Air Quality Sensor Help

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guillermo_pallarolas
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by guillermo_pallarolas »

Hello, this is the first time I write in a post. I could not find another place but it is about several PMS5003 we acquired from you via Mouser.com, together with some Feather HUZZAH esp8266. The sensor readings are Ok we assume, but we could not find what would be the right position/orientation of this sensor. Datasheets from other sensors mention how to place their sensors (vertical/horizontal, and what to pay attention about the air inlet/outlet).

I have seen many have experienced with this sensor. Does anybody know how to get this info? or any advice? Thanks in advance!

Guillermo

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oesterle
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by oesterle »

Hi, guillermo!

Please create a new topic with your question, as your question may not get the attention it merits here.

Cheers,

Eric

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StanJ
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by StanJ »

Guillermo, there isn't much mention of sensor orientation in the manual. From looking inside, it shouldn't matter much, and I've never noticed a change in speed of the fan with different orientation.

To get the most accurate results, you want the air flow in the room to go from the intake to the outlet, or else you're pulling already-measured air back into the intake. If it's outdoors, you don't have that option, and it's best to route the exhaust air over to the other side of the sensor, if that's feasible. Mine is inside a box that has ~4 times the total volume of the sensor, so I routed the exhaust air with internal baffles. You don't want to constrict the air flow, or else the sampling volume will change.

Image

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airhead
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by airhead »

I work for a State air quality program, and we operate EPA reference monitors for PM2.5 and submit data to EPA's national map.
My State, along with many others, has been evaluating the Plantower 5003 to see how it compares to EPA monitors we use for public reporting. To evaluate and calibrate our Plantower5003 sensors, we use the PM2.5 (std) data from the adafruit code instead of the PM2.5 (env) data.

I thought I would share some recent (May to September) data at one of our sites where we are comparing PMS5003's with our Teledyne T640 monitor. We made hourly averages from the Plantower data so we could compare the two data sets. The T640 uses particle scattering like the PMS5003, but is a FEM monitor (approved by EPA for measuring outdoor air quality).

Here is a plot of PM2.5(std) vs PM2.5(env) data for two of the Plantower sensors over the course of the study
PM2.5 (std) vs PM2.5(env).jpg
PM2.5 (std) vs PM2.5(env).jpg (44.83 KiB) Viewed 7776 times
This is the same behavior we see in the lab; PM2.5(env) is the same as PM2.5(std) up to 30ug/m3, and after that PM2.5(std) is higher.
We think that Plantower came up with a mathematical function that relates PM2.5(env) to PM2.5(std) that is the same for all of the PMS5003 sensors (up to electrical noise). Physically it does not make sense that atmospheric levels abruptly change character
at 30ug/m3. So we utilize our T640 to figure out which of the two parameters should be used for outdoor applications and which was a mathematical construct.

Here's the graph of the PM2.5(env) from two 5003's vs the T640:
PM2.5(env) vs T640.jpg
PM2.5(env) vs T640.jpg (66.1 KiB) Viewed 7776 times
and here is the graph of PM2.5 (std) vs the T640:
PM2.5 (std) vs T640.jpg
PM2.5 (std) vs T640.jpg (75.11 KiB) Viewed 7776 times
The plot of the PM2.5 (env) vs the T640 data is clearly not linear, and falls off at high concentrations,
but the PM2.5(std) data is much closer to being linear.

Its easy to calibrate PM2.5 (std) to the T640 using a simple linear model, see for example, page 38 of this document:

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/fi ... _guide.pdf

Thanks to EPA-ORD, CSU, and the Washington State Dept of Ecology for helping us figure this out.

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airhead
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by airhead »

I work in the monitoring group for a small state and answer a lot of questions about what the US Air Quality Index (AQI) is and what it means. So I thought I would discuss the issues we get the most questions about, and say what I can about computing the AQI for the Plantower 5003.

States compute the Air Quality index for PM2.5 from EPA approved monitors known as FEMs. The PM2.5 AQI is based on 24-hr average data. Our FEMs produce hourly data, so if we want to know what the air quality index is for last Tuesday, we just take the a twenty-four hour average of the FEM data from last Tuesday, and plug the result into the concentration to AQI tab of EPA's AQI calculator:

https://airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=airnow.calculator

The calculator lists the AQI index associated with the 24 hr average concentration entered, the groups such as asthmatics and children that are most effected at this level of exposure, and cautionary statements associated at this level of exposure.

Of course, you can always code your own calculator from the equation listed in the wikipedia article United States AQI :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_quality_index

This is simple enough, but the problem is that no one wants to know what the air quality was last Tuesday, they want to know what it is now. You're probably thinking, why not just plug the most recent hour into the calculator? But that is not quite right. You can think about exposure to air pollution like taking a drug. Taking one aspirin in the last hour is not the same as one aspirin an hour for 24 hours, or averaging a dose of 1 aspirin per hour for 24 hours. So what we need is some sort of surrogate for a 24 hour average that tells us what the 24 hour average will be based on the values we have the measured in the previous 12 hours and a good estimate of what they will be in the next 12 hours. Then we can plug in this surrogate for a 24 hour average concentration into the AQI calculator and explore the health effects. The US EPA has come up with a function that does the job, the calculator is here:

https://www3.epa.gov/airnow/aqicalctest/nowcast.htm

If you like, you can code your own NowCast calculator based on the equations here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NowCast_( ... ity_index)

But you have a Plantower 5003, not a pricey EPA reference monitor, and you want to know about the health effects associated with the levels your reading. What are you supposed to do? There are two possibilities here. If you want to know the Air Quality index for last Tuesday, you can average your calibrated Plantower 5003 data for last Tuesday and plug it into the AQI calculator.

