IKEA recently discontinued Vindriktning, their older air quality monitor.

Inside the device, they put a cubic PM1006K particle sensor. I bought three for $16.95 each last year, because I’d seen people hack them by adding sensors and a Wi-Fi microcontroller to send all of the data to Home Assistant. For my modding I bought:

• Wemo D1 ESP8266 clones
• ENS160 multi-gas sensors
• BME280 temperature and humidity sensors

The YouTube video linked above is a great guide to follow. I didn’t connect wires to the fan or the light sensor since I had no use for them. I also didn’t stack my sensors because I wanted the BME280 to be outside of the enclosure, where it would be less affected by the heat produced by the ENS160 and D1.

Even with the sensor outside of the case, the BME280 still reads high, because it heats itself up. I actually tested different lengths of wires and placements of the sensor before realizing I was still going to have to adjust the data. An ESPHome filter made the adjustment easy, which I did individually for each unit after comparing to a mobile Ecobee thermostat sensor. This is the code from the unit for my shop.

substitutions:
  slug: shop
  friendly: Shop

esphome:
  name: ${slug}-air-quality
  friendly_name: ${friendly} Air Quality

esp8266:
  board: d1_mini

logger:
  level: WARN

api:
  encryption:
    key: 'xxx'

ota:
  - platform: esphome
    password: 'xxx'

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
  manual_ip:
    static_ip: xxx
    gateway: xxx
    subnet: 255.255.255.0

i2c:
  frequency: 100kHz

uart:
  - rx_pin: D7
    baud_rate: 9600

sensor:
  - platform: pm1006
    pm_2_5:
      name: PM 2.5µm

  - platform: bme280_i2c
    address: 0x76
    temperature:
      name: Temperature
      id: ${slug}_temp
      filters:
        - offset: -3.38
    humidity:
      name: Humidity
      id: ${slug}_humid
      filters:
        - offset: 7.63
    iir_filter: 16x

  - platform: aht10
    variant: AHT20
    temperature:
      name: AHT21 Temperature
      id: ${slug}_aht21_temp
    humidity:
      name: AHT21 Humidity
      id: ${slug}_aht21_humid

  - platform: ens160_i2c
    address: 0x53
    eco2:
      name: CO²
    tvoc:
      name: VOC
    aqi:
      id: ${slug}_aqi
      name: AQI
    compensation:
      temperature: ${slug}_aht21_temp
      humidity: ${slug}_aht21_humid

text_sensor:
  - platform: template
    name: AQI Rating
    lambda: |-
      switch ( (int) ( id( ${slug}_aqi ).state ) ) {
        case 1: return {"Excellent"};
        case 2: return {"Good"};
        case 3: return {"Moderate"};
        case 4: return {"Poor"};
        case 5: return {"Unhealthy"};
        default: return {"N/A"};
      }

These resources were a huge help when I wired everything up and made changes to the YAML code:

• D1 Mini Pinout Reference
• IKEA-Air-Quality-Sensor on GitHub
• PM1006 Particulate Matter Sensor from ESPHome
• ESPHome: I²C Bus
• BME280 from ESPHome
• ENS160 from ESPHome
• AHT10 from ESPHome

Here is how I’m displaying the data on one of my Home Assistant dashboards.

As I was working on this project I knew I wanted a couple more air quality monitors around the house, which will be finished soon.

Update: I’ve had to make a small update by adding a 47uF capacitor to each ENS160 board, because they have power issues, causing the reading to stop for periods of time. My boards matched up with the right ones in the picture at that link. Here’s a picture of another ENS160 I modified, since it was a tight squeeze to made the modification on the devices I posted about here with everything already wired up. I also realized I was powering these through the 3V3 pin instead of VIN, so I fixed that.

I’ve also improved the display of the data on my dashboard by using mini-graph-card.