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Realtime California Air Quality

by gdi2290 on 8/23/20, 6:33 PM with 59 comments

  • by ilyagr on 8/23/20, 8:05 PM

    I've found http://www.airnow.gov very helpful and faster to load than the Purple Air map. They also have a simple but efficient app.

    Airnow's map is slow to load, but shows smoke, air monitors (including the Purple Air ones^[footnote]), and fires all at once: https://fire.airnow.gov/?lat=37.40&lng=-122.077&zoom=10#

    A less detailed, fast, static map for the SF Bay Area is available at http://www.baaqmd.gov.

    Last, but not least, there is a forecast of surface-level smoke available at https://hwp-viz.gsd.esrl.noaa.gov/smoke/. I found it from https://twitter.com/NWSBayArea, which is a good source of news for the Bay Area.

    [footnote]: To make the numbers match, I had to set PurpleAir to show One-Hour Averages with the LRAPA scoring. See https://imgur.com/a/d6yFtow.

  • by modeless on 8/23/20, 7:43 PM

    I like PurpleAir's air quality map but felt it was a bit too slow to check frequently. So I used their API to make the fastest air quality site around: https://aqi.today

  • by khuey on 8/23/20, 7:26 PM

    For those who don't live here, a series of dry thunderstorms last weekend sparked a number of wildfires that have combined to burn more than 1500 square miles (more than 4000 square kilometers) in less than a week.

  • by supernova87a on 8/23/20, 9:31 PM

    Maybe someone can share/explain --

    Purple Air sells you a sensor that you can install, and then takes the data, displays it on their website for lots of people to view, and then presumably makes money off the data you send them? Why should you have to pay for the sensor then?

  • by gdi2290 on 8/23/20, 6:50 PM

    also see how bad the fires are from Santa Cruz https://twitter.com/robwormald/status/1296709260429029378

  • by ahaucnx on 8/24/20, 5:13 AM

    We are a new startup (currently doing Startup School) to provide air quality monitoring solutions especially for schools.

    From the beginning it was important for us to give back to the community so we setup AirGradient for Education providing free tutorials and advise.

    We just published our open source and open hardware air quality sensor measuring PM2.5, CO2, Temperature and Humdity. So you can build your own sensor with a small display to measure the air quality in and around your home. We call it the AirGradient DIY sensor.

    Build instructions, Code and Hardware files can be found on our project page: https://www.airgradient.com/diy/

    It would be great to hear feedback from you!

    PS: We are also looking for schools that are interested in improving air quality to learn more about their needs and possible solutions. Please PM me for more information.

  • by Zhenya on 8/23/20, 9:41 PM

    Submitted a quick instruction on how to make an air purifier.

    Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24251509

    Copy/pasta to help folks:

    Note: this is not my idea, but I have used it for 2 Cal fire seasons successfully.

    1) Acquire a box fan

    2) Acquire a large "FPR 10" rated filter from home depot

    3) Duct tape filter to the out flow side of the box fan. Make sure the arrows on the filter point in the correct airflow direction.

    This works dramatically well for very little dollars and can help save your lungs if air purifiers are not available or expensive.

  • by Fauntleroy on 8/23/20, 7:29 PM

    It's useful to see the pollution numbers on the sensors, but it's also just as interesting to see which sensors have been destroyed and for how long. You can track the fire just by seeing when sensors go offline, if you know where to look.

  • by oski on 8/23/20, 7:42 PM

    Make sure to use the “LRAPA” conversion on purpleair.com

    https://twitter.com/rengiec/status/1296486310123905024?s=20

  • by dang on 8/23/20, 7:49 PM

    See also: a thread from 2018: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18714777

  • by Animats on 8/24/20, 5:31 AM

    Site down:

        Over Quota
    This application is temporarily over its serving quota.
    Please try again later.

  • by ericand on 8/23/20, 7:44 PM

    What's with indoor sensors being default on? Is there some value to then that I don't understand?

  • by tempsy on 8/23/20, 8:24 PM

    this year is like a sad joke. if covid didn’t kill San Francisco these fires will be the breaking point. it has become that for me.

  • by archarios on 8/23/20, 8:05 PM

    It seems like they're out of indoor sensors by the way I ordered one and they printed a shipping label then canceled it.

  • by snoshy on 8/23/20, 7:36 PM

    What is the source for this data?