Recently I was looking for an outdoor sensor that measures (at least) PM and which could be integrated into Homey. Eventually I bought the AirGradient Outdoor Monitor, and since not much has been written about it here, I decided to write a short post about it.
I ordered the Outdoor Monitor directly from the AirGradient homepage. It is available either fully assembled or - for about half the price - as kit. I took the kit which arrived after about two weeks directly from Thailand.
Following the build instructions on the AirGradient homepage it took me about ten minutes to fully assemble the sensor. Only one tool is needed - a small torx screwdriver - and it is included in the kit. Assembly was quite easy, but if you never held a circuit board in your hands, you might prefer the fully assembled sensor.
To include the sensor into Homey, you have to
- power it up using the included USB-C cable and a 5W USB charger (not included),
- connect to the WIFI of the sensor itself and provide username/password of your own WIFI,
- and finally start the inclusion process in the AirGradient app.
Immediately after inclusion all sensor values are available, but some of them may need a short time to adjust, so give it a few minutes.
The values react quickly to any change in the air as you can see below, when one of our neighbours starts burning old tires (or whatever):
In the advanced settings you can set among others the update interval between 15 seconds and 5 minutes, and if your data should be sent to AirGradient to be visible on their community map.
I have the AirGradient Outdoor Monitor now for over a week and I’m very pleased with it. It never lost connection, updates sensor values quickly and Homey integration is great. The only thing I am missing is the ability to set a fixed ip address on the sensor directly, but maybe this option will come in the future. Or maybe I missed it, @Achim_AirGradient?
