We Don't Love Subscriptions. But the AirGradient Dashboard Needs Them

AirGradientBlog · January 17, 2025, 12:52am

For the past few years, we’ve been driven by a simple goal: to put the power of accurate air quality data into the hands of as many people as possible. That’s why we’ve been so proud to offer the AirGradient dashboard completely free of charge. Many of you even received a year or two of included access when you purchased your monitor, and even after that initial period, we haven’t actually switched on any charges.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.airgradient.com/blog/we-dont-love-subscriptions/

rpirsc · January 17, 2025, 8:47am

I do not mind paying as long as I have alternative options always available for free ( like HA )

AirGradientBlog · January 17, 2025, 8:47am

IanH · January 19, 2025, 7:42pm

I would second that!

nhgeek · January 19, 2025, 7:42pm

I’m not surprised, maintaining this infrastructure is an ongoing expense basically forever. I’m fine with this so long (1) not having a subscription won’t cripple the device and (2) m we continue to have a well maintained and useful Home Assistant integration, which is my preference anyway. I selfhost many “cloud” services and the incremental expense for me to have my own AirGradient dashboard is effectively zero.

ektaroc · January 20, 2025, 12:46am

I think the price is reasonable and I appreciate the transparency. Many other companies would have just introduced the subscription and walled off features with minimal explanation. It’s nice to know that the fees are being invested back into the product and not as shareholder dividends or exorbitant executive compensation.

TugBoat · January 23, 2025, 12:11am

Sell a home server that has a web interface and a slot for a couple 256Gb SD cards so the data can be accessed inside a network. All AG sensors can be configured to talk to the Homeserver.

Online subscriptions should have a super cheap yearly option for $50us that doesn’t include alerts and only keeps a couple years of data.

ctuinstra · January 23, 2025, 1:12am

You have been more than fair. I was wondering why I still have access after a year. This was the push that I needed to get an outdoor unit. Just purchased it today and will share data.

I would not have any issues with the small price for a cloud service. I hate being bullied into it by most companies and I will avoid them at all cost, but being allowed to make a choice without, I can deal with that.

hestia · January 23, 2025, 4:03am

Thanks for the thoughtful post and incremental roll out. I think it’s great that you’re moving towards sustainability.

I haven’t connected my unit to wifi because there is no way to stop it from connecting to servers I do control, and I can’t patch the firmware to not connect because of this issue: [docs] instructions to compile · Issue #160 · airgradienthq/arduino · GitHub

However I’d be happy to help people get set up with a local webpage to collect and display graphs and statistics once I am able to do this for myself.

Achim_AirGradient · January 23, 2025, 6:38am

Actually in our firmware there is a checkbox in the wifi manager (when you connect it first time to your WiFi network) to never connect to the AirGradient server.

Achim_AirGradient · January 23, 2025, 6:39am

So far we have not charged anybody. Even people using it for years but we will slowly starting now. This blog post was the announcement so that people are not surprised when in the coming weeks they find a message on their dashboard about this.

hestia · January 23, 2025, 4:05pm

Here’s a link to the code that shows the firmware will unconditionally connect to the AirGradient server if it is connected to wifi.

github.com

airgradienthq/arduino/blob/master/examples/OneOpenAir/OneOpenAir.ino#L228

    
      
          initMqtt();
          sendDataToAg();
          
          
#ifdef ESP8266
            // ota not supported
          #else
            firmwareCheckForUpdate();
            checkForUpdateSchedule.update();
          #endif
          
          
apiClient.fetchServerConfiguration();
          configSchedule.update();
          if (apiClient.isFetchConfigureFailed()) {
            if (ag->isOne()) {
              if (apiClient.isNotAvailableOnDashboard()) {
                stateMachine.displaySetAddToDashBoard();
                stateMachine.displayHandle(
                    AgStateMachineWiFiOkServerOkSensorConfigFailed);
              } else {
                stateMachine.displayClearAddToDashBoard();
              }

A few lines above the highlighted line, the code also unconditionally calls sendDataToAg().

Once I am able to compile the stock firmware, I will offer a patch that will not make these requests if the user checked the box to never connect to the AirGradient server. I hope that such a patch will be accepted.

