Voc data for PA-I indoor sensors

Sensors
1

As I see that you have the new PA-I-LED sensor available, I have a question about the gas sensing capability of this sensor as well as the older PA-I, which I own.

For the PA-I, when I request “voc” in the API request fields, I do not get this data, so even though the specs are saying that it has the BME680 sensor that should read out voc? Or is there something wrong with my sensor? I bought mine in 1/2021, and think that I should see this data through my api. I’m using the /v1/sensors endpoint and ‘voc,voc_a,voc_b,’ in the ‘fields’ parameter list. When I do the same for the historic api, I get "null’ as a result for all three variables.

The new PA-I-LED has the BME688 sensor, which apparently can also sense vsc. Does the purpleair API support both the voc and the vsc for that device?

thanks!
Joerg

2

Hi Joerg,

The PA-I has a BME280 which does not have any gas sensing capability, which would explain why you’re not getting any data back on VOC. However, the PA-I-LED does have BME688, which would have gas-sensing capabilities.
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​ If you had your device retrofitted with the BME680, then you should be able to gather data on VOC. If this is the case, please write to contact@purpleair.com so that we can further troubleshoot this problem.

3

Thank you, I appreciate the response! I have not retrofitted the device, but interesting that this might be a possibility. I will explore further with your support to see if it’s feasible. thanks!