A two months comparison between

Air Master Pro AM7 and AirVisual Pro

PM sensors at meteoLCD, spring 2020

Francis Massen francis.massen@education.lu

Claude Baumann claude.baumann@education.lu
Raoul Tholl raoul.tholl@education.lu
Mike Zimmer mike.zimmer@education.lu

Francis Massen is the leader of meteoLCD (https://meteo.lcd.lu)

file: Airmaster_Airvisual_comparison_spring2020.pdf
version 1.0: 16 May 2020

Abstract

An Air Master Pro AM7 sensor was exposed besides the running AirVisual
Pro in the Stevenson hut on the terrace of meteoLCD from 3-Mar to 5-May
2020.
A comparison between both relative inexpensive sensors and the
measurements made with an Horiba instrument at the official Beidweiler
station shows good synchronicity, but differences in maxima. Linear
regression is statistically significant, and better for PM2.5. It may yield a
calibration factor to adjust the Air Master and AirVisual readings to those of
the Horiba APDA-371 at the reference Beidweiler station.
The Air Master Pro seems to suffer from instable time.

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1. The Air Master 2 Pro (AM7)

The Air Master is a Chinese multi-sensor board, sold in AM6 and AM7
versions. The AM7 Pro version here used has 5 sensors mounted on one
board: T/RH, HCHO (formaldehyde), VOC, PM's and CO2. The CO2 sensor is
made by Senseair (Sweden) , the HCHO by Dart Sensors (UK and PRC) and
the laser light scattering LLS PM sensor is probably a Plantower model. All
sensors are plugged in sockets, so may individually be replaced. A micro-
controller (not accessible and not documented, probably a ESP8286) controls
these sensors and shows the readings in a fixed time-step of about 5
seconds. The readings are shown on a TFT color display; besides the default
screen (see fig.1) two supplementary screens show graphical representations.
The motherboard has a slot for an microSD-Card, which can store the
readings in a .csv format file. A new file is made every day, the filename being
YYYYnnn, where YYYY is the start year and nnn an increasing count starting
at nnn=1 for a new card. The Air Master is powered by an on-board
rechargeable battery (autonomy about 6 hours) and/or a micro-USB
connector. When connected to a computer, the Air Master is seen as an USB-
serial device, and can be monitored by software accessing the serial port. A
Labview Virtual Instrument (VI) named "Airmaster Control Pannel" (note the
orthographic glitch!) can be found on the Internet. This software is not
necessary to operate the sensor, as the instrument runs in a stand-alone
mode; nevertheless it is the easiest way to configure date and time. The
ESP8286 microcontroller has no real-time clock, but an internal oscillator
whose frequency is only accurate to +/-15ppm, so one must be prepared to
some "wandering off" of the internal time over longer periods.

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 Fig.1 The Air Master Pro AM7

As visible from the picture, the sensors and electronics are not protected at all
against outside conditions, and the sensor is sold as an in-house instrument.
The price is about 200-250 US$ or Euro. The models sold outside China do
not have an integrated WiFi module; so the only means to connect to the Air
Master is by a USB-serial connection; access to the data is done by simply
removing the SD card and reading it out (the card is not visible through the
USB-serial line).

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As common with low-priced Chinese instruments, support is quasi inexistent.
The firmware can be updated in theory, but the file containing it can not be
found. A shareware program SPU (Serial Port Utility) as well as the Airmaster
Control VI can be found on the internet with a bit of luck, much patience and
use of Google Chinese translation. With a delay of a few months a second
instrument that seemed identical to the first was acquired. The first shows on
the SPU only the results of one sensor (HCHO, instead all 7 measurements),
and is not found by the VI when in screen mode 1. The later bought
instrument does not have these problems. So despite announcing the same
firmware release, probably some corrections were made without any
documentation; as a file with the firmware is not available, an update is
impossible. That seems to be the price to be paid for being low cost!

3. The AirVisual Pro by iQAir

This stylish and slightly more expensive instrument (ca. 269 US$ or Euro) is
developed by the Swiss company iQAir, and also is made in China. It is
operational at meteoLCD since fall 2018, and has shown good behaviour and
results [ref. 1, 2].

Fig.2. The AirVisual Pro

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This instrument is more protected against outside influences, but it is not IP56
or higher . The CO2 sensor also is a Senseair product, the PM sensor an
undocumented type (possibly Plantower) "enhanced" by iQAir according to
the products leaflet. An Allwinner A33 chip with a quad-core Cortex-A7
microcontroller works inside, and the available Flash RAM is 4 GB. There is
no removable SD card slot, and access to all the archive data is by an SMB
connection over WiFi (there is no USB-serial port). The AirVisual Pro sends its
data every 15 minutes into the iQAir cloud, accessible through a link on the
main meteoLCD web-page of the near-live data
(https://meteo.lcd.lu/today_01.html). The 4GB memory is sufficient for storing
several years of measurements, typically 4 to 5 years.

