Get a Better 'Sense' of Your Indoor Environment

In their new Kickstarter campaign, Metriful claims that we spend 90% of our lives indoors — and with shelter-in-place orders in effect in many locations across the globe, that number is probably even higher at present! But how much do we really know about the environment where we spend almost all of our time? The Metriful MS430 aims to offer insight into our environs with nearly a dozen classes of measurement crammed into a postage stamp-sized PCB!

The following integrated sensors provide myriad measurements:

• Bosch Sensortec BME680 — air quality index, air pressure, temperature, humidity, equivalent breath VOC concentration and estimated CO2 concentration.
• Vishay VEML6030 — illuminance and white light level.
• Knowles SPH0645LM4H-B — sound pressure level for six frequency bands from 125 Hz to 4 kHz, peak sound amplitude.
• Optionally, a Shinyei PPD42 air particulate matter sensor can be added for airborne particle detection.

Orchestrating all of this is what appears to be an STM32G071KB Arm Cortex-M0+ MCU — and with the on-board microcontroller doing the heavy lifting, all that's required is an I2C-capable device with 3.3V or 5V logic levels, such as the Raspberry Pi and Arduino — or many thousands of other devices.

Although it is their first Kickstarter campaign, Metriful has already completed a prototype and manufacturing pilot run, as well as (at the time of publication) raised 10 times the funds required for the minimum run. Extensive code examples and documentation are already available on GitHub, primarily targeting the Arduino Nano 33 IoT and Raspberry Pi. The board is available with pre-soldered or loose headers (in a choice of straight or 90 degree), and the combined through-hole and castellated edge terminals mean that surface-mounting to another board is also possible.

The Metriful MS430 is currently available on Kickstarter for a pledge or £31 (about $39) with a planned arrival time of September 2020.