The CCS811 Is Not A Carbon Monoxide (CO) Sensor

tl;dr Many listings on Amazon, AliExpress, eBay and in other places incorrectly state that the CCS811 is a Carbon Monoxide (CO) sensor. It is not. It reports eTVOC (equivalent Total Volatile Organic Compounds) and eCO2 (equivalent Carbon Dioxide). The CCS811 is not capable of measuring Carbon … Continue reading →

Hey Kids, Don’t Leave Your Naked Grill Sensor Out Overnight!

So… I made a small mistake recently. I left sensor that I’d built for reporting my gas grill’s temperature sitting out, unprotected, by the grill. The board was a “butterball”, a high temperature sensor with a small OLED display for reporting temperatures and a BME280 for … Continue reading →

Found: Plantower PMS3003, PMS5003, PMS7003 Connectors

I’ve been working on an air quality monitoring project using the Plantower PMS5003 particle detector. It’s a cool little device that uses a laser to count particles of various sizes (1.0mm, 2.5mm and 10mm). It won’t tell you what kind of chemicals are in the air but it will give you a good … Continue reading →

November Roast: Timor-based Coffee Blend

I roast my own coffee. When I lived in New England, roasting my own coffee meant we could have delicious coffee at home (really good because it was freshly roasted, not because I have any magical coffee powers beyond being lucky enough to have a small coffee roaster). When I started roasting, … Continue reading →

Stop The loop() Insanity!

The simplest Arduino program looks like this: void setup() { } void loop() { } This does nothing beyond build and run. The setup() function is used for one time, well, setup. This is where you initialize a sensor or connect to Wifi or set the speed of your serial port. The loop() function is … Continue reading →