Fire season has started in the West

Shasta County Air Quality Management District has discovered the PurpleAir sensor and installed a bunch of them so now we can see on the PurpleAir Map just how bad the air is around here due to the fires. At time of writing the worst station is showing PM2.5 AQI of 374 with many stations over 300.

The wildfire season isn’t over yet here. Smoke from the Camp Fire in Butte County has made it’s way to the Bay Area. Most of the PurpleAir sensors including mine are registering over 200 AQI. One problem is, my sensor is registering on the PurpleAir map but, it shows 0 in WD. Did something break?

http://ucweather.org/wxaqi.php

We thought the Carr fire was bad, but the “Camp” fire has burned 70,000 acres of woodland in less than 24 hrs 8O

It is amazing. I read that at one time, the Camp Fire was spreading at the rate of 80 football fields an hour. This seems to be a repeat of the Branscomb Fire near Suisun City that occurred a month ago, same scenario where the wind was blowing all that smoke down into the bay area and the air quality went into the toilet. I hope the wind conditions change soon. The air quality is pretty bad and they say it’s supposed to be like this through the weekend. My air quality information page is sure getting a lot of attention.

According to the 6PM press conference it’s now 90,000 acres and has become California’s most destructive fire in history, having leveled 6,713 structures. The vast majority were homes: a total of 6,453.

Regular evening wind shift to the south, now we have the smoke:


camp.jpg

Geeez, just what we need, another historic wildfire. :frowning:

I would like to know what’s going on with the AQI graphics created by WD. It seems like when the AQI hit around 175 AQI, they stopped recording anything or recording garbage. The first graphic is from PurpleAir map which appears normal but the aqi.gif and aqichart.gif are messed up. Any ideas?

Edit: I just took a look at Ken’s AQI page Saratoga-Weather.org - San Jose, CA Air Quality Index and the Realtime AQI chart on his page is doing some weird stuff too.

Edit: Brian, there seems to be a problem with WD creating the PurpleAir graphic and graph when the AQI gets over 175. Can you take a look?


aqichart.gif

what sensor is this?
purpleair?
I will need a copy of the airquality.txt and airquality2.txt files

I think the Purpleair.com network started having problems yesterday around 2am pacific time (when my graphs went all funky too).

Looking at the purpleair.com map shows large number of stations as ‘not reporting’ (mine was on the list for a while too).

Let Purpleair.com fix the upload/propogation issues, then let’s worry about the WD access/graph/tags creation.

I filed a Bug issue about this earlier today.

It looks like they got the problem resolved, for me anyway.


aqichart.gif

did anyone manage to get a cop of the airquality.txt and airquality2.txt files when it was not working in WD?

Nuts! Sorry Brian, I was going to do that today. I hope Ken got a copy of them.

Yes, and I’m not showing as ‘online’ with purpleair.com map at this time.


airquality.txt (1.26 KB)

airquality2.txt (1.8 KB)

airquality4.txt (943 Bytes)

aqichart.gif

the airquality2.txt file has a “PM2_5Value”:“46.02”,
and WD is picking that up OK here
(and gives an AQI of 126)

I think the underlying problem is that some Purpleair stations are not getting good uploads and we appear to be in ‘bunches’ on the map … my station is offline to them right now, but a local check shows it is displaying current values. Very strange.

The WD graph is likely wonky due to the intermittent nature of the data on purpleair.com/json feed for the station.

