Air Lab is a portable Wi-Fi & Bluetooth LE air quality monitor with an e-paper touchscreen display (Crowdfunding)

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.

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