Sensor.Community smart home integration, free and open source

Air quality, noise and weather from Sensor.Community citizen sensors, yours or nearby.

• Published by guim31
• Devices
• Version 1.0.1
• Requires Gladys >=5.2.0
• ★ 0

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Air quality, noise and weather from the citizen sensors of Sensor.Community (formerly Luftdaten): your own airRohr box, or the public sensors around your home.

Developed without the hardware: feedback welcome. The integration was written and tested against recorded answers of the public API and of the airRohr firmware, not against a real box. Tell us on the Gladys forum how it behaves with yours.

This integration is not affiliated with Sensor.Community.

What it does

• Reads public sensors of the Sensor.Community network by their id, with no account and no key.
• Reads your own airRohr box directly on your network, for live values every minute (optional).
• Creates one device per sensor: PM2.5, PM10, PM1 when measured, temperature, humidity, pressure, noise, CO2, depending on the sensor.
• Computes the European Air Quality Index (EEA) from PM2.5 and PM10, and tells how old the last measurement is: a silent sensor is flagged.
• Adds an Air quality dashboard widget, a scene trigger Air quality changed and a scene action Get the air quality.

Read only: the integration never changes anything on a sensor.

Requirements

• Gladys Assistant 5.2.0 or later.
• Internet access for the public sensors (the Sensor.Community data API).
• For your own box: an airRohr (or any box running the Sensor.Community firmware) reachable from Gladys, with a fixed IP address (DHCP reservation on your router).
• For the nearby search: the location of your house, set in Settings → Houses. The integration asks for access to the house coordinates on the install screen; it only uses them for this search.

Configuration

Choose the sensors

1. Open the Configuration tab of the integration.
2. Click Find sensors near a house: pick the house (empty: the first house with a location) and a radius (empty: 2 km). The result lists the sensors that sent data in the last 5 minutes, nearest first, with their type, distance and measures, and the ids ready to copy.
3. Copy the ids you want into Sensor ids, separated by commas (20 at most). The id is also the number shown when you click a sensor on the map.
4. Save: the devices appear in the Discovery tab once their first measurement is read. Add them to Gladys.

Tip: a dust sensor (SDS011, SPS30…) and a weather sensor (BME280, DHT22…) of the same box have two different ids: add both.

Your own airRohr box

Enter its IP address in Address of your airRohr box (for example 192.0.2.20). Use the IP address: names ending in .local do not resolve from the integration's container. The box is read every minute through its /data.json page; no password is needed.

Other settings

• Refresh of the public sensors: every 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes. The public data moves every 5 minutes and Sensor.Community asks for moderation: 5 minutes is the fastest.
• Language: the language of the feature names (set when a device is added) and of the texts sent to scenes. French by default.

The Check the sensors button reads every configured sensor and tells what each one answers: its type and the age of its measurement, no data, or an error.

Devices

Public sensor

One device per id, named Sensor.Community #<id> (<type>). Its features follow what the sensor measures:

Feature	Unit	Sensors
PM2.5, PM10	µg/m³	SDS011, SPS30, PMS, HPM, NextPM
PM1	µg/m³	SPS30, PMS, NextPM
Temperature, Humidity	°C, %	BME280, DHT22, SHT3x, HTU21D
Pressure	hPa	BME280, BMP280, BMP180
Sea-level pressure	hPa	BME280, BMP280, BMP180
Noise (LAeq), min, max	dB	DNMS
CO2	ppm	SCD30
Air quality index (EAQI)	1–6	every particle sensor
Measurement age	min	every sensor

Each value is the mean of the measurements of the last 5 minutes, like the Sensor.Community map. PM1 is shown as a PM2.5-type feature (Gladys has no PM1 category), named "PM1".

Your airRohr box

One device named airRohr <chip id> (for example airRohr esp8266-1234567), with every sensor plugged into the box. The name of each feature carries the sensor: "Temperature (BME280)", "Temperature (DHT22)".

Air quality index

The European Air Quality Index of the European Environment Agency, from 1 to 6: good, fair, moderate, poor, very poor, extremely poor. The worst of PM2.5 and PM10 sets the level (bands revised in 2024: PM2.5 up to 5, 15, 50, 90, 140 µg/m³; PM10 up to 15, 45, 120, 195, 270 µg/m³). The EEA computes it on validated means of reference stations: on a low-cost sensor and 5 minutes, it is an indication.

Measurement age

Minutes since the last measurement of the sensor. Past 15 minutes the measurement is stale: the integration stops sending its values (Gladys keeps showing the last ones with their date), the widget says "Stale" and the age keeps growing, so a scene can warn you.

Widget

Add the Air quality widget to a dashboard.

