DIY Air Pollution Measures
The Idea
Build an Arduino Based Air Pollution & Dust Sensor to check the Air Quality and Pollution of my environment measuring the concentration of the particulate matter PM10, with a low cost approach. My original idea was to use Arduino/Genuino UNO because i’ve already programmed it and Shinyei PPD42NS dust sensor.
However to collect the data and show it on my PC easily i needed to connect the Arduino to internet with an Ethernet Shield. Due to this cable the project difficult to deploy far away from the router. So i’ve chosen the Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 WiFi board which was starting to debut on the scene of the makers territory.
Actually i recommend a NodeMCU 8266 or anyway a development board which has on board serial converter to avoid the FTDI cable and make your life easier.
The PM10 Sensor
The Shinyei PPD42NS uses an IR LED and a Receiver to check how much the air is “dirty”. This is called “Light scattered principle“.
Building it
To build this first attempt of Air Quality Sensor i’ve chosen a Shinyei PPD42NS sensor and Adafruit Huzzah Esp8266 board. To use this board an FTDI cable is needed to interface it with your PC/Mac using USB.
To use the Huzzah ESP8266 with Arduino IDE read this official article: Use Arduino IDE with ESP8266
However i had to figure out how to connect the sensor to the board. The Adafruit Huzzah ESP8266 has 3.3V logic level, so i’ve used a Logic Level Converter because the Shinyei PPD42NS works at 5V.
To check the data from remote i’ve used Thingspeak. If you want to use Thingspeak you need to setup and create an account, it’s free and easy but you have the limit of one value update every 20 second. So i’ve set to update the read of the Shinyei every 60 second. Also check the Thingspeak API key of your channel, this key must be copied in the code for update your channel.
Wiring
