Ikea Vindriktning Air Quality Sensor Review and Accuracy

https://www.airgradient.com/resources/ikea-vindriktning-accuracy/

by ahaucnx • 5 years ago

495 146 5 years ago

jansan3• 5 years ago

My takeaway from the article: Buy the sensor, make sure air quality is in the "good" range (green light) and you will be fine. I think I will order a few.

tdrdt2• 5 years ago

Exactly. Recently I bought a very cheap CO2 meter. It is inaccurate, but still accurate enough for 99% of the people.

TheBlerch2• 5 years ago

Which CO2 meter did you get, how accurate is it and how much did it cost? Agreed people just need a meter good enough to tell them when air quality isn’t good.

numpad0• 5 years ago

Referring to acetone detectors with lousy linear lookup feature as “eCO2 sensor” is infuriating but do I must admit it’s an okay reminder for room occupants to open windows…

etimberg• 5 years ago

Agreed. I think I will buy at least one given that the cost is so low.

blackbear_• 5 years ago

Conclusion: [...] However, the defined cut off values for the air quality and its description as “Good”, “OK”, and “Not Good” are not based on science or international recommendations and create the false understanding that the air is good, when in fact it is not good at all.

jansan3• 5 years ago

Considering that the article was basically written by somone who is selling competing products I would take this statement with a truckload of salt.

baxuz• 5 years ago

Oh, I was just about to buy a few.

Someone12344• 5 years ago

Informative article with fair, fact based, conclusions.

I'd like to add that:

- The VINDRIKTNING is extremely consumer accessible ($11.99, good build, simple traffic light system).

- It may be put into spaces that previously had no particulate air quality monitoring.

- The spouse-acceptance-factor is extremely high (unlike e.g. a couple of circuit boards wired together off of Aliexpress).

There are other consumer friendly offerings, but they aren't affordable (e.g. Amazon Smart Air Quality Monitor 4x cost, Airthings 10x cost). That being said, IKEA could fix their traffic-light system's cut off points for free and should consider it.

LeanderK• 5 years ago

I think being low-cost is very important, otherwise I wouldn't consider it. I don't live near a major road, but in a small city. I don't think the air-quality is bad, but I also don't know for sure. I would not invest a significant amount of money (more than 10-15€).

TheBlerch2• 5 years ago

You may find the Breezometer app helpful - I’ve found it quite accurate for local outdoor air quality in several different areas.

Someone12344• 5 years ago

I've found a lot of indoor sources of contaminants for example cheese that fell off a Pizza onto the oven floor will put you into "yellow" the next time you run the oven.

azth• 5 years ago

- The spouse-acceptance-factor is extremely high (unlike e.g. a couple of circuit boards wired together off of Aliexpress).

Which circuit boards do you recommend that have high accuracy that can be ordered?

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

I can recommed the Plantower 5003 PM sensor. Plantower also has smaller ones, e.g. 7003 or A003 but we get the best (most accurate and stable) readings from the 5003 model.

We also experienced with more expensive ones e.g. from Sensirion but did not really measure a significant advantage compared to the Plantower.

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

It is actually pretty easy to build a much more accurate air quality sensor with the Plantower PM2.5 module as a base and a Wemos D1 mini as WiFi connected MCU. We have build instructions on our website on how to do it [1] + a nice 3D printable enclosure to pass the spouse-acceptance ;).

[1] https://www.airgradient.com/diy/

Someone12344• 5 years ago

I don't think our usages of "accessible" are the same.

For example expecting to consumers to have a 3D printer and know how to use one would preclude it from my definition by a lot. Let alone needing a breadboard and to manually solder on components onto it.

Accessible is walking into a store, putting a reasonable amount of money down, and plugging the thing in. Then providing output anyone can understand without training or expertise (e.g. traffic lights, smiley faces, etc).

formerly_proven2• 5 years ago

I see that there's a tiny 20x20 fan in these modules. Do these make audible noise or are the fans in these running rather slowly just to have air movement "better than convection" through the sensor?

beckingz• 5 years ago

Spouse acceptance factor is an underrated engineering constraint.

thecal• 5 years ago

Direct link to the item: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/vindriktning-air-quality-sensor...

Foivos• 5 years ago

For the price it is offered, it performs very well. I am not aware of any other PM2.5 sensor at $10. It cheapest I have seen is $40.

You can still use it to get a rough idea of your air quality and it is definitely "better than nothing (or not having it)".

