The Smart Home Sensors I NEVER knew I needed!

Key Points:

• These sensors enhance daily life in unexpected ways.
• The importance of monitoring CO2 levels for cognitive function.
• Automation can significantly improve air quality management.
• VOCs and their potential health impacts should be monitored.
• The variety of available sensors can aid in indoor air quality.

These 10 sensors right here improve my life in ways that I didn't even know was possible. Plus, some of these have some really surprising features that you're definitely going to want to see starting right here at my desk using a sensor I didn't even know I needed.

You see, up until recently, after I had been at the desk for a while, my mind would get a little foggy. I would start working slower, or sometimes not at all. To fix this, I tried drinking more water, standing up, and even drinking the poison. Actually, none of those things fixed the issue.

But the new sensor on my desk detected what was wrong. Turns out it was too much CO2 in the air. You know the stuff that I'm breathing out. I was not aware that when there's too much CO2 in the room, cognitive abilities can drop 10 to 50%, and this isn’t just some made-up statistic.

Every time the CO2 sensor would go to a high level, my mind would feel foggy, and I would work slower. It's crazy how accurate it is. I've been trying out a bunch of different air quality sensors, and six of them can monitor CO2. That's the Errant 4, Air Gradient, Apollo, Airytics, Airthings, and Ecobee Premium; which is different than the rest because it doesn't start with the letter A.

You can see how fast these sensors can detect the CO2. I promise that poor air quality reading is just extra CO2 and not bad breath, guys, I promise. Seriously, all those six sensors integrate nicely into Home Assistant for automations, and I'll share which sensor I recommend buying at the end of the video. I would definitely stick around to the end because I'm going to share a few extra sensors packed into devices like the Apollo that are going to blow your mind.

But one of the sensors stands out for monitoring CO2 on a desk. It's the Errant 4. The reason why is that it’s very small and it has an e-ink display that shows the CO2 level as a big easy-to-read number. Plus, there's a little indicator next to the colors to let you know if the CO2 is too high, and it runs off two AA batteries so it can sit anywhere on the desk.

Here’s what’s interesting. Unlike the other sensors that connect with Wi-Fi, the Errant 4 connects with Bluetooth. So if you work at an office that has low ventilation, you could bring it with you and use it really anywhere outside your house. Besides temperature, humidity, and pressure, this only measures CO2.

So if you want a device with even more sensors, the other options will be better and I’ll cover those in a minute and show you why they’re useful. Okay. Measuring CO2 is great and all, but how can I have my smart home really help me out?

Well, I set up an automation. If the CO2 is past a threshold level and I’m on my computer, the light strips behind my desk flash red, the fan under my desk turns on, and the ceiling fan turns on to max speed. This gets a little air circulation in the room and I leave the door open as I take a quick break.

And after I come back, the CO2 levels have dropped significantly, and the fans have automatically returned back to normal. I love this, and I've been so much more productive thanks to the CO2 sensor. But this is just my office. Where else could I use air quality sensors to improve my life?

First is in the bedroom, where the magic happens. The magic of air quality sensors, of course. So you might have heard of VOCs. They stand for volatile organic compounds and they come from everyday items. Some are non-harmful, but others can cause problems. Some of the problems caused by VOCs could be sleep disturbances, headaches, or sore throats.

The reason I think this could be good to monitor my bedroom is that sometimes Aly and I have these symptoms while we’re sleeping. You know, we’re not moving around much. The air is running less because it's at night, so the air is more stagnant. So what are VOCs?

Well, they usually come from sources that have a strong smell, like paint, disinfectants, cleaners, pesticides, permanent markers, and those kinds of things. Of course, these aren’t just in the bedroom. They could be more present in the bathroom or other areas of the house. And what’s crazy is VOCs from earlier in the day can linger at bedtime.

So having an alert for a spike in high VOCs could help you identify the source. Then you can open up the window with a fan on to get some fresh air. Okay, so here are the sensors I’ve been testing that can detect VOCs. And what’s cool is normally Ecobee or the Eve Room Air quality sensor will just show a rating for this metric and not go much further.

But when those are integrated into Home Assistant, you can have access to the exact numbers for graphs and automations. Very useful. Oh, and you know how I mentioned the CO2 levels rising at my desk? Well, the same thing can happen while sleeping, especially if the air is not running.

So what could be helpful is an automation to kick on the HVAC system in the middle of the night if the CO2 levels get too high. Here are some devices that measure both VOC and CO2, and don’t worry, I’ll share my detailed comparison table at the end with all the juicy details.

I wish I would have known more about these sensors earlier because I’m sure I could have avoided problems in the past, especially in the wintertime when I’m not running the air in my bedroom at all and I have those headaches and sore throats at night. So VOCs are bad, but there's another air pollution type that's even worse. I’m going to tell you all about that and which sensors can track it in just a minute.

Today's video is sponsored by Panasonic. Now that it’s heating up here in Arizona, I’m running my air conditioner all the time, but I still want to have good indoor air quality. You see, having clean air helps you stay healthy because there’s less bacteria and viruses in the air. But it’s so hot outside I’m not opening up a window anytime soon and letting out my precious AC.

And you might not know this, but your indoor air quality might be five times more polluted than the outdoor air. That’s why Panasonic has several ventilation solutions, including its Energy Recovery ventilators. These help turn your bad stagnant air into clean circulated air through ventilation, purification, filtration, and circulation.