4. The data series of AM and AV

As the exposure began during the 3rd March 2020, and ended during the 5th
May 2020, only the data from 4-May-2020 to 30-April-2020, i.e. 58 days, are
taken for this study.
Manipulating the Air Master data demands software that can handle over a
million of data lines. Here we used DADiSP 6.7, the latest version of this
outstanding software the main author is familiar with since its start about 40
years ago. To concatenate the files in the correct order under Windows
needed some thinking, as the file-names are not always the same length.
They are named with the year followed by an increasing number (e.g.
202032.csv, 202033.csv, ….2020320.csv,…). So an ASCII sort on the names
brings some surprises. The problem was solved by sorting according to the
file-creation time using a Linux bash command
cat $(ls -r -t) > globalfile.csv
To access the traditional Linux commands, the Opensource Github Desktop
for Windows was installed; this painlessly brings a BASH environment into
Windows.
As the Air Master clock was not set correctly (how to do this was solved only
later in May), the CO2 readings of meteoLCD and those of Air Master were

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used to detect the proper start parameters. As meteoLCD stores its data
every 30 minutes, all data were raveled into that format. For the Air Master it
was found that successive readings were made at the intervals 4s…
6s….4s…..6s….. etc. So a mean time-step of 5s could be assumed, which
means that 1800/5 = 360 successive Air Master readings were raveled into
one half-hour reading. As the Airvisual Pro stores one reading every 15
minutes, two were raveled for one half-hour. Raveling means replacing n
values by their average. The slight problem that a reading with a time-stamp
02:00 corresponds in fact to all measurements done in the interval 02:00-
02:30, and should correctly be stamped at 02:15 can be ignored here.
Here now the plot of the PM2.5 and PM10 series, Air Master Pro readings in
blue, AirVisual in red:

Fig. 3: The Air Master Pro (AM) and AirVisual Pro (AV) half-hour readings for PM 2.5,
uncorrected for humidity. Averages over the full period are 16.2 and 9.5 ug/m3

Fig. 4: The Air Master Pro (AM) and AirVisual Pro (AV) half-hour readings for PM10,
uncorrected for humidity. Averages over the full period are 19.5 and 9.8 ug/m3

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A first comment is that both instruments show a satisfying synchronicity
between lows and peaks, but with a very visible time mismatch at the start.
This seems to be a problem with the non-steady clock of the AM. So
comparing half-hours and even hourly readings may be hazardous; but, as we
will do later, averaging over a full day will smooth this mismatch out for a good
part.
A second comment is that the AM readings are always higher than those of
the AV; later we will use the Beidweiler station as a reference, and it will give
us a clue which is too high or too low.
A third comment must be made on the difference between PM2.5 and PM10
readings. As PM2.5 particles are a subset of the PM10's, their readings
should be lower. That clearly is the case for the AM (16.2 and 19.5) but not at
all for the AV (9.5 and 9,8), a fact also mentioned in [ref.2].

It is well known that humidity levels (mostly above 70%) inflate the PM count,
due to water condensation altering the scattered laser light characteristics.
Professional instruments like the Horiba APDA-371 dry the incoming air,
monitor the flow and the pressure, and mostly do not use an LLS
measurement principle (the Horiba uses beta radiation attenuation). Several
studies have found an empirical way to correct LLS readings for humidity, by
dividing the raw readings by a growth-factor defined as
b * RH 2
GF  a 
1  RH
with a =1 and b = 0.25 (RH between 0..1, not in percent!), see fig.5.

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 Fig. 5: Graph of the growth factor GF

Applying GF to both series does not make extreme, but nevertheless non-
negligible changes:

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 Fig. 6: Raw and corrected PM 2.5 readings of AM and AV

The PM 2.5 averages over the full period changes are:

raw corrected relative change

Air Master Pro 16.2 12.6 - 22%
AirVisual Pro 9.5 7.6 - 20%

A diminution of about 20% due to relative humidity is high enough not to be

neglected. So whenever possible, LLS readings should be corrected for
humidity. As both the AM and AV sensors measure RH, the readings of the
individual RH sensors have been applied.

5. Comparing the daily readings of AM, AV and Beidweiler.

The Beidweiler data are fetched from the European discomap web-site
[ref.3]; missing data have been replaced by repeating the last valid reading.