Semaphor• 5 years ago

The one they use for their DIY Kit [0] actually costs $16-19 [0] at aliexpress

[0] https://www.airgradient.com/diy/

[1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32944660534.html

jerjerjer• 5 years ago

Anything proven and with a better sensor quality?

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

Author here. I forgot to mention:

With a Wemos D1 mini (ESP8266) MCU that costs around USD 2.00, you can pretty easily make the Vindriktning WiFi connected and get the data to a backend [1].

You just need to solder three wires, and there is enough space within the enclosure to fit the D1 mini inside.

This would then allow you to get the exact measurements and to better understand if the "green" is more on the lower end or the higher side.

[1] https://github.com/Hypfer/esp8266-vindriktning-particle-sens...

404mm3• 5 years ago

Hi, thanks for the article!

Are there any non expensive sensors you could recommend? I care about the indoor air quality but it gets very pricey. I have Awair at home but it covers only one room and the unit runs $300 a piece :(

ruffrey• 5 years ago

I’ve used this one [1] then ordered similar ones from Ali express after getting the Adafruit one working.

1. https://www.adafruit.com/product/3686?gclid=CjwKCAiAhreNBhAY...

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

I am not aware of a good and low-cost wifi connected sensor but as I mentioned it is relatively easy to build one yourself.

If you don't want to buld yourself, there are a few relatively good non-connected PM 2.5 sensors for example the "SmartMi PM2.5 Air Quality Monitor" that I can recommend. It costs around USD 30 here in Asia.

bobiny• 5 years ago

I like my Netatmo. I see that it costs $200 on Amazon for main module + you can connect 3 additional ones for other rooms — they cost $86 each. It shows CO2 (notifies when it's high on smartphone), temperature, relative humidity and noise level.

ortusdux3• 5 years ago

I've been looking at ordering a variety of environmental sensors from Seeed Studio's Grove line. They look approachable and affordable, but I cannot vouch for their quality.

https://www.seeedstudio.com/Grove-Laser-PM2-5-Sensor-HM3301....

gonehome3• 5 years ago

Not the OP, but I tried a bunch of these and wrote up details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/AirQuality/comments/ikf1ed/are_ther...

Most of them (including the awair) are complete crap.

I found one that seems okay and is also one of the cheaper ones.

I use and like this one best: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DHXQXGK/

Simple screen with relevant details, no crappy 2.4ghz wifi, no crappy app, etc. it just works.

mellavora2• 5 years ago

I'm a fan of the airgradient, they offer a very nice DIY. You can build a quality sensor for under $50.

https://www.airgradient.com/diy/

Components:

    Wemos D1 Mini USD 2.24
    Wemos OLED display USD 2.47
    Plantower PMS5003 PM Sensor USD 13.89
    Senseair S8 CO2 Sensor USD 28.00
    SHT30 or SHT31 Temperature and Humidity Sensor Module USD 2.55

I think the lead article was posted by the founder of airgradient. I've had some email exchanges with him, he is supportive and helpful.

tnorthcutt• 5 years ago

You might be interested in the author's DIY kits: https://www.airgradient.com/diy

jb1991• 5 years ago

It would be great to hear some alternative suggestions for a consumer air quality meter that is accurate, reliable. I.e. are the AirThings products good? Or do you have any other recommendations?

samsolomon• 5 years ago

I purchased two Airthings View Plus monitors about a month ago. We had a subslab depressurization system installed to mitigate Radon in the basement. The company offered continuous monitoring for $300/yr. Instead I decided to purchase monitors and keep an eye on it myself.

It's hard to know how good the products will be long-term, but the app and charting is pretty good. You can download reports via their web dashboard. I've turned off all notifications except for the CO2 monitor. The ePaper screen is legible, but the text is a little rough around the edges.

Here's what it tracks:

- Radon

- PM 2.5

- VOC

- CO2

- Humidity

- Temperature

- Pressure

I will say that the View Plus is Airthings most expensive product. If you don't care about PM 2.5 or Radon monitoring, they have significantly cheaper options.

namdnay• 5 years ago

Nice article! One small typo:

It can be seen that all three sensors correlate very well but that the Vindriktning only shows about 65% of the PM2.5 values of the other two sensors and thus seems to considerably understate the air quality.

I think here you mean "overstate the air quality" right? Or "understate the air pollution"

pingec• 5 years ago

Are there any air quality devices that work well outdoors in all kind of weather?

zibzab• 5 years ago

Are you recording sensors output?

If the sensors have been calibrated in software, wouldn't you get the uncalibrated values?

balaji1• 5 years ago

Should we just consider buying an air purifier?

