Measure The Air Quality Around Your House With Free AQI Monitor Giveaway

We’re all very aware of what we’re putting on our plates and into our stomachs – but what about what’s filling our lungs?

The air we breathe is more polluted than you think – and it’s unfortunately not visible to the naked eye. The quality of air is affected by a whole host of factors, from where you love to the time of year and time of day. So how do you know whether the air you are breathing is safe?

Rohit Bansal, the founder of AQI India, has a smart device that can measure air quality levels, and he’s willing to let you test it out FOR FREE.

We caught up with him to learn more about the device and his initiative to get Indians to breather cleaner air.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started this venture.

I have lived in China for over ten years - the most polluted country on this planet when it comes to air pollution.

The venture started after I developed sinusitis because of living in Beijing. My doctor told me one of the reasons was the polluted air and this made me realise the problem would persist in India as well – this was back in 2008.

Smog over the Eastern Chinese city of Jiujiang

What does the device do and how does it work?

The device consists of sensors - a low-cost Particulate Measure (Dust) sensor, along with noise, temperature and humidity sensor.

It samples the air with a built-in fan that sucks the air inside a chamber. After testing the air, it sends the number of particles in the air to the cloud. 

Once we know exactly how many particles are present, we cover that in micrograms (one-millionth of a gram) per cubic metre or ug/m3. (This metric is used to measure the concentration of air pollutants, in micrograms, per cubic metres.)

 Once this is measured, we get the value of the particulate matter, PM2.5 and PM10 and with it, we can calculate the AQI or Air Quality Index. We have added the noise sensor to monitor how much noise is there in which area.

The air around you is more polluted than you think

Why should homes and businesses invest in the monitor?

People should install it to know what air that they are breathing while they are in the office or house.

In India, we don’t really have proper ventilation systems in offices and we are directly exposed to the air outside, even when we are inside.

There are studies that show that indoor air is 5 times more polluted than the outdoors! We would like to have the monitors placed all over the country so that people can really get an idea about what they are breathing.

There are 6 thresholds of AQI, the level of PM2.5 should be less than 35, but in Delhi, I don’t think there is any day where PM2.5 levels are even lower than that.

Delhi is one of the most polluted cities in the world

When and where can it be installed?

Installation for the phase-1 monitor is simple: we will send our guy to any part of the country to get it done.

This monitor will be installed outside the house, on the roof or the balcony. It should be at a good distance from the kitchen because kitchen smoke will affect the reading.

All you need is a power socket. The device has a GSM communication, so we don’t need any wifi. All we need is a power point that will consume less power than a household wireless router.

How can we get it installed?

We are running a giveaway project for the phase-1 monitors - we are installing them for free if we don’t have one in that area already.

You can follow this link to apply for one.

We should be launching the website in October and would like to cover maximum area of this country by then. Users will be able to see the data on the map.

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