Fig.7 shows the PM2.5 readings: clearly the AirVisual (AV) data (red) are very
close to those of the Horiba at Beidweiler (green) , whereas the AirMaster
data (blue) are nearly always too high except a for very few days with low
concentrations. The situation is different for PM10, as shown in fig.8. The
AirVisual readings are clearly too low, what does not come as a surprise, as
these PM10 readings were "anormally" close to its PM 2.5. For a good part of
the time, the Air Master Pro readings follow well those of the Horiba, with

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some noticeable exception during the high concentration days at the end of
the period.

Fig.7: Daily PM 2.5 readings by AM (blue) and AV (red) at meteLCD, and Horiba (green with
open circles) at Beidweiler, 04-Mar to 30-Apr-2020. AM and AV corrected for humidity.

Fig.8: Daily PM 10 readings by AM (blue) and AV (red) at meteLCD, and Horiba (green with
open circles) at Beidweiler, 04-Mar to 30-Apr-2020. AM and AV corrected for humidity.

.
The following table gives the averages and standard deviations for the 3
instruments over the full period:

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 average standard relative change of average
deviation w.r. to Horiba
Air Master Pro
PM2.5 12.6 7.1 + 26%

AirVisual Pro
PM2.5 7.6 4.7 - 24%

Horiba PM2.5
(Beidweiler) 10.0 5.0

Air Master Pro

PM10 15.1 8.8 - 21%

AirVisual Pro
PM10 7.9 4.8 -58.4%

Horiba PM10
(Beidweiler 19.0 8.7

6. Linear regressions of Horiba readings versus the 2 LLS sensors

An usual affine regression finds zero offsets that are rather small, so we will
simply look for calibration factors by regressing Horiba versus AM or AV.
Fig 9. shows these 4 regression lines, whose slope would be the multiplicator
to apply to the AM or AV readings. We again find that both LLS sensors work
best for PM 2.5, and the Air Master Pro better for PM10. Concerning PM10,
the R2 for both sensors is poor, and the visual impression is that concordance
is only acceptable for very small PM10 concentrations (like PM10 < 10
ug/m3), remembering that the AirVisual PM10 readings are too low by a factor
of two!

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Fig.9. Calibration factors for AM and AV: upper row PM10, lower row PM2.5

7. Conclusion

The aim of this paper was first to see how the "new" Airmaster Pro AM7 with
integrated SD card works over longer periods, and if it does survive the rather
poor protected environment of a Stevenson hut. As for the survival: yes, the
instrument survived two months of exposure unharmed, with several periods
of RH > 90%.
Fig.10 shows these RH levels as measured by both instruments; both series
do agree very well.
.

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Fig.10: Relative humidity (RH%) as measured by the inbuilt sensor of Air Master Pro and
AirVisual Pro.

Comparing the PM measurements w.r. to the reference of Beidweiler the

conclusion is that the AirVisual Pro better follows the Horiba PM2.5 readings,
and the Air Master Pro better the PM10.

A question that is often asked is if these relative cheap sensors are more than
a gadget. Here, and this was also found in the 2 previous papers in [ref.1,2],
the answer is: these low-cost sensors are much more than a gadget, but you
should not be blind to their intrinsic problems:

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1. it is mandatory to make a humidity correction; this is easy, as every
instrument has its own RH sensor

2. a serious problem is the instability of the inbuilt clock or oscillator.

The AirVisual Pro is stable for longer periods, as it is in constant
communication with a Wlan, and probably gets updated time signals during
sending its data into the iQAir cloud.
The Air Master Pro works as a completely independent device; it's time seems
wandering off. This analysis has not studied if this is a random process with
timings going too slow and too fast, according for instance to temperature (as
suggested by the ESP8286 datasheet); or is it a gradual increase/decrease in
the mean time interval between the measurements? What was a surprise was
that the observed sequence 4s…5s….4s….5s was visible over the whole
period. Counting the number of measurements per day (day given by the
inbuilt oscillator) yields practically always the same number of records
(~17280). So the timing problem seem to be caused by changes in what the
Air Master sees as being a "second".
A next study after a re-exposure for a couple of months will try to elucidate
this problem.

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References:

1. F. Massen et al. A short study in fine particles measurement at meteoLCD

by inexpensive LLS sensors.
https://meteo.lcd.lu/papers/short_study_fine_particles_19NOV2018.pdf

2. F. Massen et al: A first in-situ comparison between the Airvisual Pro and
Horiba fine particle measurements at Diekirch and Beidweiler, Luxembourg.
https://meteo.lcd.lu/papers/MASSEN/airvisual_beidweiler_first_comparison_A
pr2019def.pdf

3. discomap: http://discomap.eea.europa.eu/map/fme/AirQualityExport.htm

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