ENS161 Air Quality Sensor

ScioSense's ENS161 is the latest addition to the ENS16x family, a range of digital multi-gas sensors specifically designed for indoor air quality monitoring. Both ENS160 and ENS161 combine the detection of a wide range of gases, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and oxidizing gases, with intelligent on-chip algorithms.

The EN160 sensor calculates a series of fully processed outputs such as CO₂ equivalents (eCO₂), total volatile organic compounds (TVOC) equivalents (eTVOC), and a 5-step air quality index (AQI) according to the German Environment Agency, Umweltbundesamt (UBA) (AQI-U), while the ENS161 additionally provides a 500-step relative AQI according to ScioSense (AQI-S) output.

While all this is done on-chip with no required libraries or additional overhead for external controllers or processors, the ENS161 introduces low-power operating modes. By lowering the sample rates of the sensor, low-power and ultra-low-power modes can be offered, reducing average current consumption to 700 µA or 150 µA, respectively. In addition to traditional smart home and building applications, this opens up wearables, battery-powered devices, smart things, and IoT applications to integrate air quality sensing in a space-saving 3 mm x 3 mm LGA package.

Features

• Multiple, fully processed output signals including eTVOC, eCO₂, and AQI outputs AQI-U and AQI-S
• Low power modes down to 150 μA current consumption
• On-chip measurement and heater drive control with integrated sensor fusion and automatic baseline algorithms, no need for external libraries
• TrueVOC® air quality sensor with excellent stability
• Supply voltage V_DD: 1.71 V to 1.98 V
• Wide operating ranges:
  • Temperature (T): -40°C to +85°C
  • Relative humidity (RH): 5% to 95%
• Communication through I²C or SPI interface
• Compact size: 3.0 mm x 3.0 mm x 0.9 mm LGA package
• Options to access raw sensor data
• Evaluation kit and dashboard software available