Networked Artifacts’ Air Lab is a portable air quality monitor based on ESP32-S3 Wi-Fi & Bluetooth LE wireless SoC, equipped with an e-paper touchscreen display, and plenty of sensors to measure CO2, temperature, relative humidity, air pollutants (VOC, NOx), and atmospheric pressure.
The Air Lab ships with a rechargeable 1,500 mAh battery that will be good for about 21 days on a charge in passive mode (taking measurements every minute), and you can also power it over its USB-C ports. It includes a debug port for people wanting to change the firmware, and a GPIO header to connect additional sensors if required. Data can be visualized on the e-paper display or transmitted over BLE or MQTT for integration with Home Assistant. The company also provides a CSV export function and a web-based dashboard for data visualization.
Air Lab specifications:
- Main module – ESP32-S3 module with PCB antenna for 2.4GHz WiFi and Bluetooth LE
- Data Storage
- Volatile (SRAM) – 8 KB, good for 6 hours of samples (one measurement per minute)
- Durable (flash) – 8 MB, good for 90 days’ worth of data
- Display – e-Paper display with 296 x 128 resolution and capacitive touch using CY8CMBR3108 controller
- USB – USB Type-C port for data and debugging
- Sensors
- SCD41 CO2, temperature, and relative humidity sensor
- SGP41 VOC/NOx sensor
- LPS22 atmospheric pressure sensor
- FXLS8974CF accelerometer
- Expansion – GPIO header with I2C, 2x GPIO, and power signals to add other sensors (e.g. PM2.5 sensor)
- Debugging – UART debug port
- Misc
- Various control buttons
- RGB LED
- Buzzer
- BQ32000 real-time clock
- Lanyard friendly design
- Power Management
- Charging via USB-C port
- Battery – 1500 mAh LiPo battery
- BQ25601 battery charger
- STM6601 on/off controller
- Power Consumption (estimated, subject to firmware optimizations)
- Passive mode: 3 mA / 21 days
- Recording mode: 8 mA / 7.5 days
- Dimensions – 155 x 65 x 10 mm
- Weight – 110 grams
Air Lab’s firmware will be made open-source after the crowdfunding campaign is over, and comes with the following features:
- Passive Mode – Air Lab constantly monitors the air quality in your environment and displays the data on the e-paper screen
- Live View – Explore the past six hours of data stored automatically in memory.
- Analysis and Precision Mode – Provides an aggregated overview of the full measurement and each individual sample can be accessed with the touch bar.
- Marked Samples – Samples can be marked with an increasing number to allow correlation in controlled measurement scenarios.
- Language – English, German, Spanish, and other languages
- High CO2 Alert – The Air Lab blinks or buzzes if it detects a high concentration of CO2.
- CSV Export for data backup or analysis on a computer
- Connectivity
- BLE to access data from a smartphone or tablet
- MQTT Publish over WiFi – Notably useful for Home Assistant integration.
- Connection to Air Lab Studio web-based interface
Since the Air Lab is not exactly the first air quality monitor around, Networked Artifacts shared a comparison table pitting it against products such as Airgradient Indoor Monitor, IKEA VINDSTYRKA, and AirVisual Pro IQAir, among others. It lacks a PM2.5 sensor, but it can be added through the GPIO header as demonstrated in the video embedded at the end of this post.
Networked Artifacts has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Crowd Supply with a $30,000 funding target for the mass production of the Air Lab portable air quality monitor. The device requires a $229 pledge plus $8 for shipping to the US or $18 to the rest of the world. Rewards are scheduled to ship by October 2025. A few more details may also be found on the product page.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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