AirGradient Forum

Audible alert options

Components
#1

I see a discussion that ended a few months ago, asking about audible alarms for VOC. At that point, it sounded like work on this was still in process.

Generally, I’m looking at the AirGradient ONE indoor kit and am not finding specific guidance on how to set up audible alarms or warnings for any pollutant (e.g., PM2.5).

I would much appreciate links to webpages or forum threads that provide up-to-date guidance on what’s available in this regard, and how to set it up.

#2

Hi @raywood,

Thanks for joining and apologies for the late reply. I was just checking through unanswered posts and found this one.

Unfortunately, audible alarms are not possible with the monitors and this is a hardware limitation. We are looking to add VOC-monitoring functionality to the LED bar (similar to how we can currently show PM2.5 and CO2), but not audible alerts.

At the moment, we offer the LED bar (which can show PM2.5 or CO2 concentration) and email notifications.

#3

Have you looked at Home Assistant? There is a very good AirGradient integration, and you can easily create an automation in HA to make announcements or turn devices on or off when a threshold is crossed. I don’t currently have one, but I could write on in minutes.

And using Home Assistant, you can track and correlate measurements, even from devices from different manufacturers. Here I have plotted AirGradiant’s CO2 readings with when our Ecobee thermostat was running the heat to see if our HVAC was contributing to our home CO2 levels.

Heating vs CO2 levels
Heating vs CO2 levels2297×969 145 KB

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#4

Welcome to the community @Victor_Strasser!

Home Assistant is great for creating audible alerts - I’ve recently set up my Google Nest mini to give me alerts when the CO2 threshold crosses 1000ppm to remind me to crack open a window!

Here are steps on how to do this via HA (something might have changed in new HA version, I’ll check and update here if that is the case!):

Step 1: Define the Trigger

  • Navigate to Settings > Automations & Scenes and click Create Automation.

  • Use the UI editor to set a trigger for your CO2 sensor entity, triggering for example, when CO2 is above 1000 ppm. (When>Add Trigger>Entity>Numeric State).

  • Set the Above mode to Fixed number.

  • Choose your CO2 sensor entity (e.g., sensor.co2) and set the Above value to 1000.

Step 2: Define the Action

  • Under ‘Then do’, click ‘Add Action’.

Here, you can choose from a variety of actions to perform when the trigger condition is satisfied.

For example, if you have a Google Nest device:

  • Choose ‘Call Service’ as the action type.

  • Select your TTS service, e.g., Text-to-speech (TTS): Speak

Note: You may need to create a Home Assistant Cloud account (Settings>Home Assistant Cloud) for some of these services to be available.

  • Specify a target device (Choose entity>Google en com)

  • Specify the media player entity ID, e.g., media_player.bedroom_speaker

  • Specify the alert message in the message field, e.g., “Warning, CO2 levels are above 1000 parts per million in the bedroom.”

Or, to send a notification to your phone:

  • Install the Home Assistant Companion App: https://companion.home-assistant.io/

  • Log in to the app and name your smartphone device.

  • Choose ‘Notification’ as the action type in the Home Assistant UI.

  • Choose ‘Send a notification via "your_smartphone_name.”

  • Enter a ‘message’ text and Save.

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image847×526 16.7 KB

Step 3: Save and Test

  • Give Your Automation a Name: Something descriptive like “Warn about high CO2 levels.”

  • Save: Click the Save button to create the automation.

  • Test: You can manually trigger the automation to test it by going to the Automations page, finding your new automation, and clicking on the “Run” button (play icon) in the hamburger menu next to it.

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