Most air quality-sensing devices integrate their sensors into the same enclosure as the display, which can make getting an accurate reading tough since the viewer is directly next to the unit and could potentially skew the values. This is why one element14 community member Enrique Albertos created his own portable air quality monitor that separates the sensing module from the screen.

His system uses one Nicla Sense ME to gather air quality information about the surrounding environment with its onboard BME688 gas sensor. It is highly capable too, as it can quantify pressure, humidity, temperature, VOCs, VSCs, and various other harmful gases such as carbon monoxide. From here, the Nicla Sense ME sends its data over Bluetooth^® to an awaiting Nano 33 IoT board. The Nano is connected to a 1.8” TFT screen, which shows several pages of information that are cycled through by pressing one of the buttons at the bottom of the device.

The first layout consists of a large gauge for the indoor air quality value, and just above it is the current time from an NTP server and the battery level. Underneath is the current temperature and the relative humidity. For a more historical view, Albertos designed a layout that contains several charts that plot values over time.

You can read more about this project here in Albertos’ element14 blog post and see a demonstration in the video below.