensor.air_quality_pt100           
        
    - type: entities
      title: Others
      show_header_toggle: false
      entities:
        - sensor.air_quality_formaldehyde
        - sensor.air_quality_temperature
        - entity: sensor.air_quality_humidity
          icon: mdi:water-percent
     
    - type: history-graph
      title: 'Concentration Units (standard)'
      entities:
        - sensor.air_quality_pm10
        - sensor.air_quality_pm25
        - sensor.air_quality_pm100  
        
    - type: history-graph
      title: 'Concentration Units (environmental)'
      entities:
        - sensor.air_quality_pm10
        - sensor.air_quality_pm25
        - sensor.air_quality_pm100  

to get something like this:

Contribute

You can contribute to this project by

• providing Pull Requests (Features, Proof of Concepts, Language files or Fixes)
• testing new released features and report issues
• donating to acquire hardware for testing and implementing or out of gratitude

Credits

Libraries Used

Libraries used with this project are:

• ESP8266 core for Arduino
• PubSubClient
• WiFiManger
• ArduinoJson

License

This program is licensed under GPL-3.0