The air quality index of a person’s area can be easily known, but it is such a dry and humorous figure, isn’t it? Well, all this has changed with the AQI interest of [Andrew Kleindoff]: a visual representation of real-time AQI data presented by a friendly ghost character in a cartoon panel presentation. The background, mood and message are generated according to the current conditions, providing some changes (and random adjectives) to beautify things.
We like to focus on super clean presentations, and the e-paper screen looks great. Inside the unit is a raspberry Pi, which uses Python to talk to AirNow. The gov API gets local information and updates it every four hours (AirNow also provides many useful widgets for interested people.)
The enclosure is 3D printed, and [Andrew] uses Witty Pi for power management and battery saving. The monitor is a color electronic paper monitor, which not only looks great, but also has the advantage of no power supply unless the monitor is being updated. Pi can be awakened when needed to update new information on the screen, but it can also sleep in other situations.
[Andrew] is good at presenting information in a potentially serious and friendly manner, as we can see from his friendly reminders about annoying product recalls.