We’re excited to announce that the Air Lab crowdfunding campaign is now live! Check out the updated campaign page for your portable and playful air quality measuring device.

In the past months, we added many great features to the Air Lab. Watch our product update video below to get an overview of what has happened, or just read on.

Hardware Changes

We added an atmospheric pressure sensor, updated the PCB-based construction with a new metal bracket to hold the display in place, and added a debug and extension port at the back. The debug port allows connecting a standard ESP32 programmer like the ESP-PROG directly with jumper wires.

At the extension port, we exposed the system voltages, the internal I2C-bus, and two unused GPIOs. This allows you to connect other sensors and components to the Air Lab without needing to open up the device. This way, as shown in the video, a SEN55 particulate matter sensor can be connected to the Air Lab almost directly.

It’s a minor detail, but we also upgraded the flex cable with a connector to support standard E-paper displays. This allows easy repair if the screen should ever get damaged.

Software Features

The firmware now stores up to six hours of samples in memory, which can be explored any time by going into the live view. When starting a new measurement, the past history can now also be imported. With this feature, you can always see how the air quality around you has changed in the past hours.

On the device, measurements are stored as binary files to preserve storage space. But, this does not mean that a separate conversion tool is needed, as measurements can now be exported as CSV files directly on the device. Together with the USB-Mode, data can now be moved quickly to your computer.

In the video, we also show a sneak peek of the upcoming “Air Lab Studio”, our application to access and configure the Air Lab. With it, you can connect to your Air Lab wirelessly and read the current sample history as well as any stored measurement. Furthermore, you can configure advanced features like the MQTT client to connect to a broker over Wi-Fi to publish real-time data. On top of that, we already support a basic Home Assistant integration. We’ll go into the specifics of this in a future campaign update.

What’s Next

Stay tuned for more updates during the campaign. We’ll be sharing more technical details on software and hardware, as well as give you an introduction to more of Air Labs features. See you next week!