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Comment by wl | Hacker News Reader

There's value in automation across different devices. Just a silly example: I've got a CO₂ monitor in my office. If the level goes above a certain threshold, it triggers a fan and changes the color of an LED light strip to alert me.

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Automation is great. What's nice is the thing you described can also be implemented extremely cheaply without any fancy logic or network connectivity, and then it's just a Thing, not an IoT thing.

... Are you really using iot for a co2 sensor of all things? It's one thing if your smart toaster fails to start when your car enters the garage, it's another when a device to save your life decides to do an npm update at the wrong time and you go to sleep. For good.

This is probably to keep CO2 below 500/600 ppm, not a safety device.

Sitting in an increasingly concentrated puddle of my own CO₂ when I close the door of my small home office is not a life safety issue. It just seems to affect my cognitive performance at some point. If there were CO₂ tanks or combustion in play, I'd be using a proper industrial CO₂ alarm.

CO2 is pretty safe because your body has a built in sensor.

are you thinking of CO?

Slightly OT: But what sensor are you using? I've been on the lookout for one for years but always decided they've been too expensive. But now working from home I think it's time to finally get one.

I'm using the Kaiterra Laser Egg+ CO₂.

I was looking at this sensor available from Adafruit (and others): https://www.adafruit.com/product/4867

Seems like a reasonable price for a true CO2 sensor.

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