AirGradient Forum

Looking for an alternative sensor/monitor

#1

Sorry, I’m totally sick of being a beta tester for something I paid good money for.

I bought two One’s and an Outdoor a couple of years ago. They worked fine for a few months, but ever since there has been continual wifi issues and a CO2 sensor failure. Every few months I go back to trying to get them to work, sometimes one will for a while, there’s usually at least two out of service.

All three are going in the garbage bin, I’ve had enough.

Can anyone recommend a monitor that is reliable, and works well with Home Assistant?

#2

Hi @Kop, I am so sorry to hear that.

Could you please contact us so we can help you further (You might have already contacted us before, but we would be happy to help you investigate what could be the cause of this issue).

I would like to share my experience (I know I might not be considered a neutral source, as I am an employee). From what we have seen so far, with the recent firmware versions, we have fewer reports about Wi-Fi issues. And all of my AirGradient monitors that are running in my place have hardly experienced a severe Wi-Fi issue. I understand that the fact that I have not experienced issues does not necessarily mean that the issue you experience doesn’t exist. That is why I would like to ask you to share more with us about this issue.

For your other question about the air monitor that works well with Home Assistant, from my experience, purely on the HA aspect, other than AirGradient (which exposes a lot of entities to Home Assistant), I find that the Qingping Air Monitor Lite is also a nice choice for HA users, although it lacks a TVOC sensor. IKEA VINDSTYRKA is also interesting (no CO2 sensor), as I can connect it to my HA via Zigbee2MQTT. For CO2 specifically, I have a SwitchBot Meter Pro CO2 and am quite happy with it (communicates via BLE). I have not tried other monitors, but would love to hear more from the community too.

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#3

For what it’s worth, I have been running an AG One and an outdoor with HA for about a year, and other than the one fairly quickly resolved WiFi issue, have been rock solid with both the AG dashboard as well as Home Assistant.

The only WiFi issue I have seen otherwise, is that a lot of this type of IOT devices don’t tolerate Fast Roaming on WiFi, so run a secondary SSID without it.

FWIW . . . .

#4

I have two One’s and one Outdoor unit and have never had a WiFi issue with them. I use multiple Aruba enterprise access points and have fast roaming enabled on all SSIDs.

I understand it’s frustrating when it doesn’t work well for you. The issue could be on your side or it could be on the AirGradient devices side. It could be a misconfiguration on your WiFi or router, or it could be that the AirGradient devices don’t play well with your gear while they should. My experience is that the AirGradient team is eager to help, so I would first try to see if you’re able to solve it with their help.

A CO2 sensor failure is something AirGradient can do nothing about. They don’t make the sensors themselves. There is always a change that a sensor dies, especially these relatively cheap mass produced consumer sensors. They are fairly inexpensive and easy to replace yourself.

#5

Before you throw them in the garbage bin (where I put my Sensibo junk), I’d suggest having a look at your Wi-Fi.

And I say that having a total of 7 AIrgradients - 6 actively used.
Four Indoors, and an Outdoor unit that’s on the other side of a glass door that’s got a coating that severely degrades Wi-Fi.
And an indoor that’s in a basement that gets filthy from dust. Probably should put the Outdoor down there.

Wi-Fi can be really difficult - and I work in tech. Some cheap routers really do cause problems. I use Ruckus because it is absolutely reliable. Here’s a year of stats from two of my Airgradients.

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It’d be terribly frustrating to throw good devices in the garbage, only to find a different brand/model presents the same issues.

If Wi-Fi connectivity is the predominant problem you’re having, I don’t think it’s the AGs.

If you’re using the 2.4Ghz band, make sure your channelisation or ‘channel width’ is 20Mhz, and make sure you’re using Channel 1, 6, or 11. Other channels will overlap and cause interference - and if your neighbours are using non-1/6/11 channels, they will interfere with your Wi-Fi.

Ideally use 5GHz instead of 2.4Ghz to avoid these issues, but I’m unsure if the AG units support 5Ghz, many IoT devices don’t.

Good luck!

#6

@Kieran thank you for sharing this!

Regarding the Wi-Fi band, the AirGradient ONE and Open Air support only 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. However, our newer device (AirGradient Go, for example) supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi.