Hacker News Reader

Comment by nrjames | Hacker News Reader

Purple Air hits on a bit of the neighborhood pollution sensor idea: https://www2.purpleair.com/

I've used their API to look at California wildfire data.

Their API is great. I found their site a little slow for something I want to check regularly so I built a faster one based on the API:

https://aqi.today

If there's a PurpleAir sensor near you, it will show you the reading instantly. It also updates the favicon so you can leave it open in the background and check the reading just by glancing at the tab.

This is great! saved to home screen on iOS for convenience

Purple Air has been extremely popular in our community due to the wild fires here in California. There are quite a few sensors around town, and it gives you a good idea about how to prepare the kids for school and whether we should be riding bicycles.

How do you act on the air quality info? Seems to me that riding a bike or driving a car you'd be breathing the same air.

When you ride a bike you breathe a lot more. Staying indoors and exercising less (therefore breathing less) while you are outside are the two main things you can do when air quality is bad.

Light poles, cell towers, smart speakers and home internet routers seem like a good place where to bundle sensors with.

p.s. thanks for that site. Works well with BitBar:

      #!/bin/bash
      /usr/bin/sudo -u dzhiurgis -i bash -c 'echo -n "AQI "; curl -s https://www.purpleair.com/json\?key\=EAOGA5Q4JOPE8HH7\&show\=17325 | jq -r ".results[0].PM2_5Value"'

I think this data is integrated into weather underground app as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com