If you want to know the Air Quality associated with current conditions, you can take hourly averages of your calibrated Plantower data for the past 12 hours and plug them into the NowCast calculator, and then take your NowCast and plug it into the the AQI calculator.

OK, you saw what I did there. I put in the word calibrated in front of Plantower. How are you supposed to calibrate your Plantower 5003? Once its calibrated do you have to recalibrate it? These are good questions, and researchers, EPA and States are working hard to try to answer them. In my last post, I presented some of our data; we take a pretty simple approach, we just plot hourly average PM2.5 (std) from the Plantower vs hourly average FEM data and develop our calibrations via linear regression as described in the EPA reference cited in the post. What? You need an FEM to calibrate a Plantower 5003? Not happening! Well PM2.5 levels are pretty uniform away from sources of smoke. You can find the nearest FEM monitor to where you live here:

https://www.epa.gov/outdoor-air-quality ... y-monitors

and work out your own PMS5003 calibration. It's an interesting scientific problem, and you can join the team that's working on it!

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Dave_Adafruit_2
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by Dave_Adafruit_2 »

Hi,
I'm using a PM2.5 Sensor by Plantower from Adafruit.
https://learn.adafruit.com/pm25-air-qua ... r/overview

I'm trying to connect to a circuit playground express as shown in the tutorial above.
I have wired it as shown in the images.

I am getting an error that seems to be related to no data being returned from the sensor at the line in the code for...

while True:
data = uart.read(32)
data = list (data)
I get the error TypeError: NoneType object is not iterable

Is the sensor compatible with a circuit playground express?

Note i also have a CCS811 CO2/TVOC from Adafruit also wired to the circuit playground express and that unit and code is working well.

Thank you
Dave
Attachments
Connections for wiring.
Connections for wiring.
image 3.JPG (45.89 KiB) Viewed 7317 times
PM2.5 Sensor
PM2.5 Sensor
image 2.JPG (42 KiB) Viewed 7317 times
wiring on the CPX.  Red are the connections for the PM2.5 sensor
wiring on the CPX. Red are the connections for the PM2.5 sensor
image 1.JPG (91.75 KiB) Viewed 7317 times

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adafruit_support_carter
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by adafruit_support_carter »

@Dave_Adafruit_2 Please start a new thread for your issue.

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airhead
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by airhead »

One of the most popular citizen science monitors is the Purple Air monitor (https://www2.purpleair.com/). John Park's Purple Air AQI Display (https://learn.adafruit.com/purple-air-aqi-display) uses data from the national Purple Air network. The Purple Air contains a pair of Plantower 5003 sensors and a BME 280 RH/T sensor. It uses an ESP 8266 to process the data and send it to a cloud server. A lot of data has been gathered across the US and a correction equation has been developed (for more information see https://amt.copernicus.org/preprints/amt-2020-413/) to make the Purple Air more closely match the more expensive regulatory monitors. The correction equation is: PM2.5 = 0.524*PAcf_1 - 0.0852*RH + 5.72, where PAcf_1 is the average of the two PM2.5cf=1 values from the 5003 and RH is the relative humidity measured by the BME280. This year, during fire season in the west, EPA posted the corrected Purple Air data alongside regulatory data on its firemap (https://fire.airnow.gov/) and the website received millions of hits.
So the Plantower 5003 has hit the big time as far as citizen science sensors go, but don't forget to include the RH sensor in your build and consider doubling up on the 5003 so one one sensor can check the other as you take your measurements.

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kevinjwalters
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by kevinjwalters »

@StanJ There's a version of that distribution graph on https://publiclab.org/wiki/revisions/pm/25895 but it also includes a note about the graph being an "illustrative graph, not real data"

@mutjoymn I'm not sure what you are referring to? How does this relate to AQI?

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joejoecor
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by joejoecor »

I am looking for build a system with an array of air quality sensors that include O2, CO, CO2, PM, SO. NO, VOCs, Ozone, and maybe I missed some. Can anyone help me with building a system with all these measurement capabilities. My academic background is electrical engineering but I have been a carpenter for many many years so support is key:) I am now on the cusp of becoming a licensed patent agent veering away from the carpentry. For starters, what should I use as a main board that will process and display data from this suite of sensors? I like to build whatever I can from Adafruit components because I like what they stand for, making electronics accessible and fun for youth. I realize that some of the sensors I am looking for may have to be purchased elsewhere.

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kevinjwalters
 
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Re: Air Quality Sensor Help

Post by kevinjwalters »

There's an example of a large group of sensors connected with i2c on Adafruit Forums: Errno19 after few minutes running.

I've been using Pimoroni's Enviro+ FeatherWing on a Feather nRF52840 Express for a while. I have one running at the moment with the PMS5003 and another with an SCD-30 for CO2 connected via a breadboard. I wrote a bit of new code to support that. The Rasperry Pi (Zero) version of the Enviro+ might make more sense if you want something with a display that can send data over WiFi.

I've not gone beyond monitoring at my desk. The whole solar power thing for outside use looks fairly involved. I recently saw an announcement that there's been a deployment of Clarity Movement's Node-S in London. Those can run off solar. Their spec sheet has power as 200 mA (sensing), 500 mA (uploading), <1 mA (sleeping) with data sent over 2G/3G/4G. Much more detail on CITRIS Research Exchange, 3/6/2019: Sean Wihera , Clarity (YouTube).

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