Low(er) cost VOC meter experience?

Z - I share your pain. We've tested AtmosAware Foobot, FengSensor, and AirThinx. We had issues with reliability / re-booting with each. We're now on iteration 4 with BlueAir. This Sweden-based company began making air filters in 1996. I have a couple of their filters at home and have found their products to be reliable and their support department (Chicago based) readily available and helpful. https://www.blueair.com/us/air-monitors is the monitor – it won a T3 Platinum award, which are the ‘Oscars’ of Tech world. https://www.blueair.com/us/accessories/blueair-friend-app - is the app that shows the data. It displays PM2.5, CO2, VOC, Temp & Humidity in real time with historic trendlines in a user-friendly way. The app also tracks outdoor air, which has been problematic for us in the past. FengSensor stopped working, Foobot thought we were in Las Vegas. Blueair uses Breezometer for their data, which is one of the more reliable companies in the industry. San Francisco based so if we need to speak with them we can. We haven't tested against a better sensor such as GrayWolf, but that's up next. Will let you know how it goes for us. Zach

Hi Z, Have you taken a look at the monitors accredited by RESET? https://www.reset.build/monitors I have used Tongdy on a project in the past and it was about $1,100 per monitor including shipping. It will be another few hundred dollars a year for calibration. This was a couple years ago and my understanding through continued work with them is that they are now in the $600-800 range. I think DST and Kaiterra are in a comparable price range. In general the cost of pretty good monitors has been dropping significantly. I would avoid consumer grade monitors if you want to get any meaningful data from them. They are more anecdotal than anything. Attached is the most current summary I have of the RESET monitor standard. This is from early last year and may have been updated since, but should get you close to what you should be looking for. John M

Z, Regarding accuracy in measuring particulates, I encourage to check out the SCAQMD Sensor testing page. They’ve done such an exhaustive job testing “affordable” meters. (You want to look at the R^2 column – high numbers means higher accuracy). I’m always surprised to see that a $5k meter can give you pretty much random readings (see the Perking Elmer meter), while other sensors like the PurpleAir PA II do pretty well for a fraction of the cost. http://www.aqmd.gov/aq-spec/evaluations/summary Also, I love your quote. Ale. Alejandra Menchaca, Ph.D., LEED AP, WELL AP Senior Associate Thornton Tomasetti 27 Wormwood Street, Suite 200 Boston, MA 02210-1668 T +1.617.250.4100 F +1.617.250.4110 D +1.617.250.4177 M +1.617.999.0274 AMenchaca@ThorntonTomasetti.com www.ThorntonTomasetti.com From: Z S

We've been using the purple air sensor as an input for the passive operation of our office. The data generated seems good, but as you noted, no VOC. The API is pretty rough bu the interface it good. You can see what we're breathing here: https://www.purpleair.com/map?&zoom=16&detailsshowing=5498&lat=39.96378901519512&lng=-75.14015530021959&clustersize=19&orderby=L&latr=0.01029534887821626&lngr=0.028907774831168354