Sense Your World.
Share Our Planet.
Join the peer-to-peer, community-owned environmental sensor network. WeSense.earth empowers everyone to monitor their local environment and contribute to a global, transparent, and permanent record of our planet's health.
Engineered from day one to support millions of stations, each with many sensors. This isn't a prototype — it's real P2P infrastructure designed for planetary scale.
Live Map (pre-alpha)Live Dashboard (pre-alpha)Quick StartOur MissionGet Involved
Our Mission
At its core, WeSense is a decentralised telemetry network built on an unbreakable promise: the data is free, for everyone, forever. Every reading — past and present — is openly accessible. Anyone can query the full historical archive. Anyone can tap into the live feed. There is no paywall, no gatekeeper, no lock-in. Environmental data is a commons, not a commodity, and WeSense exists to keep it that way.
This project is founded on a simple but powerful idea: that to care for our planet, we must first be able to see and understand it. WeSense.earth is a mission to create a living, breathing, community-owned map of our environment. It transforms raw data into a shared language, placing the power of environmental insight into the hands of every individual, classroom, and community.
By observing the air in our homes, on our streets, across farmland, and into the wild places beyond, we are not just answering personal questions; we are weaving our hyper-local story into a global tapestry of understanding. From urban rooftops to remote rural landscapes, this is a tool for collective sense-making, empowering us to drive local action, contribute to global climate science, and build a more transparent, evidence-based relationship with the world we all share.
We believe openness means more than open data. Our complete system architecture is published openly — every design decision, every protocol choice, every trade-off. Anyone can understand how WeSense works, verify our approach, suggest improvements, or build on it. Transparency isn't a risk to this project; it's the foundation of it.
Measuring the Unmeasurable
The world's only free, near-real-time environmental data from actual sensors — not models, not estimates, not paywalled.
Government networks provide limited-resolution monitoring — sparse stations in select locations, publishing with delays of hours or even days via dozens of separate APIs. Commercial services charge for access to the same delayed data, or fill gaps with physics models that calculate what the air quality should be rather than measuring it. No existing service — free or paid — provides dense, live, global coverage from real sensors.
That's what we're building — and we need your help to make it real. WeSense is an early-stage open-source project building the infrastructure for community-deployed sensors reporting every 5 minutes, with all data free and open forever. The core platform is working, but a global sensor network only exists when people like you place sensors in their homes, streets, and communities. See how you can help, or check out the roadmap to see where we're headed.
Traditional monitoring is too sparse to answer the questions that matter most. WeSense.earth is designed to fill the crucial gaps.
Hyper-Local Air Quality
What is the real difference in air quality from one end of your street to the other? We enable street-by-street resolution that official monitoring misses.
Indoor Environments at Scale
How healthy is the air inside our homes, offices, and schools, where we spend 90% of our time? This is data only a community can collect.
3D Urban Profiles
How do pollutants stratify and move between high-rise buildings? We can build a 3D picture of pollution in our cities from the ground up.
Home Thermal Efficiency
How well is your home insulated? By comparing indoor and outdoor temperature readings over time, you can measure how quickly your house loses heat and identify where insulation improvements would make the biggest difference.
Real-Time Event Tracking
When a wildfire or chemical spill occurs, a dense network of sensors can track the impact on the ground, neighborhood by neighborhood, as it unfolds.
How It's Truly Open
Our technology is designed to prevent any single person or company from controlling the data.
Data is a Public Library
All sensor data is bundled into content-addressed archives, distributed across a global network of stations run by the community. Every archive is identified by its content hash — tamper-proof by design.
A Decentralized "Card Catalog"
A peer-to-peer database helps every station find the data it needs without asking a central server. Stations discover each other, exchange indexes, and automatically replicate archives for their region.
Permanent & Uncensorable
Because many stations hold copies, the library can never be shut down, censored, or lost. As long as one copy exists, the data is safe forever. Anyone can download the entire library for their own use.
This is working today. Stations are already replicating and archiving millions of sensor readings via Iroh peer-to-peer. Every station that joins the network automatically receives and serves archives for its region — become a contributor by running a sensor or hosting a station, and help us grow this into a permanent, global environmental record that belongs to everyone.
A Platform for All...
- ✓Individuals & Families wanting to understand their immediate environment.
- ✓Community Groups & Schools driving local educational and environmental projects.
- ✓Scientists & Researchers seeking access to unprecedented hyper-local datasets.
- ✓Cities & Governments needing granular data to inform public policy and planning.
- ✓Corporations & Businesses committed to transparent environmental reporting.
...Powered by Individuals.
While the data is for everyone, the network's unique power comes from you. A research institution can't place a sensor in your bedroom. A city can't map every backyard.
It is the collective action of individuals that solves the hyper-local data problem and creates the ground-truth reality that makes this network invaluable to all.
What You Can Do With It
Whether you want to monitor a single room or explore global environmental trends, the same platform and dashboard does both.
