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Comment by omh | Hacker News Reader

I have the Awair Element and I'm reasonably happy with it.

The primary interface is through their app and I think you might need to use this to get it up and running initially. But they have a supported local API feature[1] that has so far worked as I'd expect. In the end I've been happy with their app so have primarily used that so far. The data seems good.

They're quite expensive new. But they were involved in some sort of cryptocurrency (!) that failed. So there are a lot of them available as nearly-new on eBay. In the UK I picked one up for about £60, I think.

[1] https://support.getawair.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049221014-...

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Awair recently deprecated some of their devices making them into bricks instead of allowing them to continue working locally. I'd stay away.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Awair/comments/y7i5ku/awair_discont...

The v1 devices never supported a real local API. The v2 devices like the Awair Element do have a local API built-in. It does have to be enabled via the app but it lets you hit the device's LAN address and get back real time JSON with the sensor data. Not to say they couldn't figure out a way to brick those devices in the future, but you could theoretically turn on the Local API and then firewall the devices to your network to prevent future firmware updates.

That would work for a while but if you ever needed to set it up on a new Wifi network you would be screwed, as the app is required for initial setup.

One thing I've learned over the years is that it's good to "own" your SSID, and preferably stick to pro-grade routers that let you configure local network addressing. As long as you stick to Internet providers that let you run their hardware in "bridge" mode, it means you don't have to set up new WiFi networks at all.

I have some of them. They are expensive new, but well calibrated, with decent components.

The local API is easy to interface to telegraf, so its trivial to dump to your graphing system of choice.

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