Welcome

Thanks for stopping by.  This website is devoted to creating a low-cost internet enabled PM 2.5 sensor (dust, smoke… etc).  Many of these sensors exist but are expensive.  This project is driven by the idea of keeping this sensor simple, cheap, and hackable.  The work I have done on this project has built off the work of many great minds before me that have made some great discoveries while working on this sensor.  (Shinyei PPD42NS).

Secondarily, I have developed this sensor design to be classroom friendly.  As a teacher, I want to teach my students about the MAKER movement and citizen science.  This sensor project will be simple enough to get all students to build their own sensor. After they build it they will have the opportunity to hack it into something better.

My interest in this project comes from the fact that I live in the Bitterroot Valley in Montana.  As a very rural community, we feel like we have good air quality because of the lack of factories and cars but we have very high levels of  PM2.5 many times of the year.  Our two main sources are wood stoves and forest fires.  Without a sensor, people don’t know how bad the air quality is in their homes.  This sensor is designed to allow people to know the air quality in their house at all times and then to act on this information to improve their air quality.

So please take this project and make it your own.  Improve the sensitivity, make a better housing, use the sensor to test the air quality in your community.  Data leads to improved decisions so start collecting data.