The Air Quality Egg (AQE) is an

Internet of Things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

platform and hobbyist device for

crowdsourced Crowdsourcing involves a large group of dispersed participants contributing or producing goods or services—including ideas, votes, micro-tasks, and finances—for payment or as volunteers. Contemporary crowdsourcing often involves digita ...

citizen monitoring of airborne pollutants. The device won widespread recognition when it was named one of the best projects on Kickstarter in 2012, and has been featured in a variety of media outlets. Data from each device is uploaded to

Xively Xively (formerly known as Cosm and Pachube) is an Internet of Things (IoT) platform owned by Google. Xively offers product companies a way to connect products, manage connected devices and the data they produce, and integrate that data into oth ...

and published on the Air Quality Egg website. The device can be used with 3rd-party mobile apps such as Acculation's AQCalc.

Current version

Version 2 of the AQE is a single unit, Wi-Fi connected device which can be configured using a cell phone. It has two variants; indoor and outdoor. The device can be fitted with sensors for CO₂, NO₂, SO₂,

ozone Ozone (), or trioxygen, is an inorganic molecule with the chemical formula . It is a pale blue gas with a distinctively pungent smell. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope , breaking down in the lo ...

carbon monoxide Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...

volatile organic compounds Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic compounds that have a high vapour pressure at room temperature Colloquially, "room temperature" is a range of air temperatures that most people prefer for indoor settings. It feels comfortable to a ...

and

particulates Particulates – also known as atmospheric aerosol particles, atmospheric particulate matter, particulate matter (PM) or suspended particulate matter (SPM) – are microscopic particles of solid or liquid matter suspended in the air. The ter ...

(PM10, PM2.5 and PM1.0). The particulate sensors can detect particles as small as 0.3 μm (microns), using two Plantower PMS5003 sensors. The PM2.5 measurements of the AQE version 2 had an R² correlation factor of 0.79 to 0.85 with a professional reference sensor, in a field test run by the

South Coast Air Quality Management District The South Coast Air Quality Management District, also using the acronym South Coast (AQMD), formed in 1976, is the air pollution agency responsible for regulating stationary sources of air pollution in the South Coast Air Basin and the Coachella ...

. (An R² of 1 indicates perfect correlation, whereas 0 indicates a complete lack of correlation).

History

The AQE grew out of

meetup groups in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

, led by Pachube evangelist Ed Borden. The concept was conceived at a Parsons/New School hackathon. It is manufactured and sold by the start-up company WickedDevice LLC in Ithaca, NY. The name "Air Quality Egg" was created by company co-founder Dirk Swart. Originally, there were two versions of the device: an

Arduino Arduino () is an open-source hardware and software company, project, and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices. Its hardware products are licensed unde ...

shield for use by hobbyists, and a more consumer-ready "hobbyist kit" device. The latter consists of two identical-looking plastic enclosures resembling white eggs. The base unit is connected to the user's Ethernet LAN connection. A second unit monitors NO₂ and CO levels and reports these readings every few minutes to the base unit via a custom wireless protocol. The base unit reports these readings to

and the AQE website. Add-ons are available for purchase on the website, that add PM2.5 dust,

Ozone Ozone (), or trioxygen, is an inorganic molecule with the chemical formula . It is a pale blue gas with a distinctively pungent smell. It is an allotrope of oxygen that is much less stable than the diatomic allotrope , breaking down in the lo ...

, and

VOC VOC, VoC or voc may refer to: Science and technology * Open-circuit voltage (VOC), the voltage between two terminals when there is no external load connected * Variant of concern, a category used during the assessment of a new variant of a virus ...

sensors.

Competition

Despite being labelled a not-consumer-ready "hobbyist" device by the manufacturer, the AQE is one of the few de facto commercially available, comprehensive Internet of Things pollution monitors on the US market. A number of competing devices have been announced, such as Chemisense Wearable and Foobot (formerly Alima). Another US crowdsourced air quality monitoring device is CitizenSensor, but it is listed an outgoing project, DIY, and not available for purchase. A comprehensive Internet of Things air pollution monitoring device is China's iKair (pronounced "I Care"), but it has a closed, proprietary platform rather than the AQE's open source hardware and open data design. In 2014, IBM announced a partnership with the government of China for analytics software to process data from pollution sensors.

References

External links

{{Official website Internet of things Open-source hardware

Current version

History

Competition

See also

References

External links