I ran into a neat Citizen Science project the other day that triggered me to make my own particulate matter sensor. The project website (multilingual: Lufdaten.info) shows how to create one with an Arduino and some small components.
For a small price, you can measure the particulate matter in the air where you live and contribute to a worldwide network. Great stuff, unfortunately I didn’t get to finish all before NY with all the fireworks.
I went for a different approach and ordered some sensors that work together with a raspberry pi. These are small, single board computers and in this project, my ‘weapon of choice’ was a Rasperry Pi Zero W.
When I say small, I mean small. The RPI Zero is 65mm long by 30mm wide and has on-board WiFi, Bluetooth, micro USB and HDMI. Fun stuff if you can get your hands on them. This I combined with a sensor board from Pimoroni, the Enviro+ and there my journey began!
Not sure if it’s best to write my experiences in blogs or pages, I guess time will tell 🙂
Remco