Crowdsourcing air quality: Luftdaten.info

So you may have heard of air pollution. Cities suffer from it, car manufacturers cheat and manipulate (both hardware and politicians), environmental protection NGOs force cities into diesel exclusion zones.

Some of thos cities get … creative with interpreting those court orders. Some only ban diesels on the two roads with official measurement stations (Hamburg), some ban them on the rightmost lane next to such a station (Kiel) and / or test a big air filter next to them (Kiel).

In short, it might be nice to compare the official measurements to something else. Luckily, there already is a large network of privately hosted sensors all over Europe: luftdaten.info. These sensors cost about 30 EUR. They are of course in no way as exact as the massive stations deployed by the state, only measuring fine dust (PM10 and PM2.5), not gas concentrations. Nevertheless they give us a far better spacial resolution, thanks to their cheap price, easy installation and low maintenance.

After moving to Paris I decided to build one myself. Total hardware costs are around 50 EUR, assembly is not too difficult if you know your way around computers. If necessary, look for a hacker- or makerspace near you and ask them if they can help you.

All the sensor needs is wifi and power (from a regular USB charger) usually supplied through a window by using a flat USB cable. If you can provide this and want to make air pollution in your area more visible, feel free to fill in your gap! See for yourself on the map where more sensors are needed.