Indoor Air Quality Monitor Suggestions

Devices & Integrations
1

My smart home setup includes the V2 SmartThings hub, Hue lights, and a variety of small sensors. So far, so good.

One of my big goals for making my home smarter is to monitor the indoor air quality. Temperature and humidity are an important part, but monitoring CO, dust, and other irritants seem harder to accomplish. I’ve come across a few devices, with a variety of connection types and tracking abilities. However none really seems comprehensive. Ideally I’d like a device that:

  • Is reasonably small, quiet, and cheap
  • Is compatible with iOS and Android
  • Monitors CO, particulates, and VOC (volatile organic compounds)
  • (optional) Integrates with other smart home appliances (alarms, trigger settings, etc)

Any suggestions?

2

4there is a smoke detector that combines smoke and co2 other than that not to much around. Detector is z smoke by first alert

3

The cube sensors are very nice, although very expensive. They are zigbee, but they will not integrate directly with SmartThings as they use a differen profile. There is an API for the first generation, so you might be able to get cloud to cloud integration that way. If they fit your budget, I think it’s worth a try.

They recently began around the kickstarter funding for their second generation, now called Koto, which is intended to include IFTTT. So that could work nicely with smartthings, assuming you live in a region where IFTTT working. But the planned completion date isn’t until March 2016, and who knows what will happen.

If you read any of my posts on kickstarter projects, you know that I feel that no product can be effectively evaluated until you can buy it for two day delivery from Amazon. Until then everything is just marketing. So who knows what features it will actually be delivered with.

Therefore, I am not suggesting that you be an early funder. But they are a legitimate company with a generation one product which is shipping now, and some very interesting engineering. I would certainly keep an eye on the second generation.

And you can consider whether you want to look into the first-generation now. Their plan is for the second-generation to be backwards compatible, the plans can change. So if you buy it now I don’t think there’s any guarantee that it will work with IFTTT eventually, even if the new generation does. But maybe. That would be really nice.

The other product out there is only for iOS, is HomeKit, and does not integrate in any way with SmartThings that I know of. That’s the Elgato. But it’s something to look at. Nice app, FWIW.

Personally, I’m more impressed with the engineering on the cube sensors. Those folks have done some nice work. But they are very expensive, and I just don’t know what kind of integration you can get.

1 Like
4

I’ve been watching this space as well, specifically Koto (which AFAIK is late to ship).

Another interesting one I stumbled on is uHoo which, while expensive ($299), appears to claim the most coverage, including temp, humidity, air pressure, CO2, VOC, PM2.5, carbon monoxide (CO), and Ozone (O3).

Interested if anyone has others they are watching, and especially any that integrate with ST.

1 Like
5

Thanks, I hadn’t heard of uHoo yet, looks interesting. Is there any ST integration yet or on the road map?

6

Hello Keith, I can recommend you a good air quality monitor.
It is also compatible with both iOS and Android.
It also meets your other needs. Do give it a try and take a look at the product.

7

Recently had the same question as the topic poster, decided to go with an Awair 2nd gen and am very happy with it. I was able to integrate it in SmartThings and use it for automatons thanks to this device handler: