GoodOne: Building an Open Source Everyday Carry Air Quality Sampler

GoodOne began by posing a simple question: although we know the AQI of a city, just how well do we actually know the air we are breathing in our homes, at work, in classrooms, when commuting, or on the streets? Currently, air quality monitoring is either sparse and costly, or it relies on low-cost sensors whose readings offer only limited insight into calibration, benchmarking, airflow, and the way the measurements are obtained.

In order to deal with this, we developed GoodOne, an open source, portable device for sampling air quality which is intended to make it easier to check, reproduce, and improve environmental measurements. It incorporates sensors for PM2.5, PM10, CO₂, VOCs, temperature, and humidity together with an ESP32-S3, local processing capabilities, a display, a rechargeable LiPo battery, USB-C charging, and Bluetooth connectivity. The device functions offline, records the measurements locally, and can be taken along with the user to act as a personal exposure monitor, an indoor air quality monitor, or a portable ground station.

In this talk. we'll look at the first version of the system, the mistakes we made, and the changes that were introduced as we developed it.

Here, we will show how GoodOne allows users to plug and play into Meshtastic network, where different devices provide similar local readings to a community based monitoring system. using the same hardware device here, we will show how users can gather environmental information, compare readings from different places, work on pollution maps, find out exposure patterns, and use these readings to reduce their exposure.

• Understanding what city level pollution numbers miss and the challenges with measuring the air we actually breathe.

• Exploring the hardware, software, and design choices behind an open source, portable air-quality monitor.

• Seeing how the first prototype evolved through testing, failures, calibration, and real world improvements.

• Discovering how citizens can deploy devices, contribute and validate results, and help build better community driven pollution monitoring.