You. Here. Now.: How a Student Turned a Building's Hidden Air Into Living Light
Most of the air you move through all day is invisible. You cannot see the carbon dioxide climbing in a crowded lecture hall, the humidity settling into a below-grade floor, or the temperature swinging while the building's cooling fights the concrete around it. You only feel the result: stuffy, cold, off, hard to focus. A graduate student at the University of Tennessee decided to make all of that visible, and we were lucky enough to help.
The project is called You. Here. Now., a capstone by Zachary Graham at the University of Tennessee's College of Architecture and Design in Knoxville. We donated the air quality sensors that made it possible, drove down to see it presented, and came away genuinely moved by what one person built with open hardware and a lot of determination.
What is "You. Here. Now."?
Zachary's project asked a deceptively big question: if you could measure a building's environment in real time, everywhere, at once, what would you learn, and how would it change the way people live inside it?
To answer it, he built a climate data collection network and a reactive art installation on top of it, in four phases. He studied the building and its complaints. He deployed a sensor network and made the data public. He translated that live data into a physical installation of motorized lanterns that moved and changed color with the conditions around them. And he kept a journal of how having real-time air quality information changed his own behavior at home. It is a feedback loop between people and the spaces they occupy, made visible.
Why we said yes
Here is a small confession. Everyone at Apollo is a University of Kentucky graduate. Zachary's project is at the University of Tennessee. For anyone who follows SEC sports, that is supposed to be a rivalry worth taking seriously.
We decided it was not. Good work is good work. When a student reaches out trying to build something ambitious and open, the school on the sign does not matter. Helping people in our broader community make real things is a core part of who we are, so we donated the full set of sensors, made the drive to Knoxville to meet Zachary and the faculty, and watched the presentation in person. We would do it again in a heartbeat, orange and all.
This is what building in the open looks like in practice. Open hardware and open software mean a student does not have to beg a vendor for a locked-down proprietary kit. The tools are there, the community is there, and a good idea can actually get built.
The setup: 21 ESPHome sensors and a rooftop weather station
The network came down to 21 devices, all running ESPHome.
Inside the building, Zachary placed 20 Apollo AIR-1 air quality sensors, five per floor across four stories. The AIR-1 is our compact, ESP32-based indoor air quality monitor, tracking particulate matter, carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity, and more, all locally. On the roof, he built a weather station from another AIR-1 fitted with a light-level sensor and sealed in a weather-resistant, resin-printed enclosure, then paired it with a custom ESP32 anemometer for wind speed and direction.
That is the quiet beauty of open hardware. The same sensor we designed for a bedroom or a workshop ended up on a rooftop measuring campus weather, because the design is open enough to adapt. Nobody had to ask permission to reimagine it.
When Home Assistant met campus IT
This part will feel familiar to anyone who has fought an institutional network.
Zachary started with Home Assistant at the center, exactly as we would have. It is the natural home for a project like this. But the university network would not allow static IPs or DHCP discovery, which is how a lot of local device management expects to work. Rather than give up, he adapted: he assigned every sensor a unique MQTT topic and routed everything through an MQTT broker, so each device stayed tied to its physical location no matter how the network reassigned it.
The full stack ended up being a tour of what the open ecosystem can do: an MQTT broker tying the devices together, InfluxDB storing the data, Grafana serving a public dashboard, and Home Assistant and related tools handling management and alerts. Getting approval for all of it took just over 11 weeks and sign-off from four separate departments. That is persistence, and it is a reminder that the hardest part of a sensor project is often the paperwork, not the soldering.
What the data revealed
Once it was live, the network told a story the building had been hiding.
Across a month of readings, interior conditions tracked the outside weather far more closely than the day-night HVAC cycle, with a striking 11.6°F average temperature difference between the upper and lower floors. Ground-level spaces, including the below-grade first floor, struggled most with moisture. Carbon dioxide levels rose and fell with occupancy, spiking during class periods and evening lectures, which made the invisible rhythm of the building suddenly legible.
The headline finding was blunt: outside of a small minority of readings, almost no space in the building met ASHRAE-55 comfort standards, overwhelmingly because the building was overcooled. A structure works hard to stay uncomfortable, and nobody could see it until the data was on a screen. Or, as it turned out, hanging from the ceiling.
From data to living light
The dashboard was the practical output. The installation was the magic.
Zachary translated the live sensor feed into a field of 20 motorized paper lanterns. Custom firmware across three microcontrollers subscribed to the same MQTT broker and converted the readings into movement and color: temperature raised and lowered each lantern on a spooled cable, while carbon dioxide and humidity shifted its hue across the spectrum. For demonstrations, a millimeter-wave radar sensor even pulsed a single lantern's brightness in time with a viewer's breathing, so the building seemed to breathe along with the person standing under it.
It took roughly 11 hours to install and strike, mounted into a drop ceiling that could not be altered, every pod wired and tested in place. The result was a room that quietly told you how it felt.
