Climate Station is a beautifully crafted sensor suite that adds a powerful environment node for your home. With brass legs, wood vinyl, and a discrete OLED display, environment sensing never looked so good.
As I was fatigued, drained of energy, and suffering from a CO2 induced headache, I thought to myself, it would be nice to track the air that I am breathing. After all, excess carbon dioxide can have negative effects on productivity alongside particulate matter which can irritate or damage air ways. As I shopped for smart indoor air stations I was shocked to see how expensive they were. An Air Gradient One for $249? An Airthings View Plus for $330? Could I purchase the best sensors and make my own smart air station for much cheaper?
After researching and purchasing several sensors, I had challenged myself to learn PCB design in KiCAD and manufacture a board for this project. Version 1.0 of the PCB worked, however, several tolerances were near manufacturing limits resulting in Version 2.0 with additional improvements. The shell of the station is 3D printed with only two components, the shell and the top. This design is completely toolless and requires no screws or other fasteners.
Climate station uses an AHT-10 for temperature and humidity readings using I2C, MH-Z19C non-dispersed infrared (NDIR) sensor for CO2 readings using UART, and a PMS5003 laser sensor for particulate matter (smoke, dust, and pollen) readings using UART. A VEML7700 was initially included to measure indoor LUX, however, the final enclosed design rendered this measurement useless and was wired for an OLED display.
Climate Station constantly measures and outputs data to Home Assistant via a 2.4GHz patch antenna and cycles through temperature, humidity, CO2, and Air Quality Index (AQI) score on the OLED display. Climate Station is powered by the XIAO ESP32-C6 giving it potential mesh router capabilities with Zigbee and Thread. With an indoor climate node, many automations and use cases are available, from smart HVAC systems, automatic venting, health risk alerts, and more. This station rivals those on the market with a total price of $64.
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