After some pretty serious wildfires here in Oregon earlier this year I decided I wanted to know more about the air quality outside and inside my house. So I set about making two different units to do that. This happens to be the indoor air quality station with a custom enclosure.
Using code that Roscoe81 on Github developed; Enviro-Monitor. I put this together with;
- Raspberry Pi Zero W
- Pimoroni Enviro+
- Pimoroni SGP30
- Plantower PMS5003
- Wiring
- Fastners
- And 1 warm white LED for style points
All of this stuffed into a little custom enclosure I made and posted up here at Prusa Printers: Super Deluxe Indoor Air Quality Housing. I also explain a bit more about how it goes together here as well as provided some exploded views of the assembly to get an idea of how it goes together.
Unfortunately, I burned up the little screen on the Enviro+ by using an inappropriate ribbon cable to connect the RPi to the Enviro+ early. I’m still debating what to do but @alphanumeric has had some awesome suggestions for overcoming that which might require a bit of rework on my housing. That or I just buy another Enviro+, but all the sensors are working and sending their data to where I wanted it sent so it’s working… mostly.
Nice, very nice. Wish I had a 3D printer.
Keep an eye on your temperature reading. The PI Zero will give off a little heat over time and if it warms up the inside of the house / enclosure you’ll get false high readings. If the chimney is open and lets air out you’ll likely be fine. Especially with the door slightly open.
Yeah, I really wanted the Pi in it’s own little enclosure up at the roof, but that’s going to require a rewire so that the wires don’t prevent everything from closing up nicely and frankly, I’ve had enough fun with this for a little while.
I have one build that’s been reworked I don’t know how many times.
I started with a Sense Hat on a Pi A+ that showed the Day, Date, Time, Temperature, Humidity, and Pressure on the LED matrix in a scrolling message. With no case it was fine. I had a Proto Hat between the Pi and the Sense Hat with a RTC on it. Made a portable version in weather proof case and the temperature read high. Drilled holes in the case to let air in and the heat out and it wasn’t weather proof anymore lol.
First mod was a BME280 mounted externally on the bottom of the case where it wouldn’t get rained on or snowed on.
It’s now a Pi Zero, BME280, LTR-559, VEML6075 , LED Shim, Unicorn Hat HD, PowerBoost with a 6600 MAH battery. New case with holes positioned so rain etc can’t get in. It now displays Day, Date, Time, Temp, Humidity, Pressure and UV index. Each message is color coded based on the readings. 0c or lower gets me Blue text for the Temperature message as an example.
This stuff can be a whole lot of fun and I learned a lot of Python code on the way.
I should post my enclosure for the outdoor air quality sensor, but none of the hardware for it is Pimoroni. I could post it over at Luftdaten and send you a link. It’s, kind of like this project, overly complex thanks to me.
I hardly ever actually totally finish a project. I get it done, use it for a while, then do a what if it also did this, or I could add this etc. =)
EDIT: The “NEW” section on the shop page doesn’t help either lol. :P
Yeah, I bought an Inky because… I honestly don’t know, but that’s another project.
I’m honestly trying to avoid getting to the point where I’ve acquired so many projects I never get them done, but so far my impulse control isn’t helping me reduce that likelihood.
I’m not doing to bad, I have a half dozen + builds that get used daily or almost daily. Some stuff that only gets used for prototyping new builds etc. And if I’m honest a few finished but gathering dust stuff. I have more in use than not being used builds though. :)
https://io.adafruit.com/Extra_Fox/dashboards/springbrook
Here’s the dashboard for our indoor quality, the software being used here is pretty cool although having to pay for Adafruit IO is probably a bit steep if this is all you ever use it for.
