We are looking at monitoring Indoor Air Quality parameters for a research project. We have been using so far a uHoo sensor, as it seems one of the few in the market that monitors more parameters. It monitors 9 different parameters and data can be logged, saved in the cloud and retrieved in excel form. Is there any other IAQ sensor that monitors a wide number of parameters and allows to log and retrieve data? We would appreciate suggestions on this.
I fully agree with Wei Du. Before choosing an instrument, you should define the questions you intend to answer. There is no "air quality" sensor, since the "air quality" is not well defined. Sensors detect or measure some specific compounds that may smell bad or be toxic, but none of them detects if the air is actually healthy.
If you start measuring a large number of parameters without knowing how you intend to interpret them, you are at risk to get a large database with no actual result. I give you just one example of what happened to me in a project: We installed CO sensors to determine (knowing the outdoor airflow rate we have also measured with tracer gas) the number of cigarettes smoked per hour in office buildings, but we did not check (by simle calculation based on simple assumptions) if the sensitivity was good enough. After getting the data, we found that these CO sensors were not sensitive enough by a factor > 5 to provide valuable information !
For planning experiments, I recommend: Box, G.E.P., W.G. Hunter, and J.S. Hunter, Statistics for Experimenters, an Introduction to Design, Data Analysis and Model Building. 1978, John Wiley.
Many thanks for your responses and reference documents, I think they are very helpful.
My idea was to find a sensor that could measure not just temperature, humidity and Co2, but also PM2.5 and VOC, as the research is about healthy indoor environments. I agree with you that accuracy must be one of the main drivers when looking for a suitable sensor.
Also, an area of concern is the storage and security of the data you are logging. Some sensors display the data in your smartphone but you cannot log and retrieve the data for a particular period. Some others, like the uHoo sensor that I mentioned allows you to store the data and retrieve it, but it is stored in the company's cloud, what might have some security implications. I don´t know how the airthinx that Edwin Rodriguez-Ubinas mentioned will perform in terms of security of the data stored.
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