Breathe easy, knowing that you can track and sense the quality of the air around you with the PM2.5 Air Quality Sensor with Breadboard Adapter particulate sensor. Mad Max & Furiosa definitely should have hooked up one of these in their truck while scavenging the dusty desert wilderness of post-apocalyptic Australia. And for those of us not living in an Outback dystopia, this sensor + adapter kit is great for monitoring air quality, and super easy to use!

WITNESS real-time, reliable measurement of PM2.5 dust concentrations! (PM2.5 refers to particles that are 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter.) This sensor uses laser scattering to radiate suspending particles in the air, then collects scattering light to obtain the curve of scattering light change with time. The microprocessor calculates equivalent particle diameter and the number of particles with different diameter per unit volume.

You'll need to hook this up to a microcontroller with UART input (or you could theoretically wire it up to a USB-Serial converter and parse the data on a computer) - we have code for both Arduino and CircuitPython. 9600 baud data streams out once per second, you'll get:

• PM1.0, PM2.5 and PM10.0 concentration in both standard & enviromental units
• Particulate matter per 0.1L air, categorized into 0.3um, 0.5um, 1.0um, 2.5um, 5.0um and 10um size bins

As well as checksum, in binary format (its fairly easy to parse the binary format, but it doesn't come out as pure readable ascii text)

We give you the sensor box as well as the cable and a 0.1" / 2.54mm breakout board so you can wire it easily. You only need power plus one data pin (for the UART TX). Power is 5V, logic is 3.3V

Check out our guide for Wiring diagrams, Arduino & CircuitPython code!