I own one of these sensors and make it publicly available. Why in the world would I have to pay to get the data from it so I can display it nicely in my home assistant setup when I provide the data free to everyone? Am I missing something?
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Hello Ganon,
If you’re querying the data for one sensor, the initial one million points can provide several years of data. A user commented about this here: PaymentRequiredError making api calls - #14 by dpattee.
If you never received the initial one million points, please contact us at contact@purpleair.com.
If you are on the same network as the sensor, you can visit its IP address with /json to get the data locally without using the API.
We agree that you shouldn’t have to pay for your personal sensor’s data and are looking for ways to improve and implement this in the future. We appreciate your feedback and welcome any other suggestions.
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Appreciate the response!
And sorry, I was a bit grumpy when I posted that apparently. I should’ve known I could hit the sensor locally.
Are you all involved in the HomeAssistant integration at all? I think currently it just uses the API and I’d like it to hit my local sensor. I’d love to make that as easy as possible :-p
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I really agree with this - it’s not acceptable to ask users to share their data and then charge to get it back (I cannot access my sensor locally). The limit is large, but it will run out. It should not be difficult to implement a token system linked to a users own account. So please - within the next couple of years! - provide a way for users to get their own data for free.
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Hello Ganon,
The HomeAssistant integration was created by a user and is not maintained by PurpleAir. We are looking into directly incorporating data into service like these and hope to have options like that in the future.
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Not to be a party pooper, but be sure to read the Terms of Service, especially section 2.6 and all of section 4. The ToS makes it pretty clear who owns the data and what you can do with it.
If you’re doing enough with the sensor to generate a million API calls, then it’s worth it to invest in a Meteobridge (or other compatible datalogger) and store the data yourself.
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I also agree with this - I should be able to query my own sensor data without using credits/points. I can get the data required via a local JSON query, but it requires the device to be on the same local network and ideally it would be good to have the PurpleAir isolated for security reasons.
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We will figure out a way to make sensor owners able to access their own data for free. We do appreciate all the feedback.
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Back two months later because I’ve run out of points - and I still seriously object to having to pay to retrieve my own data. That million points lasted almost exactly two months (the sensor has actually been down for some time, but I assumed it was broken. It’s not: I’ve run out of points so the API calls fail).
Moreover, how on earth have I run out of points? I call the data every ten minutes, generating 100-120 calls per day, but each call uses 155 points? The guide says that each of these calls (get_sensor) should use one point.
Please (a) credit my account immediately with more points and (b) explain what is going on here.
Having looked into this, I’m guessing I am being deducted so many points because I am retrieving all sensor fields, and each one costs points. Is this the case?
Either way, this is still ridiculous for data which I provide myself, to you, for free. Please make good on your promise above and elsewhere to provide free data access - to all personal data - to those who provide it.
Well this is unfortunate. There’s no way my casual use is costing more than the data I’ve been contributing. I’ll be taking all of my sensors offline, and I encourage others who have likewise been cheated to do so as well. I’ll check back in a year or two to see if this is resolved…maybe.
Seems like PurpleAir is dragging their feet on a Home Assistant integration.
You can get your sensor data for free via The Air Quality Open Platform.
Get yourself and API key from https://aqicn.com (you’ll need a valid email address) and find your station number from the map (its the 6 digit number in the URL https://aqicn.org/station/@123456/ )
When you add the integration for World Air Quality Index (WAQI), you enter your API key and Station number
@Jetson @elton @stml sensor owners can get data reported by their sensors for free by sending an email to contact@purpleair.com. Please contact us and we’d be happy to assist. Anyone using home assistant can then use the existing community integration to view data for their sensor.
In the future there will be a system providing enough points for all data your sensor contributes at a minimum.
I’ll be sure to contact the email address, but did anyone do any research on this? The Home Assistant official integration, the one on the project repo that stores the core home assistant code, makes roughly 720 calls per day and uses almost 30k points per day. It seems like the integration updates the sensor using the public API endpoint approximately once every 2 minutes. I imagine it’s not restricting the number of fields being fetched. But at that default rate it would require more than 10 million points to keep the integration running for an entire year.
Is it not possible to have someone from PurpleAir just look at the official integration and see if it is possible to either optimize the calls being made currently or (even better) query against the local ip address of the device if it’s available and only use the public API endpoint as a fallback?
Seems like you all have made a good amount of progress on this. I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, but I really appreciate all the follow up on the issue! Thanks! I’ll hopefully have time to check it out soon. 