Currently in Bay Area where air outside seems good but these apartments seem poorly ventilated, old fixtures, old floors, lots of electronics, etc.

newman314• 5 years ago

Given that the correlation is pretty good, I wonder if it's sufficient to just add a compensating factor to get a better sense of air quality.

smusamashah• 5 years ago

Append this info in your article please. It's a very useful suggestion for future readers.

wnevets• 5 years ago

Have you tested other air quality sensors, if so have you tested the uHoo?

https://getuhoo.com/

accountofme• 5 years ago

Hi author! Nice write up and good analysis. However I think you missed something in the analysis.

The sensor is only accurate to +-20uG/m^3 this also means it can never reach a reading of healthy air according to the WHO specs... I think that is a bigger issue that the traffic light UI.

Apologies for picking on this issue. I am very thankful you took the time to create this article and look at the all the specifications.

ZoomZoomZoom• 5 years ago

I assume you're in some way connected to the site maintainers (or it's just you). Please, tell them the site is broken, as it does not display anything without JS.

There's nothing dynamic on the page (in fact, on most pages on the site). It's mostly text and images, a user doesn't need to run your blobs of code to see them.

micheljansen3• 5 years ago

The article already mentions connecting a Wemos D1 mini, which lead me to searching for a howto. Stumbled onto this excellent article by my old friend Guy, complete with assembly pictures: https://style.oversubstance.net/2021/08/diy-use-an-ikea-vind...

jve4• 5 years ago

Was super easy to follow instructions and get the same steps done.

Can you/your friend point out what kind of lovelace widget is that? Named: Our VINDRIKTNING chart after normal cooking, that helpfully has 3 gradients (green/orange/red)?

Thanks.

micheljansen3• 5 years ago

I'd reach out to him on Twitter (he's @guysie there).

rceDia• 5 years ago

Cheap, easy to use is o.k. not sure of reliability. Another IOT at home air quality solution is Purple Air. Offers units for outdoor or indoor. Not as cheap as IKEA but affordable. https://www2.purpleair.com/

micheljansen3• 5 years ago

$200 for the cheapest model though. That's a factor 20!

dsizzle4• 5 years ago

Does anybody have any stories of how devices like this revealed a problem -- what the problem was, does an air filter fix it, etc?

dirtyid• 5 years ago

I have a xiaomi air purifier with AQ detector. Scrubber seems to to help with allergies. Detector itself is pretty much a glorified smoke detector Tamagotchi toy for me. I haven't found much use for it other than to keep numbers as low / nominal as I can. For which living in a pretty clean part of the city with good air quality means being more mindful when I cook to reduce smoke. That said the high AQ alarm has saved me a couple times from leaving stove top on / burning pots. Kind of paid for itself in that sense.

colechristensen4• 5 years ago

You would be surprised how much particulate certain cooking methods produce, your home can go from 0 AQI to forest fire levels for a few hours without a filter.

With the right filter and sensor, you can keep your AQI in the single digits consistently and react appropriately to particle buildup. If you have a CO2 sensor as well you can react to CO2 buildup which is something I have experienced plenty of times in a modern apartment (not necessarily dangerous levels but levels high enough that cognitive effects should be expected). It is hard to keep indoor CO2 levels anywhere near outdoor levels without forced ventilation with the outside or living in a large house.

dsizzle4• 5 years ago

Do you have any recs for the right filter and sensor?

kfarr• 5 years ago

We have an indoor purple air sensor with a color gradient indicator (from green all the way to purple and many gradients in between). Exactly as you've said we are surprised at the number of times cooking has turned the air quality horrible indoors. Further we are able to see how when air outside is smoky from wildfires that the internal air filters are doing their job. Definitely worth the cost for us in the Bay Area: https://www2.purpleair.com/products/purpleair-pa-i-indoor

fma2• 5 years ago

Yes...formaldehyde exposure is a big issue in the US. Not many know of it. I bought a new construction house, so it has new carpet, paint, cabinets, wood flooring etc has an off gas effect. I honestly it's criminal to allow builders to build like this, or material to be manufactured like this. That "new car" smell, that smell when you open up new furniture made of plywood (the glue contains formaldehyde) .

There are threshold laws in the US and Europe. There are laws from OSHA that regulate where you work - but no laws that regular where you sleep! It's all driven by money, of course...material with lower formaldehyde cost more to manufacture. Just walk into a Sherwin Williams and compare their paint. The highest ones are eco friendly "Low VOC" (volatile organic compound) - so industry definitely knows about it.

