In 2018, PurpleAir worked on a project alongside Citizens of Clean Air (CCA) to create what they call “tri-sensors” - sensors that measure particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, and ozone. This project took place in Grand Junction, Colorado, and around 12 sensors were created and set up to report their data to the PurpleAir map. To view the ozone readings, PurpleAir introduced the ozone data layer.
“Tri-sensors” use PurpleAir monitors to measure the particulate matter, BME680 sensors from Bosch, and ozone sensors from the New Zealand company Aeroqual, which were custom-designed to connect to PurpleAir devices.
We hope to cost-effectively incorporate new types of sensors, such as ozone sensors, in the future.
Hi @Zuber_Farooqui, these sensors were only created for the project done by Citizens of Clean Air. We do hope to incorporate more sensors into PurpleAir devices in the future - like ozone - but we do not have any timeline for release.
Good to know about this new development. Over here in Greece NO2, and subsequently Ozone in summer, have very high levels - well over the safety limits, and I personally would like to monitor those as well. Right now I am doing it with an Airly sensor, but I would prefer if there were the opportunity to monitor them within the PurpleAir platform. I hope to see this developed very soon! Thanks for the good work you do!
Awesome, sign me up, once you get that ready for sale. I think there’d be a good amount of demand for such a lower price, tri-sensor. More, different types of data = good (IMO), with Ozone and VOC being a good initial priorities.
I want an ozone sensor, too! I live in the fairly dense SF Bay Area, and we are prone to smog. There ought to be at least a couple of PurpleAir ozone sensors in this area, but there are none. Sign me up!
From a refinery town and a “disavantaged community” with poverty and a high disease burden: I would like to layer ozone (O3) with PM2.5, and possibly NOx. I trust that the quality O3 sensors are highly accurate and priced in the $1,000 range vs. PA-II at $250. So there would be more distributed PA-IIs and very carefully located ozone sensors. All networked via the internet and layered. I am not sure of the quality of the affordable NOx and organic gas sensors, being of the 90th plus percent accuracy to the gold standard detectors. Although VOCs and NOx are elevated in flaring episodes. (Wish: to then create a separate internet-based interactive GIS map for the monitor target area (the refinery town)…
Currently, the Airly ozone sensor rated the highest in the $1,000 range of cost and was one of the highest overall rate ozone sensors for accuracy, per the SCAQMD.
I would love ozone as well as sulfur dioxide. Both can flare my asthma and it’s always a fine dance between open windows for less carbon dioxide buildup inside (Aranet4 is awesome to track this) and letting in asthma air triggers through those open windows.