Air Quality France
Let your home breathe at the right moment.
A ventilation unit is a fine thing until it spends a summer afternoon pulling ozone into the bedroom. This app gives Homey the official French air quality index for your commune, today and tomorrow, so the house can stop the ventilation, keep a motorised window shut or start a purifier on its own, instead of after you have read the news.
Where the data comes from
The ATMO index is the official French one. The regional monitoring associations compute it every day, commune by commune, on five pollutants, and Atmo France publishes it as open data. The app reads it directly. No account, no API key.
The scale has six levels: Good, Fair, Degraded, Poor, Very poor and Extremely poor, numbered 1 to 6.
Requirements
- Homey Pro running firmware 12.3.0 or newer.
- Not available on Homey Cloud: the app runs locally.
- France only. It is the French index, so it covers French communes and nothing else.
One device per commune
Commune air quality. At pairing the app proposes the communes around your Homey; if yours is not there, type its name. Add as many as you like: home, the office, the grandparents.
| Capability | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Air quality today | The level in words |
| ATMO index | The same, from 1 to 6 |
| Air quality alert | Alarm, from the level you choose in the settings |
| Main pollutant | The one driving today’s index |
| Air quality tomorrow | The forecast, or Not published yet |
| NO₂, O₃, PM10, PM2.5 and SO₂ sub-indices | Each pollutant on the same 1 to 6 scale |
| Index issued | When the monitoring association published it |
| Last update | When the app last read it |
Widgets
- ATMO index shows the commune, the index out of six with a dot in its official colour, the level in words, then the pollutant driving it and the time of the reading.
- Air quality shows the level spelled out rather than as a figure, with its dot, then tomorrow’s as soon as it is published, the main pollutant and the time of the reading.
Pick the commune from a list with search; each one shows today’s level, “Fair · 2/6” for instance, so you can tell them apart. Leave it empty to show the first one. Five backgrounds: Deep blue, Slate, Plum, Forest and Sand.
Flow cards
Triggers:
- The air quality index changed
- The air quality drops to [level] or worse
- A pollution episode is under way
- Tomorrow’s forecast is published
Conditions:
- [device]: the air quality is [level] or worse
- [device]: the air quality is [level]
- [device]: tomorrow’s air quality is [level]
Action:
- [device]: refresh the air quality index
The pollution episode card fires when the index reaches Poor or worse, once, on the way up. It does not fire again every hour while the air stays bad.
The forecast card is the one I would start with. It fires when tomorrow’s index comes out during the day, which leaves a whole evening to decide whether the windows open tonight.
Why five sub-indices and not just one number
A purifier with a particle filter does nothing against ozone. The overall index says how bad the air is; the sub-indices say what is bad about it, and that is what decides which appliance should react. So each pollutant has its own capability and can drive its own Flow.
Settings
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Raise the alarm from | Degraded (Fair, Degraded, Poor or Very poor) |
| Refresh interval | 60 minutes (15 to 1440) |
The index is published once a day, so an hour is plenty. The app also reads it again just after midnight, Homey time, so the new day does not start on yesterday’s value.
What it does not do
- Not every region feeds the national stream yet. If your commune has no index, the app says so rather than inventing one.
- A day without a computed index shows nothing, not the previous day’s value, and fires no card.
- Tomorrow arrives during the day. Until then, Air quality tomorrow reads Not published yet.
- It is a daily index, not a sensor. It describes the commune, not your street or your living room. For indoor air, pair it with an indoor sensor and compare.
Languages
English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish.
Reporting a problem
Post here with your Homey firmware version, the app version, the commune and its INSEE code (shown in the device settings, with the monitoring association that covers it), and the day concerned. If the value differs from the one on your regional association’s website, say which one and when you looked: the index is issued once a day and both sides may simply not have refreshed at the same moment.
More about the app, every widget and Flow card included: Air Quality France for Homey — Rapinology
Feedback and testers welcome.
Have fun 