The numbers in my house were effectively off the charts and OSHA would be closing down your employer if you had this exposure at work.

Remediation for this is essentially allow to off gas, keep windows open. Off gassing also is impacted by humidity, so may be low during winter but high in the summer or when it rains.

Air filter DOES NOT fix this. The amount of air moved by a HVAC is peanuts compared to just opening windows for a few minutes.

California has regulations: https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/our-work/programs/composite-wood-prod...

dsizzle4• 5 years ago

The numbers in my house were effectively off the charts

Did you get a measurement done, and if so where do you go to get that?

GekkePrutser3• 5 years ago

Some filter vendors like Xiaomi offer active carbon filters to capture formaldehyde. Not sure how well it performs but I notice it captures odours well too.

kccqzy• 5 years ago

There was a time when my air quality sensor (a Temtop device) showed suspiciously high PM2.5 in the kitchen. It turned out the kitchen oven had too much oil build up inside and required cleaning. And no, I tried both cheap and expensive air purifiers; none of them could beat opening the kitchen window or turning on the range hood (a dedicated one, not the kind attached to a microwave). In this particular case, it was also a good reminder to clean the oven.

ortusdux3• 5 years ago

Does anyone know how amazon's new unit fares? It monitors PM 2.5, CO, VOCs, temp, & humidity for 70$. I wouldn't buy one considering the source, but I am interested in how effective it is.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W8KS8D3?&linkCode=ll1&tag=andro...

stdbrouw• 5 years ago

The choice to display anything under 35 μg/m³ as "good" does not seem unreasonable at first glance. Indoor PM2.5 can often be higher than outdoor so that the yearly average will be pushed down by time spent outside and there is no need to have <5 μg/m³ inside too. Also, by the author's admission the unit also measures particles larger than PM2.5 which are less harmful. There's no point in having a unit that will flash orange or red for almost everyone almost all of the time.

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

As I mentioned in the article it really depends on the length of the exposure and how you use the sensor.

Yes in many places in Europe or North America, the outdoor air quality is most of the time good.

However -unfortunately- there are also many places where the outdoor air quality is very unhealthy most year round and then an annual exposure to 35 μg/m³ vs 5 μg/m³ makes a big difference.

srg0• 5 years ago

I think it was a conscious design decision to reduce false alarm rate. Assuming that this low cost device can be/become very inaccurate, then the designers had two choices:

1) Report all alarms as detected. Eventually, the device becomes a red LED which users learn to ignore.

2) Report a problem when the device is reasonably sure there is a problem. Green light does not necessarily mean that the air quality is good, but when the LED becomes red, it should be taken seriously.

punnerud• 5 years ago

Archived version (from today): https://web.archive.org/web/20211206144732/https://www.airgr...

prashnts2• 5 years ago

I have a question since the author is around:

My sensor was working fine for a few months. It’s located near the area I smoke, so whenever I’m smoking it changes to red quickly. And after a few minutes (10 or so) it’d go back to green.

But for past few weeks it’s stuck at red. I disassembled it and cleaned the intake hole (which is covered with a fabric) and it worked after. However it went back to displaying red again all the time.

So my question is whether this sensor needs frequent cleaning? If so what are the alternatives?

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

I don't really have much experience with the PM1006K in the Ikea sensor but it is not untypical that PM sensors can get "stuck" and showing high concentrations.

Sometimes it helps to blow compressed air inside to push out any dust that might cover the optics but that also often does not help too much or only temporary.

prashnts2• 5 years ago

Thank you! I’ll try that. Building an airgradient sensor is next in my list of projects!

skybrian• 5 years ago

I've seen this and rebooting my Temtop sensor seems to help, sometimes.

renewiltord• 5 years ago

Out of curiosity, and with no judgment intended, what is the purpose of the air quality sensor if you are actively smoking? Is it a mechanism for you to determine whether the smoking is exposing other members of the household to second-hand smoke, etc.?

I only ask because it seems to me (with no concrete research) that the smoking risk is much greater than generalized air quality risk.

DannyBee2• 5 years ago

I would be very careful with this kind of evaluation. There are lots of sensors that perform well vs reference instruments but not in the field.

If you want real evaluations, SCAQMD (the folks in charge of air quality for southern california) do evaluations of commercially available, low cost sensors, both against reference instruments and the lab.

See http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations

You can see what i said is true from the table - lots of sensors that are very well correlated with reference instruments in the lab, but suck horribly in the field.