This helps keep your home energy efficient while staying well ventilated. And all of Panasonic's fans are high performance, including the WhisperGreen select ventilation fan. These fans have some interesting smart home features like tech that can tell you your current IAQ scores, and sensors that can control the fan based on motion and condensation levels.

If you’re wanting to improve the ventilation in your house, this is a great place to start. Check out more info about your IAQ options linked below. And thanks to Panasonic for supporting the channel. Okay, so you wanna know what freaks me out? Particulate matter or PM.

And this could be a mixture of dust particles, dirt, or liquid droplets in the air. This is serious because it can knock years off your life, cause heart or lung problems, bronchitis, asthma attacks, and all sorts of nasty stuff. Seriously, I think I know too much because I’m kind of scared of the air now. What are you looking at? Never seen a kid in a bubble before?

You’ll see a number next to the PM like PM2.5, and that’s just the size of the particulate matter that it’s measuring. So 2.5 micrometers is 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair. So pretty tiny. In the kitchen, it could be broiling, frying, grilling, using gas stoves, or one slice of Aly’s toast. What? Come on. Anything lighter than this is just bread.

Not only that, but it could be coming from things that you do often to not even realize, like burning candles, incense, air fresheners, or even mold can cause that number to rise. Plus, devices like 3D printers can also be a factor. Here are the devices I tested to have particulate matter detection.

This number normally should be really low. If it does go high, you might think, oh, just go open up a window. But that might not be a solution because the outdoor air could be even worse. I feel like I keep giving more and more bad news in this video, but if you want data on your outside air, well, Air Gradient has an outdoor sensor that gives you accurate readings to use in automations.

So if the outside air quality is bad and a door or window is open, you can get an alert to close it. Or if the air is good outside, then it will tell you to open it. And we get really bad dust storms here in Arizona. You know those walls of dust you see in the movies? Yep, that’s my backyard.

It’s basically Mad Max back there. Sometimes I just blindly open up a window when the temperature is nice outside without thinking about it. So having sensors help prevent me from doing something dumb will help improve my life. I’ll definitely be testing this sensor and all the others long term, so make sure you’re following the channel.

All right, now for the good stuff. I’ve gone through all the devices I’ve tested so far, but some of them have some extra sensors built in that take them over the top. I’m going to move rapid fire through the sensor, so here we go. First, the Apollo MTR1. Not only does it have a CO2 sensor, but it also has a millimeter-wave sensor that can detect multiple zones.

What? There's even a little RGB light, and it can detect UV and ambient light of the room. Look how tiny it is. It's crazy that they can pack all of that into such a small device, and the price is not bad at all. Apollo also makes more air quality sensors that are supposed to be pretty good too. You might have heard of people building their own air quality sensors and adding tons of features.

Well, imagine that. But you can skip the hassle and just buy it. That's the Aytics ES1. This is packed to the brim with sensors, and it can even sense nitrous oxide dioxide. Plus, it can detect sound. I'm really impressed with how well this works, and I hope this small company is able to grow. A more popular air quality sensor is the Airthings Wave Plus.

It's really expensive, and I'm not a fan of the look. It takes batteries or it can be plugged in for power, but this is the only sensor that I know of to detect radon. From what I heard, radon doesn’t just come and go like the other air pollutions that I mentioned earlier. Either your house has it or doesn’t, so I don’t think it’s worth getting, especially for the massive price tag.

On the opposite end, if you want to get an inexpensive sensor that uses Zigbee, then check out the Ikea Viriri. This is a good one for just dipping your toe in air quality, but it is going to be missing most sensors like CO2, etc. Here's a table of all the sensors and what they can detect.

Pause if you want to look at it longer, and all of them except for the Amazon sensor integrate nicely into Home Assistant. If I had to recommend one sensor overall, that’s tough, but I would go with the Air Gradient. There are a couple of reasons why.

1. I like the look. It has LED lights at the top to give you a quick glance at the current air quality state.
2. Next is the OLED display that shows all the important info right there on the device. It’s really easy to read if you don’t want to look at the dashboard.

And what's cool is that you can use this with or without Home Assistant. Enabling the cloud allows you to control, update, and view the dashboard as a standalone device. So really anyone can use this. Air Gradient is really big on being open source, so you don’t have to worry about your device not working down the road. I love that.

And the icing on the cake is how serious Air Gradient is with sensor accuracy. They’re using high-quality sensors and making sure there is enough airflow and space to measure correctly. Plus, it has the nitrous oxide dioxide sensor that is missing on most of the other devices. It’s really difficult to verify and compare the accuracy of these sensors, but for my brief testing, the less expensive sensors were a little less accurate.

So you kind of get what you pay for in this space. But if I had to trust a sensor for accurate readings, Air Gradient would be at the top of my list. To me, the sensors that can detect CO2 are the most helpful because that’s helping me every single day, and I definitely didn’t know I needed it.

But now I don’t want to live without it. It’s great to see air quality sensors becoming more popular, and it’s been eye-opening to learn about all these sensors. I’ll definitely be making more automations with air quality sensors, so hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already.

Thanks for watching. Hey yeah. I think I know why the VOCs are spiking. Oh yeah? It’s the dirty diapers, right? Maybe. But I think I found a much worse culprit. Guilty.