Air quality is detrimental to health. With the new fires on the West Coast of the United States, air quality monitoring has never been more critical. The measures can save lives if only just alerting to open a window.

I decided to design an easy to use, Gas sensor module, based off the CCS811 sensor.

Let me tell you a bit about it.

The CCS811 is from AMS, and can detect a rather wide range of VOCs. Connected to the microcontroller it will return a TVOC reading and the equivalent CO2 reading, over I2C. (It's over I2C to make life easier.)

There's a small and not so powerful microcontroller onboard to control power, read input data and provide the I2C interface.

According to the datasheet of CCS811, the sensor can detect Alcohol, Aldehydes, Ketones, Organic Acids, Aromatic Hydrocarbons, Amines, and Aliphatic.

The breakout has an onboard level shifter so it will work with both 3.3 and 5V logic levels.

This sensor is intended for Indoor Air Quality Monitoring.

What is a potential project with this?

Home automation system- (IoT): If the air quality is higher than normally acceptable values the windows will be opened and the residents will be notified. Should the air quality keep rising the residents will be asked to temporarily exit the room due to unsafe air quality.

Each sensor can be connected to a low cost ESP node, and a central Raspberry Pi for HMI display.

Thus, this breakout can be placed in strategic locations and all data can be viewed at once from the HMI display.

I truly believe this sensor breakout can help protect people and change lives.