Specs, data, and honest comparisons — no fluff.

ambient one — air quality monitor

We built an air quality tracker because we couldn't trust the cheap ones — here's the data.

Measures PM2.5, PM1.0, PM10, CO₂, VOCs, NOx, temperature and humidity in real-time. Swiss Sensirion sensors. Open MQTT. Works with Home Assistant out of the box.

433 Kickstarter backers $117k raised Batch 2 · ships June 2026
Pre-order — £199

10% discount applied automatically at checkout

ambient one air quality monitor

Real readings, not demo data

Actual logged measurements from ambient one units in a home office, a workshop, and a small studio. All readings exportable via CSV.

🪵 Sanding wood in a workshop (20 min)
PM10 1,840 µg/m³ Off the charts — mask needed
PM2.5 420 µg/m³ 84× WHO annual guideline
CO₂ 980 ppm Borderline

Without monitoring, you'd have no idea. Dust settled but PM2.5 stayed elevated for 40 min after stopping.

🖥️ Working from home, windows closed (afternoon)
CO₂ 1,480 ppm Cognitive impact above 1,000
Humidity 71 % Mould risk above 65%
PM2.5 12 µg/m³ Elevated from street traffic

Opening a window for 10 minutes dropped CO₂ below 800 ppm. Without a monitor, most people never realise the air degrades this much during a normal workday.

🪵 Sanding wood indoors (20 min)
PM10 1,840 µg/m³ Off the charts — mask needed
PM2.5 420 µg/m³ 84× WHO annual guideline
CO₂ 980 ppm Borderline

This is why we built it. Without monitoring, you'd have no idea. Dust settled but PM2.5 stayed elevated for 40 min after stopping.

🛋️ New IKEA furniture off-gassing (48 hr)
VOC index ~420 index Day 1 peak
VOC index (day 3) ~95 index Back to baseline
Humidity 67 % Mold risk >65%

Formaldehyde and other VOCs in flat-pack furniture are well documented. The data confirmed when it was actually safe to sleep in the room.

ambient one in a workshop
ambient one — designed in London

What it actually measures

Sensor specs, not marketing copy. The Sensirion SEN66 module — the same sensor family used in commercial building management systems.

Sensor What it detects Range Accuracy
PM1.0 / PM2.5 / PM4.0 / PM10 Fine particles — dust, smoke, pollen, combustion particles 0–1,000 µg/m³ ±10 µg/m³ or ±10%
CO₂ Carbon dioxide — ventilation quality indicator 400–5,000 ppm ±40 ppm ±5%
VOCs (index) Volatile organic compounds — paints, solvents, cleaning products, new furniture Index 1–500 ±15% typical
NOx (index) Nitrogen oxides — gas stoves, traffic, combustion Index 1–500 ±15% typical
Temperature Ambient temperature –10°C to 60°C ±0.5°C
Humidity Relative humidity 0–100% ±4.5% RH

VOC and NOx are reported as indices (1–500 scale), not absolute ppb, because the Sensirion MOS sensor requires baseline calibration over time — the raw ppb values before calibration would be misleading. The index is reliable from day one. Full datasheet: sensirion.com/SEN66

Honest comparison

Where competitors beat us, we say so.

Feature ambient one Awair Element IKEA ALPSTUGA Atmotube Pro
Battery powered ✓ ✗ ✗ ✓
PM2.5 ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
CO₂ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✗
VOCs ✓ ✓ ✗ ✓
NOx ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Modular ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Open MQTT / local API ✓ free Paid tier ✗ ✗
Home Assistant auto-discovery ✓ 12 sensors ✗ ✗ ✗
Data export ✓ ✓ ✗ ✓
Offline (no cloud required) ✓ ✗ ✗ ✗
Price £199 ~£230 ~£29 ~£120

Honest notes:

  • Atmotube Pro (~£120): Goes with you. If you want personal exposure monitoring while commuting or outdoors, Atmotube wins — ambient one is a room monitor, not a wearable.
  • Awair Element (~£230): Established brand with 5+ years of firmware updates. If you're risk-averse about buying from a newer company, that's a fair concern.

From the founders

We're Giulio and Yuki. Yuki came from MIT where she was working on environmental sensing research. I came from SAM Labs, an IoT startup. We built ambient one because we kept finding ourselves in workshops, studios, and flats with genuinely bad air — and had no reliable way to know it. Cheap monitors contradicted each other. Good ones locked your data behind a paywall.

