{"id":367,"date":"2025-05-15T17:10:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T07:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/?p=367"},"modified":"2025-05-15T17:10:58","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T07:40:58","slug":"solar-air-quality-sensors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/solar-air-quality-sensors\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar air quality sensors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A few moons ago I built a BalenaOS deployed set of Enviro+ air quality sensors for my Raspberry Pi Zero. It&#8217;s been sitting indoors monitoring our air for a while, waiting for me to build an environment proof case and solar for it so I could deploy it outside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Parts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.raspberrypi.com\/products\/raspberry-pi-zero-w\/\">Raspberry Pi Zero W<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/shop.pimoroni.com\/products\/enviro?variant=31155658457171\">Enviro+ hat<\/a> with <a href=\"https:\/\/shop.pimoroni.com\/products\/pms5003-particulate-matter-sensor-with-cable?variant=29075640352851\">PMS5003 particulate sensor<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.adafruit.com\/product\/4712\">Adafruit LC709203F Battery Monitor<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.adafruit.com\/product\/1525\">Voltaic Systems 6volt 6Watt solar panel<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.adafruit.com\/product\/390\">Adafruit Solar Lithium Ion\/Polymer charger<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>2 recycled batteries from a Lenovo ThinkPad battery<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Code<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/sighmon\/balena-enviro-plus\">BalenaOS compatible docker container<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/sighmon\/homekit-enviroplus\">Apple HomeKit integration<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Having some annual leave to burn gave me some time to think through the brackets between the solar panel and the waterproof case, and over coffee this morning I realised I could keep it super simple and use strips of a plastic milk carton to connect the two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\" style=\"flex-basis:100%\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" data-id=\"369\" src=\"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-1024x768.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-369\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-2048x1535.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-1-1568x1176.jpg 1568w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-scaled.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"673\" data-id=\"370\" src=\"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-1024x673.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-370\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-1024x673.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-300x197.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-768x504.jpg 768w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-1536x1009.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-2048x1345.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/enviro-plus-solar-2-1-1568x1030.jpg 1568w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m hoping the solar panel will provide enough water cover for the sensors in light rain, but time will tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I suspect I might also need to buy a bigger solar panel and a couple more batteries for it to survive the winter months. I&#8217;ll post the data shortly. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few moons ago I built a BalenaOS deployed set of Enviro+ air quality sensors for my Raspberry Pi Zero. It&#8217;s been sitting indoors monitoring our air for a while, waiting for me to build an environment proof case and solar for it so I could deploy it outside. Parts Code Having some annual leave &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/solar-air-quality-sensors\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Solar air quality sensors&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,9,82],"tags":[57,50,14,83],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-raspberry-pi","category-sensors","category-solar","tag-enviro-plus","tag-raspberry-pi","tag-sensors","tag-solar","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":371,"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/371"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sighmon.com\/says\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}