Davis introduces air quality sensor

[elagache]

Dear WeatherCat faithful,

[gripe mode on]
I just found two emails from Davis Instruments which Apple "thoughtfully" tagged as spam for me.  Also tagged as spam was the notification of Firefox 80.0.1 and a sale on 1965 Buick auto parts . . . . . . This is getting too far! 
[gripe mode off]

Oh well, better late than never.  Davis has gone into the air quality sensor business:

https://www.davisinstruments.com/product/airlink-professional-air-quality-sensor/

It is of course integrated into Davis's cloud station system.  However, there is no indication at the moment of whether or not there will be an API so that software developers like Stu can get their greedy hands on the data.

For whatever it's worth, Davis has uncut the price on the leading air quality sensor: Purple air:

https://www2.purpleair.com/collections/air-quality-sensors

FYI . . . . . . . . . .

Cheers, Edouard

[mcrossley]

Local API - https://weatherlink.github.io/airlink-local-api/
And of course from the WeatherLink cloud API - https://weatherlink.github.io/v2-api/

[Weatheraardvark]

I saw the ad and going to pass on it.  I have so many agencies nearby that provide air quality .

It would be nice to have if I were out in the country or not near a large city to monitor the air.  Fortunate for me I purchased three air purifiers that have a feature to monitor the air quality in the room.   I inspected the filters and they were very dirty, one wouldn't think that much whatever  is in the air , even if the fans on the unit only come on when the wife treats me like a greek god,  offering a burnt entree.

[elagache]

Dear Mark, Weatheraardvark, and WeatherCat faithful,

Local API - https://weatherlink.github.io/airlink-local-api/
And of course from the WeatherLink cloud API - https://weatherlink.github.io/v2-api/

Oooh! That makes this device a whole lot more interesting!    Thanks Mark for pointing this out!

I saw the ad and going to pass on it.  I have so many agencies nearby that provide air quality .
. . . .

I'll do the same, but for a different reason.  Until Stu has time to integrate this sort of device into WeatherCat, I'd rather not have yet another device that I have to monitor using another interface.  However, should air quality end up coming to WeatherCat - sign me up! 

Cheers, Edouard 

[elderforester]

I know of a number of folks chomping at the bit for this feature to be incorporated into WeatherCat. West Coasters all, and with fires and whatnot circulating locally, should be considered of paramount importance to be implemented.

Hopefully this can be added to WeatherCat in the not so distant future. Pretty Please!

[xairbusdriver]

Is this information not already widely available? Perhaps knowing the exact, local conditions would help determine when any local (home-based) air-cleaning machinery could be turned off. Otherwise, I think people should already be aware of this problem and, more importantly, have taken steps to improve conditions in their homes. It should also be a factor in who we elect to local, state and national office. West Coasters are not the only folks dealing with polluted air. At least our local branch of NWS (West TN) issues alerts quite often.

[elagache]

Dear elderforester, X-Air, and WeatherCat feature-o-holics, . . .

I know of a number of folks chomping at the bit for this feature to be incorporated into WeatherCat.
. . . .
Hopefully this can be added to WeatherCat in the not so distant future. Pretty Please!

Is this information not already widely available?
. . . .

There is room for both sides on this one.  WeatherCat integration of an air quality sensor isn't essential.  You can buy a sensor today and get the data off of it without too much pain.  As you say X-Air, there is a lot of data already available on the web.  This thread had two sites that really helpful in our current air quality miseries out west:

https://athena.trixology.com/index.php?topic=3171.0

What makes integration with WeatherCat highly desirable is to have the same tools that WeatherCat provides available for your air quality data and to bring that data into the same place as all your other weather data.  I check WeatherCat many times a day.  To be able glance over the air quality data along with all the other parameters would be a great advantage as I plan my day.  At the moment, we have had basically a day without sun.  You cannot see the solar disc because the smoke over us is so dense.   WeatherCat, as always, is aiding me in understanding my situation.  The peak solar radiation today has been only 49 Watts/m².  On Labor Day Monday, the peak solar radiation was 833 Watts/m².  So the solar radiation we are observing is around 1/20 of normal - all this thanks to WeatherCat.

Alas, Stu is in a real pickle having to move his household and probably losing a lot of freedom in the process as he must most likely move into a more urbanized area.  I don't know when he will be able to resume anything more minimal maintenance on WeatherCat.  He also has a list of possible future features that he very carefully massages based on the demand of us fickle users.  We'll just have to see if support for an air quality sensor moves up on that feature list and when Stu will ever find the time to work on such things again.

Cheers, Edouard 

[The Grand Poohbah]

WAQI provides access to tens of thousands of air quality sensors all over the world. They also have a nice API that can access individual air quality sensors or groups of them. I use the API to access the air quality sensor that closest to us.

To access the air quality sensors on a browser, go to http://www.waqi.info

To use the WAQI API, start at https://aqicn.org/api/

[xairbusdriver]

Thanks, Poohbah! I think the 1,000 requests per second will just about cover my site, assuming they average that out per hour.

[elagache]

Dear Grand, X-Air, and WeatherCatters who are fussy about the air they breath,

WAQI provides access to tens of thousands of air quality sensors all over the world. They also have a nice API that can access individual air quality sensors or groups of them. I use the API to access the air quality sensor that closest to us.

Thanks for the info.  It is a very comprehensive site!  I just gave myself a bookmark to the closest station they list.  It is considerably better than the AirNow.gov data.


Cheers, Edouard 

[Blicj11]

Grand:

Thank you for the WAQI information. Very useful!