I would think you would be better off submitting the sensor in question to them, and letting them put it through its paces.

(They publish within a month of finishing testing, and testing takes ~8 weeks)

dognotdog• 5 years ago

IMO, the single biggest problem is that even five-figure reference instruments disagree considerably in the 0-20 ug/m3 range, and if you look at the figures of the SCAQMD tests, you won't see much more than noise in the scatter plots in that range, with increasing consistency at larger concentrations. Some of this is due to mismatches in response times and synchronization, but a lot of it is due to different disturbances, noise processes, and varying sensitivities to different particle size distributions in different sensor types.

With inexpensive optical scattering sensors, the situation is even worse. While it is easy enough enough to "count" individual 2.5um particles, the scattering equations work out to an order of 10^6 reduction in scattering amplitude, per particle, going down to 0.3um (when measured with red or infra-red light), and different particle compositions will scatter differently. On top of that, the number of particles increases significantly per unit mass concentration, making the signal processing a lot harder once one can't just threshold individual "blips" in the signal.

Whether the sensors are particle counting or nephelometric in principle, the basic trade-off is that to see smaller particles, they need higher amplification factors, which in turn increases thermal noise, also amplifies stray light, and makes the device more sensitive to EM interference. Many signal processing pipelines do simplistic noise filtering, throwing out much of the baby with the bathwater.

On top of these principal difficulties, the optical scattering type sensors are quite sensitive to temperature variation, and aging of the photoelectronic components, which is why field tests under varied conditions often depress their accuracy even further.

Long story short, it is very easy to build a sensor with qualitatively good correlations to actual PM concentration, as long as the PM concentration is sufficiently high, but the health effects have no threshold, and every added bit of pollution counts, starting at zero. Unfortunately, commodity PM sensors are quite bad at quantifying these low, yet meaningful, ambient pollutant levels, which is probably why IKEA chose their traffic light thresholds the way the did: not because of how it relates to health, but because this is what they could do with a $12 device.

hedora3• 5 years ago

Thanks for the link; that’s a great resource!

To summarize their current results: Purple Air (especially version 2) is the only one that doesn’t suck at measuring PM 2.5. None of the consumer-targeted gaseous sensors they tested work.

Did I miss something? Is some other third party running more comprehensive tests?

DannyBee2• 5 years ago

Assuming you care PM1.0/PM2.5 (which are what are truly harmful), and want R^2 >0.9:

Atmotube pro Elitech (for PM2.5) Purpleair

The field evaluations have good expositions of the underlying data in slide form. For sure the purpleair is the best bet that i can see. Note that they are pragmatic as well - if you read field evaluations, AQMD folks generally think >0.8 R^2 is very good. Which probably makes sense comparing a $50-$250 device to a several thousand dollar reference instrument.

Note that one serious issue is that a bunch of the sensors aren't just uncorrelated, they are often dramatically undercounting. It would be one thing if they were dramatically overcounting, and told you air was horrible when it wasn't. But they are actually telling you air is fine when it isn't even close to fine.

I actually went down the same path as OP about 6 months ago. I have used a dylos meter in my old woodshop, and was building a new one, and wanted to see what the the best thing to do was. After a bunch of looking, i found these folks. I am not aware of others doing this breadth of testing.

(It turn out the dylos meter is either accurate, or overcounts, depending on temperature/humidity. This is actually acceptable since it won't tell me things are good when they are bad, but it also turned out the purpleair was consistently good for the same price :P)

formerly_proven2• 5 years ago

So the two purpleair devices are using PM1003 and PM5003 sensors, respectively. These are available off the shelf as well. I suppose the salient question is: does purpleair calibrate / select these themselves or add anything to them (e.g. filter), or can you just use a PMS5003 for 30 bucks and get similar results?

Gatsky• 5 years ago

The Sensirion does pretty OK for the price and form factor.

jiveturkey• 5 years ago

I don't have a problem with the OP's analysis of the Ikea sensor. It seems generally reasonable. But rather with their implication that the DIY sensor being promoted is of higher quality.

Because accuracy is very much a "finished product" implementation issue, not just the sensor itself, such implication is off-base, particularly in direct comparison to any finished commercial product. The accuracy of the DIY version is going to vary -- a lot -- depending on the builder of such.

I wonder if AQMD would evaluate a "reference build" of the DIY sensor, seeing as there is an enclosure as part of the "reference" implementation. At bare minimum, the airgradient site should have comparison to highly ranked (by AQMD) sensors, such as purple air. I'm actually quite surprised there are no such comparisons on the site.

intrasight• 5 years ago

http://energysmartohio.com/indoor-air-quality/which-indoor-a...

