Monitor air pollution cheaply and accurately with this matchbox-sized particulate matter (PM) sensor from Plantower!
It senses particulates of various sizes (PM1, PM2.5, PM10) from sources like smoke, dust, pollen, metal and organic particles, and more.
Pair this particulate matter sensor with Enviro+ for Raspberry Pi, our Particulate Sensor Breakout, Pico Enviro+ or Enviro+ FeatherWing and build your own air quality monitoring station to contribute to citizen science. Just plug the cable into the sensor and then into the connector on the underside of Enviro+, and away you go!
The sensor has a small fan that sucks air through the sensor and past a laser that can detect both the number (and hence concentration) and size of particles in the surrounding air.
Features
- Plantower PMS5003 Particulate Matter (PM) Sensor (datasheet)
- Detects PM1, PM2.5, PM10 particulates
- 15cm Picoblade cable
- UART serial interface
- Python library for Raspberry Pi
- MicroPython library for Raspberry Pi Pico/Pico W
- Dimensions: 50x38x21mm
Software
Our Python library for the PMS5003 sensor lets you read PM1, PM2.5, and PM10 in both standard and environmental units, and numbers of particles of various sizes: >0.3, >0.5, >1.0, >2.5, >5, and >10um.
Note that if you're using this sensor with Raspberry Pi, then you'll need to make a couple of changes to its configuration. Type sudo raspi-config in the terminal and then under "Interfacing options" and "Serial" disable the login shell and enable the serial port hardware. Edit your /boot/config.txt file and add the lines enable_uart=1 and dtoverlay=pi3-miniuart-bt to the bottom of the file. Our Enviro+ installation script will do all of this configuration for you.
You can also use this sensor with Raspberry Pi Pico (and other RP2040 boards) using our MicroPython library for PMS5003. You can install it easily using Thonny's 'Tools' > 'Manage Packages' (search for 'pms5003-micropython').
Notes
There's a blue protective film that covers the metal casing of the sensor, and you can peel this off before use.