I’m looking for an app that can give me the air quality outside of my home without any device , just like the weather.
Plume Labs provides such an air quality index near my home but I don’t see it integrated with Homey Openweather.org seems to provide it also and is integrated with Homey. However it seems I need to provide my credit card info, meaning it will not be free. I could pay if I could test, but from their website it does not seem to find my city or close enough (I’m in the French Alps), and when I install in Homey it requires an API key that I can only get it seems with an account with credit card
Any suggestion / alternative
If you in a area where you don’t find a monitoring station close enough to your home.
Then i think why not set your own station outside off your house/cabin.
A nice unit is the Air Gradient (Shop )
This is a kit you can assamble by your self with only one screw I think. Ok it has a price.
The first Airgradient has his own app for Homey, and with the “sensor community” devices you can use the tool off @Gruijter Outdoor AirQuality
A other outside (but is more a weather stations) is the WeatherFlow tempest (or other model) but it have a high price. (but all so with a App for Homey.
But the support of the firm is very good (After all most 4 years I got a new unit, true a broken sensor)
Succes
In fact it is free if you dont exceed the monthly free limit. I actually added my credit card to openweather some weeks ago, and set the polling to 10 minutes. No charge so far…
And you can share your API limit between different weather devises.
Think of every device uses 2min interval. to be safe.
If you add a second current weather device (location), just use 4min interval for both.
If you add a air quality device, you can use a 30min interval because it’s updated only one a hour from OWM side - and set both other weather devices to 5min.
Forecast devices are updated from current weather device and don’t use the API. Only devices where you have to insert an API key in device settings are polling the API.
If you set a limit in your OWM account you can check if that’s ok and prevent charging. You will get a mail from OWM if you hit the limit and no request will be answered by OWM for this day.
openweather.org does require credit card but in most common use case it will remain free
lack of local info can be addressed by buying a 125 USD device for air quality sensor supported in Homey
But I cannot really test without providing my credit card info, which I find very annoying (on their website I could not check air quality info but only weather )
So it does not seem to do the job. I know there are public air quality sensors near my home since I can access them with other services such as Plume Labs or Airvisual and they do not require any physical device.
If I cannot find a service with good integration in Homey I guess I will simply use a web frame to display the info in Homey since I will not really use the info in flows.
If someone has another service integrated with Homey that would be great
I had installed Openaq, but it said no device installed, which led me to believe a physical devices needed to be installed, but maybe I did not understand
I will try again, just to make sur I’m not missing the point
Update. I have installed a tried to install Lufdaten device (randomly since several are proposed). It returns some values for
PM 2,5
PM 10
Temperature, humidity and pressure
Not something easy to use. No color saying it’s good or bad, or what a good measure should be and only PM measures which I find very limited. The AQI offered by Plume Labs includes Nox, CO, SO2, O3, radon and more and compiles all values into a single indicator which is much more user friendly for a non expert
Just a Quick Look at what Plume Labs give me
Thanks but this is not what I’m looking for. There is a public sensor not far from my home and some services are able to access it.
I have no desire to splash 300-400€ (plus installation pain) for some air quality index that I do not have a very strong need for
But if I can somehow bring that free info into Homey that would be a plus.
So far I have not found a way to get the info from the Plume Labs app (not available from the website unfortunately) but still need to test Openweather.org by providing my credit card details and hoping there is relevant info
I also need to try Visualair, maybe they provide the info through a website, not just the app
This is a great app and provides all the indicators I was looking for (CO, NO3, CO2, PM 2.5…) and many more indeed such as pollen
It offers close to 50 indicators and has found my home city and is well integrated with Homey
Thanks so much for this.
And no credit card needed unlike Openweather
I now need 2 things
check the info provided does correspond to my city (sometimes in some apps they find the city but provide info from 100 miles away)
Build a nice aggregate Air Quality Index and display it in Homey. Something like: if average is >85 then Excellent
If average is between 70-85 then good
Not sure how I can do this but I guess it’s a different topic
)