I've always returned to the Dylos sensor as the gold standard

Another good review of sensors: http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/summary-pm

simonebrunozzi• 5 years ago

It's almost incredible that for something as "simple" as an air quality sensor, particularly in relation to PM2.5 (the most important metric for most buyers, IMHO), there's no simple answer as: product X costs $50 and provides 99.X% accuracy; product Y costs $200 and provides 99.9X% accuracy.

Two years ago, during one of the most intense fire seasons in California, I spent a few hours studying different solutions, and ended up buying a refurbished PurpleAir sensor. It seemed to work great, but I felt it was a bit too expensive for what it was doing, too bulky, and in general not as easy to use for the ordinary person as it should be.

Same problem with home air filters - if you want to purify the air in your house, there's too many snake-oil solutions out there, and few that are worth the spending.

ortusdux3• 5 years ago

Finding myself in a similar situation with last years fires, I have had great luck with the WINIX air filters sold at costco. I bought 2 on sale for $100/ea. They are 5 staged with HEPA and charcoal filters, have a built-in air quality monitor of unknown quality (I should open one up one of these days), and they have an ok app that allows you to check air quality and adjust their settings. Each unit includes 2 years of filters, and they look to be about $30/year/unit to replace after that.

hedora3• 5 years ago

Air filtration and monitoring are a classic market for lemons.

Wirecutter has decent-ish tests of air filters, though they assume tiny New York apartments, so you have to dig around a lot to find results for larger units.

(From reading their review, you’d think >1000 sq ft homes are unheard of in the US, but the average is closer to 2000 sq ft)

s0rce• 5 years ago

If you have some electronics experience you can buy the Plantower sensors that PurpleAir uses and connect it to a microcontroller, there are guides mentioned in the comments here.

GatorD42• 5 years ago

The color guides seem similar to the IQAir AirVisual Pro and Apple’s weather app. Like the article mentions this is likely to be inside and most useful for alerting when cooking has caused significant particle emissions, that’s what I use my AirVisual for.

maltalex• 5 years ago

Say I'm convinced enough to order an AirGradient kit. Is this accurate? Does it take up to 5 weeks for most destinations?

We currently ship approximately 1-2 weeks after receipt of payments. Delivery takes 2-3 weeks to most destinations (North America, Europe, Australia).

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

The shipping times mentioned on the website are a bit conservative and often it is faster.

We currently have kits in stock and ship within a few days of orders received.

Shipping times really vary depending on destination and are hard to predict but 2-3 weeks is a good estimation.

jve4• 5 years ago

Really glad this was published. I was looking at airgradient solution for PM2.5 monitoring, but while thinking - saw this @ IKEA and bought it. And it is in my short term plan to wire it with Wemos D1 so I plot values and make sense on whether IKEA air purifier helps anything or not. Because if I follow the LEDs, it's chaos - it can be RED for hours with purifier nearby. And the same without purifier - colors just like to change in my house.

I have a question about precision: If the precision ±20μg/m³ - isn't it actually normal that they "extend" the green led up to 35μg/m³ then? Because that 12μg/m³ is maybe 32? Uh, looks like not even PMS5003 can reliably show you that green line with a high confidence, doesn't it?

Btw here is a nice thread that shows you how to wire it up with Wemos D1 and connect to Home Assistant. People compare their readings with other meters, too. But someone says he bought multiple of those and even those show different numbers. Someone sees IEKA values 10x higher (for lower values, but within specified accuracy) than other sensor https://community.home-assistant.io/t/ikea-vindriktning-air-...

But at least they FOLLOW the plot of more accurate sensors. I see value in that. I want to know if air purifier helps something or how much it helps.

genewitch3• 5 years ago

As a quick aside, both the air quality things I bought say not to rely on instantaneous readings but instead to use the aggregator average reading. One has the ability to show averages and the other is more like "if the value is consistently higher than normal it's probably correctly 'high'" - so unless there's some weirdness in the Ikea one it shouldn't be switching colors unless you are very close to the threshold.

It is possible that your air filter shakes or vibrates enough that it's kicking dust up, or you have poor indoor air quality. How often do you have to replace filters and how dirty are they? For reference I live in a forest, with pollen and dirt dust and people and pet dust, poor seals on windows, and open doors/screens, as well as high humidity year round; I buy the 3M 1000-1500 filters which are pretty beefy, and they last about two months before becoming uniformly dark grey on front and back. Ideally I'd replace them monthly but they're about $15 each and that adds up across three filters.

