2020/05/10

Xiaomi Air Quality Sensor

Today's Xiaomi review is of the Air Quality sensor, it's about 10 by 6 by 3 cm with a 10 cm capacitive colour touch screen with a resolution of 800 x 480.

There's a PM2.5 particulate laser reflective sensor and Sensiron TVOC/CO2a and Temp/Humidity sensors which are used to measure the air quality. TVOC is a measure of total volatile organic compounds which cover a range of substances from detergents through flammable liquids and gasses. The CO2 values aren't actually measured but approximated through various calculations on the sensor.

This is not a professional device, so the readings will be reasonably accurate, but don't base anything medical on the readings.

It's WiFi connected and connects back to the Mi back-end services and can be controlled by the Mi Home App. In the Mi App it's necessary to change the region to Mainland China of the device won't be found (or lost if configured in Mainland China and then say switch to Europe, but it will come back again if the region is changed back).

There are a variety of display modes which show average values of sensor readings and a clock of course which is set using Internet time sources so stays accurate. Even though the region in the app is set to Mainland China, a local timezone in the device can be set, so the correct time will be displayed (some other Xiaomi devices will show Chinese time).

An especially useful feature is the BLE gateway which can monitor other Xiaomi Home Bluetooth connected devices, collect their data and send it back to the Mi Home servers. So say there's a Xiaomi Home temperature/humidity sensor in another room that the Mi Home app would connect to, the BLE gateway can download its data, send it to Mi Home and then it's accessible via the Mia Home app from anywhere. This is actually pretty useful if there are other smart devices in the home and say the temperature is quite low, then turn the heating on so it'll be nice and cosy when you get home.

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