• With a sensor chosen in its settings: live tiles (PM2.5, PM10, temperature, humidity), the level of the European index colored by its band (green for good and fair, orange for moderate, red beyond) and the age of the measurement.
• Without a sensor: one row per sensor measuring particles, with its level.

Scenes

Trigger: Air quality changed

Starts the scene when the European index of a sensor reaches another level, confirmed by two readings in a row (one puff of smoke does not fire it). Filters: the sensor, and the new levels that matter (for example poor, very poor, extremely poor). Variables available to the following actions: sensor name, level (as a word in the configured language), level 1 to 6, previous level, pollutant setting the level, PM2.5 and PM10.

Action: Get the air quality

Gives the air quality of one sensor, or, without a sensor, the worst of the sensors measured in the last 15 minutes. Outputs: a summary ready for a notification ("Poor · PM2.5 62 µg/m³ · PM10 80 µg/m³ · 3 min ago"), the level as a word, its key and number, PM2.5, PM10 and the measurement age.

Scene examples

• Close the windows when the air gets bad: trigger "Air quality changed" with the levels poor, very poor, extremely poor → send a message "Air is {{triggerEvent.data.level_label}} around {{triggerEvent.data.sensor_name}}: close the windows".
• Morning briefing: at 7:30 → action "Get the air quality" → send the summary in the morning message.
• Silent sensor: trigger on the "Measurement age" feature above 60 minutes → notify that the sensor (or your box's Wi-Fi) is down.
• Ventilation: when the index of your own box goes back to good or fair, start the controlled mechanical ventilation.

Troubleshooting

• No device in the Discovery tab: a sensor appears once its first measurement is read. Click Check the sensors: "no data in the last 5 minutes" means the sensor is offline, or the id is wrong (the API answers the same for both). Check the id on the map.
• The status says the API does not answer: the Sensor.Community API is down or unreachable from Gladys; the readings resume on their own.
• Your box does not answer: check its IP address (a fixed one), that it is powered and on the same network as Gladys, and open http://<its address>/data.json in a browser.
• A box with an old firmware (before 2020) has no /metrics page: its device is then named after its address, and a new address makes a new device. Update the firmware.
• Logs: open the integration logs from Gladys. Set LOG_LEVEL=debug to see every reading.

Limits

• Data of citizen sensors, not of reference stations: low-cost dust sensors over-read in humid air (fog, rain). Use the values as trends.
• Public sensors are read every 5 minutes at most, and at most 20 sensors.
• Only PM2.5 and PM10 feed the European index: the other pollutants of the official index (ozone, NO2, SO2) are not measured by these sensors.
• PM4 and particle counts (SPS30, IPS-7100) are not shown: Gladys has no category for them.
• The integration reads; it never configures a box.

Configuration settings

These are the settings Sensor.Community asks for in its configuration screen in Gladys.

Setting	Type	Required	Description
Citizen sensors	section	No	Read public Sensor.Community sensors (no account) by their id, the number shown on the map, or your own airRohr box on your network. Not affiliated with Sensor.Community.
Sensor ids	string	No	The ids of the public sensors to read, separated by commas (20 at most). The "Find sensors near a house" button below lists those around you.
Address of your airRohr box	string	No	Optional: the IP address of your own box on your network, read every minute for live values. Use its IP address: names ending in .local do not resolve from the integration.
Refresh of the public sensors	select	No	The public data moves every 5 minutes, and Sensor.Community asks for moderation: 5 minutes is the fastest.
Language	select	No	Language of the feature names (set when a device is added) and of the scene texts.

How to install Sensor.Community in Gladys

1. In Gladys, open Integrations: Sensor.Community appears in the catalog, next to the native integrations, with a community badge.
2. Click Install. Gladys pulls the Docker image (ghcr.io/guim31/gladys-sensor-community:1.0.1), starts it in a sandbox isolated from the core, and generates the integration's interface (devices, discovery and configuration).
3. Open the Configuration screen of the integration, fill in the settings, and save.
4. You can also install it directly from its repository URL: https://github.com/guim31/gladys-sensor-community.

Sensor.Community requires Gladys >=5.2.0. The catalog inside Gladys refreshes every hour, so a new version becomes available at most one hour after its release.

Not running Gladys yet? It is free and open source: follow the installation guide to get started.

About external integrations

Sensor.Community is an external integration: a community integration packaged as a Docker container and published on GitHub, that Gladys installs in one click and runs in a sandbox isolated from its core. It is published and maintained by guim31, not by the Gladys core team.

• Browse all integrations, native and community
• Build and publish your own external integration
• Source code on GitHub — source of this documentation

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