I ask because I don't think my system does anything for VOC, I don't use carbon filters for the three, so I'm mostly filtering dust, pollen, clay, etc.

jve4• 5 years ago

I bought this unit just ~2 weeks ago? https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/foernuftig-air-purifier-black-6...

So I haven't had chance to change filters yet.

Yeah, but it has high outgoing airflow, so I suppose it shakes up dust for me. It changes to red pretty fast when starting to cook, then hours, hours to bring it down.

dahart2• 5 years ago

I don’t think using the brand new WHO guidelines is very fair. Not sure when it was released, but regardless this product was likely completely designed and manufactured before the WHO guidelines were published, just a few months ago.

Also, Airnow.gov still has a published scale that is worse than the IKEA product. https://www.airnow.gov/aqi/aqi-basics/. Green is 0-50, Yellow is 51-100, Orange 101-150, and Red 151-200.

ahaucnx9• 5 years ago

Airnow is using US AQI and not μg/m. US AQI 50 corresponds to approx. 12 μg/m.

dahart2• 5 years ago

Oh thank you, pre-coffee units fail on my part.

So I’d guess most air sensors on the market aren’t necessarily classifying their readings into green-good / red-bad, or at least come with a now-outdated chart. Are there sensors that have been released and/or updated to match the new guidelines already?

flybrand3• 5 years ago

I work at H&V - we’re one of the biggest makers of air filter media (the rolled goods / fabrics - not the actual filters).

We love seeing the innovation going on in this space - any suggestions on how we could better support this growing awareness of the value of IAQ?

dribblecup• 5 years ago

Sponsor open source code and open source hardware solutions that DIY folks can put together at $300 or below price point.

Gold star if you sponsor an independent test of this solution to verify its effectiveness.

Bonus points for explaining what matters in terms of testing.

Self-serving (which is OK in this context) points for explaining how your product mitigates the problem by demonstrating the DIY metered results.

jve4• 5 years ago

I mean... first of all I would like to hear what are the consequences of good/bad IAQ (Indoor Air Quality?)

I'm actually more driven/interested in data/compare it to other folks, but I don't have a clue what does it mean for my health. What's the difference between PM2.5, PM10, PM1, PM0.1. What is TVOC (as in sensor description: benzene,etc Volatile organic compounds), HCHO (is for formaldehyde). How do I measure them (parent expands on these questions), what are the "norms" and, most importantly: WHY should I care about those values?

Then ofcourse tips on HOW to decrease those particles. That's where filter comes in, yeah. First time someone said he just slaps filter on an air ventilator, I was like: "Wow, it's SO simple? Yeah, sounds logical"

flybrand3• 5 years ago

We can pay for the testing all day long - we are a major customer at most testing labs.

How big of an award gets attention?

$1k for the best? $500 for runner ups? Testing for all?

liversage• 5 years ago

Some trivia: ‘Vindriktning‘ is ‘wind direction' in Swedish.

djanogo• 5 years ago

Playing devil's advocate, this device is obviously made for mass market($11.99), what if the WHO/AQI "Good" numbers are too hard to achieve for general consumers?, the buyers of this device might be venturing into clean air for the first time and the last thing they want to see is "orange/red" ALL the time.

blacksmith_tb• 5 years ago

I bought three Vindriktnings when they came out, and on a day when we had some wildfire smoke making outdoor air quality around 150 put all three outside. Two went yellow then red, while the third stayed green... I guess I'd prefer a false positive to a false negative personally. It's true, they only cost me $13 each, so not a huge loss but it does suggest there are quality control problems with either the sensor or the whole device.

NamTaf• 5 years ago

I think it's folly to try to cater for the type of person who buys a product, has it identify an issue, then blames the product for identifying the issue.

pnathan• 5 years ago

When I was looking into air quality a year or two ago, I realized that the color-coded "AQI" so popular are not precisely a scientific analysis, as they are a blend of different measurements, with cutoffs specified by committee. Different countries have different formulas for AQI. That doesn't make them wrong, but it makes them not a "gospel truth".

I have a Dylos rigged up inside my apartment, feeding particle measurement data to a serial port, which stores the data on my own cloud. I don't bother with AQI.

Animats• 5 years ago

That's just particles. No CO2 sensor.

mpalczewski2• 5 years ago

Just to add to this:

CO2 is important because it is a proxy for how much air you are rebreathing. This is especially important because of Covid. If you have a few people in a poorly ventilated room co2 will climb. Whereas in a well ventilated room, it might be nearly as good as being outside.