One thing I felt strongly about from the start: I didn't want the sensor hidden behind furniture. Most monitors are tucked away on a shelf or sit on a windowsill. ambient one is designed to be out in the open — the e-ink display shows your readings at a glance, without needing to open an app. That design decision shaped everything else.

Batch 1 shipped to 433 Kickstarter backers. Their feedback directly shaped Batch 2. You can reach us at hello@ambientworks.io.

— Giulio & Yuki, co-founders @ ambient works · London
ambient one in use

Specs and price — no asterisks

SensorsPM1.0 / PM2.5 / PM4.0 / PM10, CO₂, VOC index, NOx index, Temp, Humidity
Sensor moduleSensirion SEN66
DisplayE-ink, 1.59″
ConnectivityWi-Fi 2.4GHz, Bluetooth LE
Battery3,500 mAh Li-Po
ChargingUSB-C, 5V/1A
ProtocolsMQTT (local), REST API, BLE
Home AssistantAuto-discovery, 12 entities, no cloud
Dimensions75 × 75 × 35 mm
Weight~180 g
Made inDesigned in London, assembled in China

Batch 2 pre-order price

£199 was £249

Batch 2 is limited by our production run — we'll update availability as it changes.

Ships June 2026 · Designed in London, assembled in China

Pre-order ambient one

10% discount applied automatically at checkout

433 Kickstarter backers · $117,443 raised · View campaign →

The questions Reddit always asks

Is this just a rebranded Chinese AQI module?
No. The sensors are Sensirion (Swiss), the hardware is designed in London and assembled in China. We don't use Plantower or Nova PM sensors, which are common in budget monitors and have higher variance. The SEN66 combines laser scattering for PM, metal-oxide sensing for VOC/NOx, and photoacoustic NDIR for CO₂ in a single module. The same sensor family used in commercial building management systems.
Why not just buy the IKEA ALPSTUGA?
The ALPSTUGA (£29) is a solid budget option for basic PM monitoring — but it has no CO₂ sensor, no VOC, no NOx, no local API, no data export, and no battery. It's also cloud-dependent. If basic PM readings on the IKEA app is enough, it's a fair choice at that price point. If you want CO₂, VOC index, NOx, Home Assistant integration, and actual data ownership, the two products aren't really comparable.
Is the data exportable? Can I use it in Grafana / InfluxDB?
Yes. Data is available over MQTT locally — works with any MQTT broker (Mosquitto, etc.) and therefore directly into Node-RED, InfluxDB, Grafana, Home Assistant's Energy dashboard, or whatever you want. We also have a REST API and CSV export from the app. No subscription required for any of this.
Is the firmware open source?
Not fully yet. The firmware currently supports custom firmware flashing via USB (ESP32-based), and we've shared the sensor data format and MQTT topic schema publicly on GitHub. A full open-source release is on the roadmap — we're a 3-person team and we want to do it properly rather than dump a messy codebase. Follow github.com/ambient-works for updates.
Open API — what does that actually mean?
Our REST API is cloud-based and requires account auth for remote access. It returns a JSON payload of all current sensor values. Separately, MQTT runs locally over your LAN — topics follow the Home Assistant discovery schema, so you can subscribe to individual metrics directly into Node-RED, InfluxDB, Grafana, or any MQTT consumer without touching our API. No rate limits on local MQTT.
You're a small company. What if you disappear?
Fair concern. The device works fully offline and over local MQTT with zero cloud dependency. If we shut down, the device keeps working — you'd lose the app's AI tips and remote access features, but core monitoring and local API would be unaffected. We've committed to publishing the firmware source if we ever wind down the company.
Where does it ship from? How long does shipping take?
Designed in London, assembled in China. Shipping: UK (2–3 days, free), EU (3–7 days), US/Canada (5–10 days), Rest of World (7–14 days). Batch 2 production is confirmed, shipping June 2026. We'll email with tracking when your unit ships.

433 Kickstarter backers · $117,443 raised · View campaign →

Pre-order — Batch 2, ships June 2026

Pre-order ambient one — £199

10% discount applied automatically at checkout

Questions? hello@ambientworks.io