My testtags.php shows

//==========
$purpleair2_5 = '46.0'; 	 //Value of 2.5 micron particle measure from purple air sensor (see in WD under setup, advanced/misc)
$purpleair1_0 = '186.2'; 	 //Value of 1.0 micron particle measure from purple air sensor
$purpleair10_0 = '282.3'; 	 //Value of 10.0 micron particle measure from purple air sensor
$purpleairaqi = '126.9'; 	 //AQI (air quality index) value from purple air sensor
$purpleairaqidescription = 'Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups ';	 //AQI description (e.g Good, moderate)
$purpleair60minmean10_0 = '287.0'; 	 //Last 60 minutes average PM 10.0 value
$purpleair60minmean2_5 = '46.8'; 	 //Last 60 minutes average PM 2.5 value
$purpleair24hourmean10_0 = '282.3'; 	 //Last 24 hours average PM 10.0 value
$purpleair24hourmean2_5 = '9.6'; 	 //Last 24 hours average PM 2.5 value
$purpleair60minmin10_0 = '282.3'; 	 //Min value in last 60 minutes PM 10.0 value
$purpleair24hourmin10_0 = '0.0'; 	 //Min value in last 24 hours PM 10.0 value
$purpleair60minmin2_5 = '46.0'; 	 //Min value in last 60 minutes PM 2.5 value
$purpleair24hourmin2_5 = '-1.0'; 	 //Min value in last 24 hours PM 2.5 value
$purpleair60minmax10_0 = '282.3'; 	 //Max value in last 60 minutes PM 10.0 value
$purpleair24hourmax10_0 = '282.3'; 	 //Max value in last 24 hours PM 10.0 value
$purpleair60minmax2_5 = '46.0'; 	 //Max value in last 60 minutes PM 2.5 value
$purpleair24hourmax2_5 = '56.0'; 	 //Max value in last 24 hours PM 2.5 value
$purpleair2_52 ='0.0'; //2nd sensor 2.5 reading
$purpleair1_02 ='0.0'; //2nd sensor 1.0 reading
$purpleair10_02 ='0.0'; //2nd sensor 10 reading 
$purpleairaqi2  ='179.8'; //2nd sensor aqi reading
$purpleairaqidescription2  = 'Unhealthy '; // 2nd sensor aqi description

so now the second sensor seems to be acting up. The local JSON shows

{"SensorId":"a0:20:a6:a:a2:7a","DateTime":"2018/11/11T22:32:11z","Geo":"AirMonitor_a27a","Mem":26264,"Id":397,"Adc":0.01,"lat":37.274700,"lon":-122.022903,"accuracy":0,"elevation":0.00,"version":"2.50i","uptime":15824,"rssi":-69,"hardwareversion":"2.0","hardwarediscovered":"2.0+OPENLOG+16021 MB+DS3231+BME280+PMSX003A+PMSX003B","current_temp_f":75,"current_humidity":9,"current_dewpoint_f":12.31,"pressure":1007.25,"pm1_0_atm_b":90.49,"pm2_5_atm_b":124.91,"pm10_0_atm_b":132.80,"pm1_0_cf_1_b":59.71,"pm2_5_cf_1_b":82.29,"pm10_0_cf_1_b":87.51,"p_0_3_um_b":13614.09,"p_0_5_um_b":4350.54,"p_1_0_um_b":661.03,"p_2_5_um_b":40.37,"p_5_0_um_b":9.34,"p_10_0_um_b":1.94,"pm1_0_atm":91.70,"pm2_5_atm":125.23,"pm10_0_atm":132.41,"pm1_0_cf_1":60.48,"pm2_5_cf_1":82.68,"pm10_0_cf_1":87.57,"p_0_3_um":15878.11,"p_0_5_um":4650.34,"p_1_0_um":680.86,"p_2_5_um":33.32,"p_5_0_um":11.14,"p_10_0_um":1.18,"responseCode":"504","responseCode_date":1541975527,"key1_responseCode":"200","key1_responseCode_date":1541962057,"key1_count":376476,"key2_responseCode":"200","key2_responseCode_date":1541962067,"key2_count":380139,"key1_responseCode_b":"200","key1_responseCode_date_b":1541962087,"key1_count_b":380002,"key2_responseCode_b":"200","key2_responseCode_date_b":1541975457,"key2_count_b":380852}

if you able to capture a data file when its not updating correctly in WD that would be good

Even though the AQI graphic and the chart are being generated okay, the Purpleair graph in the WD display is not working properly for me either. I see some green vertical lines but, nothing else. I tried restarting WD but, still the same. Here are copies of the WD display, airquality.txt and airquality2.txt anyway if that is any help. And I’ll be sure to copy it the next time it stops working.


airquality.txt (851 Bytes)

airquality2.txt (1.71 KB)

is the graph under view, purple air, OK?
I suspect the main screen graph might be going out of range
what is the current AQI?

No, it isn’t. In fact, while the aqi.gif looks okay, the aqichart.gif just went bananas again. Graphs and airquality text files are attached. According to the Purpleair map, current AQI is 174.


aqichart2.gif

airquality(1).txt (848 Bytes)

airquality2(1).txt (1.71 KB)

Here is a more current screenshot of thw WD display. All you see is green lins instead of the Purpleair graph.