“I was very excited about this products as I wanted to dip my fingers in the RPi world while also monitoring the air quality in my room after buying an air purifier. At first I was amazed by this little thing, lots of examples provided so I didn't have to dig around to find code examples for all of the sensors. Well all of that would have been nice but I found some of the examples didn't work out of the box. Not a huge pain as I found github issues describing the problem but it would have been nice if those were fixed.
Now let's talk about the data - in terms of the pm particles sensors, it seems to be working fine. Turning off my purifier results in higher numbers while turning it on full power lowers the numbers significantly. Also tested it with a candle next to the sensor and I don't think I'll ever light a candle in my room. Sadly, the much simpler (I would assume) sensor for temperature is all over the place. First of all, the different examples use a different compensation value so you will get different reading on them. You might wonder why there even is a compensation value. Well that's to accommodate for the heat generated by the chip. It makes sense, however, it doesn't account for the heat generated by the RPi it's connected to. Due to the temperature being off, pressure and humidity also take a hit as they rely on the temperature.
After more research I found that I need to get a GPIO extender cable to isolate the heat from the RPi. Not a huge problem as they cost £5-6 but I am annoyed that this wasn't mentioned anywhere in the product page. With the cables being as cheap as they are I would have just included one with the package or at least warned about it since now I have to put another order through and pay for the delivery.
In conclusion, a very cool product with lots of potential but sadly won't work out of the box and you will need to buy more items for it to work properly.”
“Easy set up. The display is small but helpful for monitoring and getting set. Lots of code examples to get started, and a few others on GitHub. Some needed updating.”
“Looks a great little board, unfortunately , it doesn't appear to run well. Cannot get the Lcd screen to work or to recognise the particulate filter. Tried everything to get it going. Disappointed.
Contacted Pimoroni not heard back from them , yet.”
“Fantastic little board, full to the brim with sensors. The amount of data this thing can output (especially for the price) is amazing. Well worth the purchase, as there are so many projects I can do with it.”
“Nice small thing in a compact form. Workable sample code. Support provided in English instead of English with some Chinese characters. Thoughtfully packaged in a small padded envelope instead of a nonsensically large cardboard box with excessive tape.”
