André Costa's Pico W Air Is a Raspberry Pi Pico W Carrier Board for Air Quality Monitoring
This CircuitPython-based board comes with a Raspberry Pi Pico W already installed — just add a Plantower PMS5003 particulate matter sensor.
Maker André Costa has designed a carrier board for the Raspberry Pi Pico W microcontroller board, turning it into an Internet of Things (IoT) host for a Plantower PMS5003 and optional secondary Qwiic/STEMMA QT sensor: the Pico W Air.
"The Pico W Air is a great board if you want to get into environment data logging," Costa claims of his latest design. "It comes with a connection for a [Plantower] PMS5003 particulate matter sensor and Qwiic/[STEMMA] QT connector that allows you to connect any Qwiic/[STEMMA] QT (I2C) sensor. All powered by the excellent Raspberry Pi Pico W."
The carrier board comes with a Raspberry Pi Pico W surface-mounted and already loaded with a CircuitPython firmware. The Plantower PMS5003 sensor, the board's primary data source, connects over a solder-free cable, while a secondary sensor can be added using the Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector — and there are five general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, including one analog input, brought out to an unpopulated 0.1" pin header if you need more.
Elsewhere on the board are red and green LEDs, for what Costa calls "status or other blinking business," and a footprint for an optional reset button. The firmware comes with a built-in web server with JSON application programming interface (API) and an MQTT client, compatible with Home Assistant, Node-RED, or other MQTT brokers.
The source code for the project has been published to GitHub under the permissive MIT license, while the boards are listed on the DPHacks Tindie store for $11.50 including the Raspberry Pi Pico W — though, at the time of writing, were showing as out-of-stock.