Hydrofarm Autopilot Desktop CO2 Monitor & Data Logger

Writing this after 1.5 years of continous use. Never encountered any issues and is a great tool to check for poor air quality due to high CO2. Nice big number on the display makes it easy to read from far away, and a graph to show changes over time. Powered using normal USB, it can be left connected to any phone charge, or using a powerbank to bring it around.I was pretty surprised how fast CO2 builds up in a closed bedroom, this meter lets me know to adjust ventilation as needed. Can't really say how accurate it is as I have nothing to compare it to, but look pretty reliable. The rate which increase in my closed room is the same after 1.5 years, and in a well ventilated area read ~440ppm which is close to what I expect. Didn't really pay attention to the humidity and temps.Highly recommend this! You can't really tell if you are living in a high CO2 bubble and might be affecting you negatively without you knowing!

Was an electronic engineer for Air Force & at Motorola in years past. Wanted to find way to monitor air flow forchurch & home. This works great. No calibration. You can attach a phone battery to make it portable or just plug it in. Type "covid" and "CO2" and you will get many articles about using this to limit spread of viruses. It is NOT an official Covid monitor but probably as close as you can get.Final benefit... I found out I had high levels of CO2 in my basement. Made adjustments and everything is good. CO2 can really cause you health damage. Worth every dollar! Could save your life two ways...

ProsThis meter has quite a few features for the price which I especially like. The altitude compensation feature is crucial for someone who lives at an intermediate elevation like me. When compared with a RAD-0301 Mini CO2 Monitor, they were within 40-50 ppm of each other when they both had elevation dialed in. The Hydrofarm is pleasantly fast to respond to large changes in CO2. I really like the plethora of mounting options too and the addition of the folding stand in the back. The addition of the hygrometer and thermometer is nice, and I like how the trend chart for those can be viewed too. The thermometer is more accurate than the hygrometer, but this is normal for virtually all devices, humidity is actually a notoriously hard parameter to accurately measure. The meter also retains the settings if you unplug it to move it somewhere else.ConsThe three LEDs for the High, Low ,and target are all green...this is a fairly stupid oversight, and makes it hard to see which is illuminated from a distance especially since the green backlight you see in the picture only comes on with a button press. The axes on the trend chart are kind of hard to interpret (it is in x unit/div kind of like an oscilloscope) I think the one year limited warranty is also rather anemic for the price.Misc.Although it's not why I bought mine, COVID has caused a huge surge in interest and sales in CO2 meters. If Hydrofarm wants to stay competitive in the field, hopefully they entertain the requests made in these reviews.It's interesting to set the trend chart to 24 hours and see how it varies throughout the day. (You may have to use a different scale depending on your house, 24 hours is 2h/div) In my house, I always keep all windows closed. When the AC kicks on, you can actually see the CO2 drop as fresh air is circulated from outside. Also having people over at the house can be seen in a precipitous climb!

Very handy. Didn't realize how tight house was until I was battling a PH issue in a saltwater aquarium. Excess CO2 was causing low PH.Bought this monitor, 1522 out of box. Checked calibration, was ok. Temp within a degree of other thermostats, same with humidity sensor.Boiling a pot of water with natural gas in 10 minutes sends CO2 upwards fast. People also make it skyrocket. Can be used with a battery thru micro USB port. Graphing is good. A backlight would have been a bonus but its pretty easy to see in moderate light. The LED's are great at a glance indicators.Have since installed an ERV unit. Now I can monitor when high or low speed is needed. PH issue is fixed. Run around 6 to 800ppm normally now with ERV. Unit has both plants and Human settings, these affect how the LED alerts are triggered. Humans LED turns yellow at 1000ppm.CO2 was not something I would have thought about. Maybe psychological but family does seem to generally feel better. Great device.

I wanted a CO2 reader and ordered a used version of this one and even though the description stated I'd have indicators that it had been used before, I had none. I plugged it in and it has seemed to work fine. It gave me very high readings when I started using it and have since opened more windows and turned on space heaters and it brought the CO2 reading way down. I'm looking into owning more actual house plants now to see what effect those have on the CO2 levels are without opening windows. But I did notice a difference in how I felt after opening windows and lowering the CO2 levels.I recognize that this product is really intended for growing various produce (it has many built in settings for CO2 levels for types of things you're growing) and only lets you use Human levels of CO2 as an "advanced" option. So it made me feel like I overbought to just get warnings of high human levels of CO2. I still like it and definitely liked that I bought mine "used" which had no indications of it having ever been used.