Even for just being at home this is important because if the air is poorly ventilated it will feel "stuffy". It can affect how well you are able to think and work.

Most air quality meter's only measure pollution, and you have to get an expensive one to measure co2 which is why it is frequently omitted despite importance.

eb0la• 5 years ago

Not just Covid. In an office environment or a school, you need to be under 1000ppm:

Effects of low-level inhalation exposure to carbon dioxide in indoor environments: A short review on human health and psychomotor performance https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041201...

knownjorbist• 5 years ago

What are good CO2 monitoring options near this price point?

AdrianoKF2• 5 years ago

I have a Vindriktning with the ESP8266 makeover sitting on the desk behind me, feeding its data into my Home Assistant instance. So far it's working great, except for one annoying detail: I'd much prefer the forced airflow fan to be on at all times, since the constant on-off cycling (around every ~10s) is quite audible and distracting in a quiet environment.

solomonb• 5 years ago

How do you know it is working great? Have you compared it against other known sensors?

AdrianoKF2• 5 years ago

"Working great" in the sense that the modification and integration was pretty painless. In terms of output quality, I've only done a few smoke tests (pun intended) - cooking, blowing smoke over the sensor - with decent results.

gedy• 5 years ago

You can move the fan power to the 3.3v pin on the ESP8266, runs much quieter

zahma4• 5 years ago

I think I’ve plugged this here before. Sensor is an open community trying to track pollution. You can build your own sensor by ordering a dozen or so parts for 50-100 USD off AliExpress or Amazon (or wherever else you’d prefer because there’s really nothing extraordinary here). Some sensors even go down to 1 micrometer. The firmware is built to distinguish between 1, 2.5, and 10 micrometers. I believe AQI is the standard metric that is used for the map’s visualization.

It requires minimal technical expertise, no 3D printing, no soldering, and minimal configuration.

It’s a noble mission, and I find the granularity of data for both pollution and temperature far more telling than the estimates of more centralized systems.

Check out the map and guide here:

https://sensor.community/

https://sensor.community/en/sensors/

dheera3• 5 years ago

I've been using a Adafruit Plantower PMSA003I and it always reads 0 even if the AQI is 90 at my place.

It basically always reads 0 if the AQI is anywhere under 200, and pretty useless.

I wonder if there is a better I2C sensor that I could use?

zahma4• 5 years ago

Sounds like it’s not working. There is always particulate matter to be detected, so even if you are fortunate enough to live in a low-pollution area, there should be some PM readings. The AQI is just an estimation of how healthy it is to breathe particulate matter per 8hours or ozone per 24 hours. So if the AQI is reported to be 90, it means you should definitely see some PM readings. My sensor was not very expensive but worked very well for a couple years until it broke a couple weeks ago, likely from moisture. Go to the guides section of the sensor community site and see which sensors they recommend. I think they’re largely interoperable.

rplnt2• 5 years ago

Looking at the map of EU, any idea why the hole in Czech Republic?

zahma4• 5 years ago

Because it’s a voluntary community. They aren’t pulling data from other sources to aggregate onto the map. What you see on the map is a collection of individuals who have built their own sensor and keep it online.

dheera3• 5 years ago

I've been using a Adafruit Plantower PMSA003I and it always reads 0 even if the AQI is 90 at my place.

It basically always reads 0 if the AQI is anywhere under 200, and pretty useless.

FPGAhacker• 5 years ago

Green: 0-35 /Good + Low
Amber: 36-85/OK + Medium
Red: 86- /Not good + High

I absolutely despise this pattern. You could not pick a worse set of colors for the most common form of color blindness.

Spivak• 5 years ago

It's not so bad because it operates on the same philosophy as street lights. Even if you were completely color blind you would still be able to tell. This is how it appears in real life.

    +---+      +---+      +---+
    |   | Good |   | Fair | * | Poor
    | * | <--  | * | <--  | * | <--
    | * |      |   |      |   |
    +---+      +---+      +---+

giantg2• 5 years ago

I wish I could find a home executable mold spore test procedure that will give me spore counts by types. Most of the consumer tests are next to worthless. I think all I need is a fan with known volume of flow through some .3 micron filter paper, then I can check it under a microscope (guess the filter paper could use a grid, unless my hemocytomer will cast shadow through the paper.

Ikea Vindriktning Air Quality Sensor Review and Accuracy

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