Project Aura is a DIY air quality monitor based on ESP32 that features a touchscreen display and industrial sensors, fully integrated with the Home Assistant home automation platform.
While DIY and open source often mean creating the board yourself and soldering components, Project Aura is different. It utilizes off-the-shelf parts connected with cables, eliminating soldering needs, and the enclosure can be 3D printed. The firmware can be easily installed via a one-click web installer.
Key components of Project Aura:
- Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-LCD-4.3 – an ESP32-S3 board with a 16MB flash, 4.3-inch IPS display (800×480) featuring capacitive touch, using PH2.0 connectors instead of a terminal block for I/Os.
- Sensirion SEN66 + Adafruit breakout for data capture, measuring PM1, PM2.5, PM4, PM10 particle levels, CO2, VOC, and NOx, as well as temperature and humidity.
- Sensirion SFA30 formaldehyde sensor – Note: optional. Without it, the interface displays AQI instead of HCHO. Support for the new SFA40 firmware is underway.
- Adafruit pressure sensors (DPS310, BMP580, or BMP581) & I2C Hub, automatically identified by the firmware to plot pressure change graphs, alerting weather changes.
- Adafruit PCF8523 real-time clock with a battery.
- Various cables and screws.
Note: The Adafruit SEN6x breakout isn’t currently in stock. You may need to wait or find another breakout board.
The firmware has a touch user interface using the LVGL library, includes a local web setup portal, and supports MQTT for Home Assistant discovery. UI features include the main dashboard, settings, theme selection, MQTT configuration, screen timeout and sleep settings, and time/data configuration. Supporting eight languages including English, German, and Chinese, the open-source code allows adding other languages easily.
The firmware uses PlatformIO CLI or VSCode + PlatformIO extension, built with Arduino ESP32 core 3.1.1 (based on ESP-IDF 5.3.x). Source code, binary releases, and build/flash instructions are available on GitHub. The web installer is available on the project’s website for backers.
Project Aura is possibly the most visually appealing DIY air quality monitor, but not the only one. The open-source AirGradient ONE Kit, built with an ESP32-C3 SoC, has a smaller 1.3-inch OLED compared to Aura’s 4.3-inch touchscreen.
You can build the air quality monitor yourself or buy it assembled. The first option involves a crowdfunding campaign where a $25 pledge provides access to the 3D-printable enclosure files, assembly guide, and web installer code, totaling around $200 with the optional SFA30 sensor. Alternatively, an assembled unit can be purchased on Smartdomo for 139 Euros or 189 Euros, though it’s currently out of stock.
Via Adafruit