Ikea Vindriktning Raspberry Pi Pico Guide

A simple 2 hour build to enable an Ikea Vindriktning to be turned into a remote air quality sensor on WiFi

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Detail
• Assembling
• Software
• Summary

Introduction

The Ikea Vindriktning is a simple air quality sensor with 3 LEDs on the front indicating low (green), medium (amber) or red (High) particle counts at the PM2.5 size.

Ikea Vindriktning Product Page

This device has remarkably the perfect amount of spare space to add a Raspberry Pi Pico Internally, allowing us to capture the data from the PM1006 Sensor using the Raspberry Pi Pico IO Wireless to access it remotely.

This guide assumes you are already familiar with programming the Raspberry Pi Pico and soldering. If you are not, it is advised not to continue with this guide until you are comfortable doing these tasks.

Detail

For this mini project, we are going to connect the Vindriktning up to the Pico and read the payload that is requested by the Ikea microprocessor on the board. This keeps the unit working as purchased, whilst adding in the automation functionality.

According to the Ikea Manual, the LEDs on the front of the Vindriktning indicate the following PM 2.5 Air quality particle counts. We can use these numbers to provide the same information back to our web interface or home automation system to keep the display consistent.

• Green: 0-35 /Good + Low
• Amber: 36-85/OK + Medium
• Red: 86- /Not good + High
• Pulsing: Start-up mode

This particular sensor seems to return PM1.0, PM2.5 and PM20 information, however the data sheet for this model only reflects it is capable of PM2.5 readings. In this code, the decoding of these is commented out.

This micropython code implements a simple web server to display the information retrieved from the PM1006 sensor. This is then stored for retrieval by a simple web server, but could easily be implemented using MQTT for example.

Assembling

The Raspberry Pi Pico Wireless needs both power and the data signal from the PM1006 sensor. To connect it up, we need connect the following pins between the Pico and the Ikea circuit board.

Once soldered, I recommend using a piece of heat shrink over the Pico to ensure it doesn’t short out once enclosed back in the enclosure.

Leave the case open until you have installed and have the software on the Pico Operational.

Software

Download this GIST and open it with Thonny.

Pico Micropython code

Once loaded update your WiFi SSID and passphrase information.

# WIFI Setup
ssid = "mySSID"
password = "mySecurePa33w0rd"

The Thonny console will display information about the connection. You can simply connect to the web interface on HTTP Port 80. Using the path /reading you can obtain the JSON payload showing the LED status, and the PM count.

{'status': 'Green', 'pm025': 0.9}

Summary

From here, simply add your integration of choice, ie MQTT and integrate with your Home automation system ro perform actions like ventilation, open/close windows or other tasks as you wish.