Are there good sensors for pollen?

I was super-curious to try out this sensor since sibling is pollen-sensitive, so decided to bite the bullet and order it.

Hopefully some simple code to exercise it can be written in a free hour or two, hopefully within a week. I'll use sibling for calibration since Jan and others are too far!

The SPS30 is a great particulate monitor sensor - I've run one for about 8 months now. They definitely easily detect bushfire smoke (yep, Australia) and my neighbour's wood fired smoke quite easily. Dust storms also show up quite easily. One of my colleagues did some correlation with local monitoring stations operated by our governmental authorities and the sensor seems to be quite accurate. It's more expensive than an ordinary "dust" sensor, but they do separate PM1/2.5/4/10 and internally calculates counts and mass figures. The connection wire is the big issue - I didn't have anything that would plug into it, so I soldered wires to the pins and blobbed it with hot glue as a quick fix.

- Gough

Ohh drat.. I didn't notice the connector, too expensive to to place that as an order for a single item now due to delivery charges : (

Still, what you did seems like a fine idea, to convert it to something that will fit a microcontroller board anyway.

I'm keen to see what it detects non-pollen-related too (I'm near an airport, and quite a few small factories are not many miles away).

If you decide to order the connector, don't forget to order contacts too. They are separate.

For suppliers that have a minimum order value to reach free shipping, I add consumables like solder, flux, replacement tips.

Yes! I did have a bag of just the plastic shell with no crimps. Then I realised the ones I had wouldn't fit into the shell. That was very annoying.

- Gough

I realise this thread is around one year old but it's now Hayfever season and I feel it's my duty of care to point out that pollen sensors do in fact exist. Please see below.

I lost my job almost every year for years, due to Hayfever, as it had me bed-bound for 2 months during the grass pollen season (most common allergy worldwide). Meds don't work for so many people, myself included. I hope this explains my interest in this topic. This was before I became self-employed in something completely unrelated. Many "air quality monitors" neglect to mention they doesn't detect the main thing people need- POLLEN. Some claim their PM10 sensors can detect pollen- not true (or misleading at best)! Allergy-causing pollen is 20 microns - 200 microns (Grass pollen being the most common cause of hayfever at 20 microns) All air purifier "auto" modes work with a PM2.5 sensor which is useless during hayfever season when it needs a PM30 sensor. Manufacturers advertise "We detect down to 0.1 microns!" but conveniently neglect to mention it's often only up to 2.5 microns (or 10) which is useless for pollen which is 20 microns upwards. Hopefully the below info will help someone to fill the gap in the market & develop a home pollen meter.

1. This looks small, portable & could be used to develop a new pollen sensing product: https://www.tsdpl.com/products/particle_sensors_product/pollen-sensor

2. Youtube video of a pollen sensor called "PS2" (not sure if it's the same as the above): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCdSL7zmWI0

3. An article about "Pollensniffer", a portable device that measures pollen concentration but with no info on where to get it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720339267

4. A huge pollen monitor that looks more suitable for large outdoor spaces, which is useless for the indoor home user as we all know when pollen season has started outside!: https://www.et.co.uk/products/air-quality-monitoring/pollen-monitors/pollen-monitor-baa500

5. The only pollen sensor that seems to be commercially available (but it's something like around $4,000 which isn't useful for most allergy sufferers like myself): https://www.pollensense.com/

6. Large particle sensor "above 10 microns" - which is what we need for pollen (looks similar to no. 1 - same manufacturer):

https://tsdpl.com/products/particle_sensors_product/large-particle-sensor

and this link appears to offer a price by contacting them:

https://www.indiamart.com/toshniwal-sensing-devices-pvt-ltd/particle-sensors.html#large-particle-sensor-133659247

An indoor pollen meter is essential to help people know exactly where there is pollen in their home, how it's getting in & take steps to prevent it (e.g. air purifiers in certain places). It would also be useful on air purifiers themselves, in AUTO mode. Allergy sufferers often have a delayed reaction to pollen, so a sensor is paramount to controlling it.

Another thing missing from the market is allergy-based portable air conditioning. A dual-hose air conditioner with HEPA filter would be essential for hayfever suffers but doesn't appear to exist on the market anymore. Interestingly enough, the air purifier market is saturated with HEPA filter products when in fact pollen is 20 microns & larger so HEPA wouldn't be required to stop it- almost anything would stop it, possibly even a cotton rolled up filter, yet this isn't common knowledge. There's a huge market out there specific to hayfever sufferers and if you simply target pollen and nothing else you could produce some very cheap products.

I would do if I had the contacts or skill !

I know the threads old but I stumbled over this thread first in all the searching so maybe it helps others.

I found this paper talking about using a image sensor like you mentioned but with out having to use the expense of a lens systems https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6062327/ I think this is quite a promising possibility for DIY development.

Someone else mentioned later in this thread about PollenSense https://www.pollensense.com/pages/automated-particle-sensors which is basically using a microscope and AI vision inspection but as that person said hardware is expensive. So it would seem definitely possible.

Thanks