OppositeDay
Member
- Joined
- Jul 27, 2017
- Messages
- 36
First off, hello to everyone in the Pyra community! I found out about the Pyra just about 3 days ago, read the wiki in pretty much its entirety, lurked (and posted) on the irc a lot, and just created my forum account. I plan to use the Pyra as a phone replacement that, unlike most phones, is not locked down in any way, has a hardware killswitch for the baseband modem, is mostly open, and runs full-on GNU/Linux.
While I was going through the homepage for about the hundredth time, I noticed the part about sensors. Quoting: "a pressure-, humidity- and gas -sensor." While the pressure and humidity sensors aren't all that uncommon, I found the gas sensor part very interesting. I've always thought that a mobile device one can expect to carry with themselves most of the time should have an air pollution indicator, especially indoors. You can imagine my disappointment when I went on the Wiki and saw that the relevant sensor here (Bosch BME280) had no such capability. However, I did find out about the Bosch BME680, a sensor that's about the same size (3mm*3mm vs 2.5*2.5 on the 280), doesn't cost much more, and (I think) could replace the 280 without a redesign of the PCB. It has (open) Linux drivers, and measures VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) in the air.
Again, despite it being relatively uncommon, I think the ability to detect hazardous air pollution is quite valuable to have on a portable device that you carry with you pretty much all the time, as a smartphone replacement (which is my use case, and I imagine that of many others as well). Is such a switch plausible, without incurring much additional cost? Would it require a PCB redesign (in which case I might as well forget it), or would it fit the current design? Would it work well in the Pyra's current case, or would it require significant/prohibitive changes? And most importantly, does anyone else like this idea, given that it's convenient to make the switch?
While I was going through the homepage for about the hundredth time, I noticed the part about sensors. Quoting: "a pressure-, humidity- and gas -sensor." While the pressure and humidity sensors aren't all that uncommon, I found the gas sensor part very interesting. I've always thought that a mobile device one can expect to carry with themselves most of the time should have an air pollution indicator, especially indoors. You can imagine my disappointment when I went on the Wiki and saw that the relevant sensor here (Bosch BME280) had no such capability. However, I did find out about the Bosch BME680, a sensor that's about the same size (3mm*3mm vs 2.5*2.5 on the 280), doesn't cost much more, and (I think) could replace the 280 without a redesign of the PCB. It has (open) Linux drivers, and measures VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) in the air.
Again, despite it being relatively uncommon, I think the ability to detect hazardous air pollution is quite valuable to have on a portable device that you carry with you pretty much all the time, as a smartphone replacement (which is my use case, and I imagine that of many others as well). Is such a switch plausible, without incurring much additional cost? Would it require a PCB redesign (in which case I might as well forget it), or would it fit the current design? Would it work well in the Pyra's current case, or would it require significant/prohibitive changes? And most importantly, does anyone else like this idea, given that it's convenient to make the switch?
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