I get many questions asking which air quality monitors best integrate with different smart home systems. While discussing the massive range of smart home platforms could be a complete thread in itself, I wanted to start by discussing air quality monitors that support Home Assistant.
Being one of the largest smart home platforms out there and easily being my favourite because of the massive amount of customisation possible due to the open-source nature of the platform, I wanted to take a bit of a deeper dive into air quality monitors that can either natively integrate into Home Assistant or that have community integrations for the platform.
Why Home Assistant?
If you already use Home Assistant, you’re likely already aware of how powerful it can be when combined with air quality monitors. However, for anyone new to the platform, the first question we need to address is why you will even want to use Home Assistant in the first place. After all, it can be an investment if you don’t have any spare hardware lying around, as you will need a device to run the platform on. Here are a few key advantages of Home Assistant:
- Total customisation. Whether you want to delve into the automation side of Home Assistant or not, the control you have over your dashboard is unbeatable. Above is a screenshot of one dashboard I used for my recent Apollo AIR-1 review. With time and effort, you can create the perfect dashboard with only the necessary information.
- Unparalleled automation. A massive range of other devices also integrates with Home Assistant, meaning you can create automation sequences that are triggered when certain pollutants reach levels (and this is barely scratching the surface).
- and so much more. Honestly, I’m still a Home Assistant beginner, but I already know there is so much more than this platform can do. For example, I added a custom entity on my dashboard to show EPA-corrected data for one of my monitors, which means all data passed through to the dashboard is more accurate than the raw readings from the device. These little features are just the icing on the cake!
My Apollo AIR-1 dashboard (It looks much better when it isn’t zoomed out for a screenshot)
Which Air Quality Support Home Assistant?
This list will be far from exhaustive, as there are many air quality monitors that I have yet to try. However, here are the monitors that I’ve found to work with Home Assistant so far. If you have any more that you would like to add, please let me know in the comments below!
Furthermore, for some of these, I’ve linked to the official integrations (on the Home Assistant URL), and some are links to workarounds/unofficial integrations. If you don’t want to delve into the technical side, please get a monitor with an official integration as there is no guarantee the unofficial integrations will be easy to implement or even that they will work correctly.
AirGradient (Indoor and Outdoor) - AirGradient - Home Assistant
Apollo AIR-1 - https://apolloautomation.com/products/air-1
Aranet (Aranet4 Home, Aranet2, Aranet Radiation, Aranet Radon Plus) - Aranet - Home Assistant
Qingping (AQM Lite & CO2) - Qingping - Home Assistant (for some reason, the larger monitors are not supported officially. There do seem to be some workarounds, however: Add support for Qingping Air Monitor model number CGS1 - Feature Requests - Home Assistant Community)
Airthings - Airthings - Home Assistant
AirVisual (AirVisual Pro from IQAir) - AirVisual Pro - Home Assistant. There may be some workarounds for the outdoor device: Support for AirVisual's Outdoor Unit? - #9 by tedivm - Feature Requests - Home Assistant Community
Awair - Awair - Home Assistant
PurpleAir - PurpleAir - Home Assistant
CO2.Click (some sensors) - Using co2.click cloud enabled sensors with HomeAssistant using the cloud API
INKBIRD is a bit questionable as it seems like they have an official integration for some monitors, but not from the air quality range. The IAM-T1 may be possible, though, with a workaround. See this Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/161rkaj/integrating_inkbirds_a_new_air_quality_monitor_in/
uHoo - Integration uHoo airsensor - Third party integrations - Home Assistant Community