MallocArray · January 23, 2025, 6:22pm

A little higher in the same code

github.com

airgradienthq/arduino/blob/92e74feabdb7518b055df85c74fc694aaad9a45f/examples/OneOpenAir/OneOpenAir.ino#L203

    
      
                      "Offline Mode",
                      configuration.isOfflineMode() ? " = True" : "  = False", "");
                  delay(1000);
                  break;
                }
                uint32_t periodMs = (uint32_t)(millis() - startTime);
                if (periodMs >= 3000) {
                  break;
                }
              }
              connectToWifi = !configuration.isOfflineMode();
            } else {
              configuration.setOfflineModeWithoutSave(true);
            }
          } else {
            connectToWifi = true;
          }
          
          
if (connectToWifi) {
            apiClient.begin();

Line 203 sets connectToWifi to the opposite of isOfflineMode, so if you set OfflineMode, then connectToWifi will be set to false, and the entire condition starting at 211 will not be executed.

Poorly named for sure, but to my eyes it looks like OfflineMode will prevent it from connecting to the AG servers to fetch configuration and to send data to the Dashboard.

hestia · January 23, 2025, 6:51pm

Offline mode means it will not connect to the WiFi at all, which to be fair, does mean that it will not connect to AG servers. However, it also means there’s not way for it to report any data to a local server either.

So as the firmware is written now, it seems like the choice is either don’t connect the device to WiFi at all, or it reaches out to AG servers. That is the problem I’m going to fix.

Samuel_AirGradient · January 23, 2025, 6:54pm

Hi @hestia ,

Sorry for the confusion, you’re right that checkbox still make the monitor interact with our server, even if you set configurationControl to local, those request function to AirGradient still executed on boot.

We will fix this on the next release.

Samuel_AirGradient · January 23, 2025, 6:58pm

By the way, you can also use prometheus with grafana if you want. The monitor support prometheus metrics format.

Regarding patch, we are very welcome to every feature request, bug report and of course pull request to our codebase.

MallocArray · January 23, 2025, 7:15pm

Ah, I see. I was incorrect in my assumption of Offline Mode meaning Offline to the AirGradient Dashboard upload, and wasn’t thinking Offline as in no Wifi at all.

drew · January 23, 2025, 9:35pm

And the other option doesn’t need to be Home Assistant necessarily. How about unloading the loads on your own servers by offering a local software option?

The airgradient itself could cache data. Then when the local software comes up, transfers all data over. Or it’s a taskbar windows app, or any other not-on-your-server options.

vlotty · January 28, 2025, 5:19pm

This might be in the works, but some thoughts on pricing and future features/options:

I like the idea of selling a pre-configured, easy to set up (plug and play?) home server, based around HAOS or something else to provide local network dashboard services. This sounds similar to the EufyCam model which is very popular.
Could future versions of the monitors have slots for SD cards? Historical data (say beyond a few days or a week) could be stored locally to reduce demands on cloud storage.
Offer a free, basic, better (and maybe best) pricing tiers. This adds complexity so easier said than done, and might be in the works, but if not, I think it could help AG be sustainable. Free would be serviceable for most people if all it had was real-time dashboard, or just 1 day or 3 days of data etc, for say, your first X devices. After that you need basic, that adds up to Y devices and a week or two weeks of data, with the slight discount if paying in advance yearly. Etc. Fun features that might not add cost to cloud infrastructure but would add value and be included in the “better” or “best” tiers could be things like custom monitor display screens, or custom LED patterns.

gabrieLL · February 1, 2025, 1:19pm

Adding and SD card slot to store offline historical data is a good idea and a very versatile solution , with granularity options. Yoctopuce devices have internal datalogger to a memory chip too. However making it work with a website based solution is a complex task as I see it. Not sure , if it would be useful , this idea quite complex when it comes to the front-end side of things. But easy with local database , If you run InfluxDB/Grafana for example.

HomeAssisstant already stores historical data for 10 days, but … if you need more storage InfluxDB addon can be installed/added.
https://github.com/hassio-addons/addon-influxdb