This is not the correct forum to discuss your business decisions, which are of course completely you own. But a lot of SmartHouse/IoT companies go the costly route, in a market which is just emerging. This makes the use of 10 year for the TCO already questionable, because these early adopter systems will seldom run that long.
And there is of course a difference between 5$ systems and 75$ systems, regarding the quality of the sensor nodes. But when 5$ are the trash types, then 75$ is Rolls-Royce (temp. only).
IMHO the decisions will be made over the price, because already you have so many mid and high price suppliers. There is the question of the target audience, too. A full fledged ecosystem with apps and cloud supported home server and good support will always sell for more than a early adopter / half-DIY solution. You should just make sure you position yourself correctly.
That said, I am looking forward what you offer will be in the end, and what packages you sell.
I do agree, that is why we do not push/lock users to use âone rightâ cloud solution, but rather provide multiple integration possibilities like Amazon AWS IoT, MS Azure IoT, Blynk, IFFFT, ThingSpeak, etc. or even stay local only with MQTT broker base and Forris, Grafana, Node RED, etc. We do provide multilayer SW (MCU functionality focused firmwares, MCU low power SDK, hub, integrations) but HW design/production is our main focus.
Definitely, topic is about HW design priorities decisions. E.g. you can not do 2 years battery operation (commodity AAA Alkaline) on Wifi radio with energy demanding sensor (even when it costs 75 USD or whatever, there are HW design limits when you look under the hood).
We believe there is audience who is able to distinguish also other parameters than price and âcar brandâ - that is why those HW designs were created and shared.
You can have a look at BigClown shop. Regarding Sensor configuration for Turris distribution channels, choice is at Turris team side.
Thanks for the explanation of the price point
The specification you talking about is however not possible to guess from: âSensor (1) measuring the amount of CO2, humidity and temperature.â so it is hard to compare it to anything.
I do agree, the difficulty to compare have two main sources:
HW configuration of Sensor have to be finalized by Turris team
missing open source wireless sensor products with 2 years on battery operation - if anybody is aware of such products, we will be happy to get acquainted with them.
You are welcome to ask for any information regarding Dongle/Sensor you like to be aware, we will make our best to provide answers.
Or you can simply wait for finalization of HW configuiration and compare datasheet later.
This is a good initiative, but the sensors are a bit costly for most. You may want to consider this sensor for an air quality monitor. It is cheap, reliable, simple and has been calibrated against a very expensive laboratory monitor and performs well.
Thank you for proposal, http://aqicn.org/sensor/shinyei/ (continuous heating element in sensor) would be fine for projects where 2 years on battery operation is not one of the goals.
Firstly, aqicnâs experiments are about particulates, while Bigclownâs sensor measures CO2. You may argue that particulate count is at least as interesting as CO2 concentration though.
Secondly, I draw a different conclusion from their article: that the cheap sensors are pretty bad. Quotes from the article:
From the previous graph (Shinyei vs. Samyoung), it is clear that the data generated by the Samyoung sensor is not at all reflecting actual air quality. In order to ensure that this issue is not caused by a deficient sensor, the sensor was replaced with a new one, but yet, no improvement were observed.[âŚ]
[âŚ]
At first glance, the correlation for the Shinyei sensor seems to be much stronger from PM10 than PM2.5 readings. But, actually, it seems to be even more complicated since during some periods, the correlation to PM10 seems higher while for other periods, correlation to PM2.5 is higher. If this turns out to be true (which will require more data for the confirmation), that would mean that calculating the AQI from a Shinyei sensor could prove to be very arbitratary (see the PM10 vs. PM2.5 analysis).
Would it be possible to have a fully functional âsmoke-detectionâ including
CO-detector in addition to CO2
smart alerting options (e.g. Email/SMS-warnings) for people outside the house
basic alerting options (programmable Voice-/tone-alerts) for direct warnings to people inside/near the house?
Because for 120⏠I get a fully functional smart mesh-capable smoke detector⌠Downside is it is not trustworthy (it matters not that much, as it cannot collect that much data from you, but it does⌠name is NEST protect btw )
Without smoke-detection a CO2-sensor is worth- and meaningless to me.
The pure âair-qualityâ-sensor sounds interesting, but again questions:
-is it possible to have built-in diodes to show humidity- and/or temperature-levels directly physically visible?
is it resistent to condensing humidity?
If yes I gonna buy it definitely in big amount (one per room)!
If no diodes I would need a smartphone-app to show actual humidity. If no residence it is senseless as I could then not monitor bath- and washroomsâŚ
It is up to you where the discussion will go. Sensor HW design targets are:
Open Source
Wireless
2 years on battery
So that is why energy-intensive sensing elements (like continous heating or air flow support motors) can not be used for Sensor and they are out of our focus now.
Keep going as you like please. For wired sensors I recommend new thread.
Nest protect with CO- and CO2-detectors have a 10 years TCO and allow do do functionality tests = maintenance (and have several other benefits that kind of outweight the other capabilities of your sensor).
I know its kind of a comparison of apples (BigClown opensource + openhardware) and pears (google data-collection company - but the collection is really basic in this case) but with smoke-/CO2-/CO-detection sensors and warning integrations the naked abilities of nest protect are impressive. And I donât know if I would rely on a self-built warning functionality
In this part of the question I wanted asked for the sensor without CO2-sensor, sry for not stressing that.
Then let me ask again: Will the sensor without CO2-detection be capable of surviving condensing humidity? I would plan to place it into a washing room or a bathroom where there will be for sure periods with condensing humidity.
Yes, the point with the diodes decreasing the battery life counts. Is there an option to have it connected to a power supply (like USB)? Surely only for areas without condensing humidity
)