The insight that stuck with us
Here is the part worth sitting with. The public air quality dashboard, freely available and advertised, drew very few visitors. The lanterns drew a crowd. In the single day they hung, people's curiosity about the building's conditions, and about how their own presence shaped those conditions, was higher than anything the dashboard produced.
That gap is the whole point. Data on a screen is easy to ignore. Data you can feel, that moves and glows in the room with you, changes how you behave. It makes you notice. And once you notice, you start to act: you open a window, you move to a different space, you question why a room is freezing in May.
This is exactly the loop we care about most. When you can see the state of your environment in real time, you understand how it affects you, how you react inside it, and how you can adjust it. Zachary's own journal phase captured the same thing at home: real-time air quality information quietly changed his daily habits. That is what an air quality sensor is really for. Not a number for its own sake, but awareness that leads to a healthier, more comfortable space.
When the air turns dangerous
Comfort is one thing. Health is another, and this is where real-time air quality data truly earns its place.
We learned that firsthand not long ago. A nearby business caught fire, and within minutes the particulate readings on our own AIR-1 sensors started climbing inside our Kentucky workshop. We could watch it happen live. So we acted: we shut off our AC units, which were pulling in outside air, and turned our air purifiers to maximum. Indoor PM2.5 had spiked to around 100 µg/m³. Within a short time of making those changes it dropped back below 10, while the air outside was running 20-30 times higher than inside. Without the data, we would not have known to do any of it until the smell reached us, and by then the damage is done.
We are not used to readings like that in Kentucky. But in California, in Canada, and across much of the West, wildfire smoke makes this a normal and even seasonal reality. When the outside air is worse than the inside air, the right move is to seal up: turn off energy recovery ventilators and anything else drawing in outdoor air, run purifiers, and keep watching the numbers until it passes. You cannot make that call if you cannot see it. A local air quality sensor turns a dangerous, invisible event into a clear one you can act on.
The bigger mission
You do not need a ceiling of motorized lanterns to get this benefit. You need to be able to see your own environment, privately, on your own terms. That is what we build toward.
Every Apollo device runs 100% locally, with no cloud and no subscription. Your air quality data, your presence data, your habits, they stay in your home. As the second official commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation, we contribute the majority of our profits back to the foundation, funding the future of ESPHome, Home Assistant, and a smart home built on privacy, choice, and sustainability. A project like Zachary's is the open home mission made visible: open tools, local data, and a person using them to understand and improve the space they live in.
It is also a reminder of how capable this ecosystem has become. Twenty-one low-cost ESP32 devices, ESPHome firmware, Home Assistant, MQTT, and a handful of open-source tools added up to a research-grade sensor network and a moving work of art. A few years ago that would have taken a lab and a budget. Now it takes a good idea and a community that shares its work.
If you are building something like this
We love supporting students, educators, and makers who are building in the open. If that is you, reach out. And if you want to start seeing your own air the way Zachary's building finally could, the AIR-1 is a good place to begin. Put one in the room where you spend the most time and watch what you learn in the first week.
Our deepest thanks to Zachary Graham for letting us be a small part of You. Here. Now., and to the faculty at the University of Tennessee College of Architecture and Design for supporting work this thoughtful. You can see more of Zachary's work at [ZACHARY LINK].
This is just the beginning of what open, local tools can do in the hands of curious people. We cannot wait to see what gets built next.
Frequently asked questions
What sensors were used in the project? The interior network used 20 Apollo AIR-1 air quality sensors, five per floor. The rooftop weather station was an AIR-1 with an added light-level sensor in a weather-resistant enclosure, paired with a custom ESP32 anemometer, for 21 ESPHome devices in total.
What is an AIR-1? The AIR-1 is Apollo Automation's compact, ESP32-based indoor air quality monitor. It tracks particulate matter, carbon dioxide, temperature, humidity, and more, runs on ESPHome, and works locally with Home Assistant. No cloud or subscription required.
Why did the project use MQTT instead of Home Assistant alone? The university network did not allow static IPs or DHCP discovery, so each sensor was given a unique MQTT topic routed through an MQTT broker. This preserved location-tagged data for every device regardless of how the campus network reassigned addresses.
Can I do something like this in my own home? Yes, at any scale. A single AIR-1 lets you see your home's air quality in real time and locally. From there, Home Assistant and ESPHome let you build automations, dashboards, and even reactive displays as far as your curiosity takes you.
Apollo Automation designs, engineers, and manufactures privacy-first, locally-controlled smart home sensors in Versailles, Kentucky. Every product features 100% local control with no cloud dependencies or subscriptions required. Apollo is a Works With Home Assistant partner, Made For ESPHome certified, Works With Homey certified, a BBB Accredited Business, and the second official commercial partner of the Open Home Foundation. Learn more at apolloautomation.com.
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