Greg Cormier's Espairqual Offers an Easy Approach to Interfacing PM Sensors with Home Assistant

Engineer Greg Cormier has designed an Espressif ESP32-powered board which aims to make it easy to get Plantower PMSx003 and Panasonic NA-GCJA5 particular matter (PM) air quality sensors talking to a Home Assistant instance: espairqual.

"Espairqual is an ESP32 based ESPHome interface for PMSx003 and Panasonic NA-GCJA5 particulate matter (PM) sensors," Cormier explains of the device he has designed. "It offers a plug and play solution to integrate air quality monitoring with home assistant. It provides 5V to the sensor and 3.3V to the internal electronics."

Driven by an Espressif ESP32 module running the popular ESPHome firmware, the board is designed to talk to one of the two different air quality sensors: "While the [Plantower] PMS5003 is a good sensor," Cormier explains of his decision to add support for the Panasonic sensor, "I did receive one dead-on-arrival from Aliexpress. The Panasonic sensor is cheaper, smaller, available from tier-1 distributors and has a 5+ year life expectancy."

In either case, the board connects to the external sensor and acts as a bridge to a Home Assistant or compatible home automation system. A USB Type-C connector is used for power, driving both the espairqual board and the sensor to which it's connected, or there are screw terminals for DC and AC power — from 9VDC up to either 40VDC or 28VAC, with 24VAC as the target for the design.

Cormier has released board design files and source code for the project on GitHub under an unspecified open source license; assembled boards are available to order on his Tindie store at $30, and fit within a Hammond 1593KBK case to neaten things up.