Monitor Your Home
Track temperature, humidity, CO2, and air quality in every room. Understand your indoor environment, spot ventilation issues, and make informed decisions about your living space. All from the same dashboard.
View DashboardSee the Big Picture
Your sensor joins a global map of environmental data. Explore real-time conditions across neighbourhoods, cities, and countries. Zoom from your backyard to the entire planet on a single interactive map.
View MapOwn Your Data
Every reading you contribute is permanently archived and freely accessible. No subscription, no lock-in. Download the raw data, run your own analysis, or just check in on your neighbourhood's air quality.
The Vision
WeSense.earth aims to be more than a data source; it's a hub that integrates and contextualizes all relevant environmental data.
Open Hardware
True open source means open hardware. All you need is a cheap ESP32 board and a sensor to get started — our firmware handles the rest. We're also developing custom PCB designs with modular sensor support and 3D printable cases for both indoor and outdoor deployment.
Build Your Own
Our open-source firmware runs on a wide range of ESP32 boards (T-Beam, C3, C6, S3) and auto-detects connected sensors. Flash, configure WiFi, and your device starts reporting to the network. See the recommended sensor list for tested hardware combinations.
3rd Party Hardware
Already have sensors? We support Meshtastic, Home Assistant, and Ecowitt devices out of the box. Our simple ingester plugin system means anyone can write an adapter for their own hardware — if it produces sensor data, it can join the network.
New Sensing Frontiers
Beyond common air quality metrics, the architecture is designed to support any type of sensor, with a focus on data that is hard for professionals to collect at scale, including noise pollution, light pollution (sky quality), UV index variation, and soil moisture.
A Plugin Ecosystem
A project becomes indispensable by integrating data from many sources. The architecture is designed to unify data from Home Assistant, official government networks, satellite overlays, and weather APIs into one resilient, open repository.
Emergent Accuracy
The network doesn't just collect data; it learns from it. WeSense is designed to work with both precision instruments and affordable off-the-shelf sensors alike, by using statistical swarm correction to cross-calibrate the entire network, we automatically detect and compensate for drifting sensors, and transform the collective power of thousands of devices into a uniquely robust and trustworthy picture of our world.
Our Roadmap
This project has been in development since 2024 and is currently pre-alpha software. The core pipeline, decentralised archiving, live P2P distribution, archive replication, robustness hardening, and the full contributor documentation suite are now complete. Three stations across New Zealand and Australia replicate 93,000+ archives with a measured zero disconnects per hour across the P2P network. The remaining work before Beta is grouped into four focused alphas — an initial announcement, Home Assistant integration, hardware and networking, then scale and security prep. The vision remains to build toward a fully decentralised, community-owned network that anyone can contribute to, without paywalls or judgement.
Alpha 1 Release
FutureFirst public release, announcing the network to early adopters.
- ○ Public Announcement
Alpha 2: Home Assistant & Onboarding
FutureLowering the barrier for everyday contributors. Home Assistant integration reaches HACS, firmware flashes from the browser, and setup guides cover the common platforms.
- ○ Home Assistant Plugin Field Testing
- ○ Publish HA Plugin to HACS Community Store
- ○ Web-Based Firmware Flasher (no Arduino IDE required)
- ○ Deployment Guides for Common Platforms
Alpha 3: Hardware & Networking
FuturePhysical and network-layer work — open hardware designs, connectivity for home users behind CGNAT, and research into alternative transport layers.
- ○ Hardware Designs & 3D Printed Enclosures
- ○ DERP Relay for CGNAT/Dynamic IP Users
- ○ Historical Archive Import to ClickHouse
- ○ Investigate Reticulum as Transport Layer
Alpha 4: Scale & Release Prep
FutureInfrastructure hardening and the pre-Beta security audit — everything the network needs to stand up at scale under real-world scrutiny.
- ○ ClickHouse Schema Migration System
- ○ Classification Delta/Diff at Scale
- ○ Security Audit
Beta 1 Release
FutureStable public release once the security audit closes and the alpha series completes.
- ○ Address Audit Findings
- ○ Final Release Candidate Testing
- ○ Public Beta Announcement
How to Contribute
WeSense.earth is a community movement. Whether you are a developer, a scientist, or a curious individual, there is a vital role for you.
Contribute Data
The most valuable role. By placing a sensor in your unique environment, you help build the hyper-local, ground-truth data that no one else can provide.
Run a Meshtastic Node
Add environmental sensors to a Meshtastic device and contribute data through the mesh network. Your readings travel across the mesh and into the WeSense network automatically.
Read the DocsBuild a Meshtastic Gateway
Share your neighbourhood's environmental telemetry with the world. A gateway bridges your local mesh to the internet, contributing data from nearby nodes that aren't connected themselves.
Read the DocsBuild a WeSense Node
Deploy a dedicated ESP32 sensor for high-frequency environmental monitoring. Reports every 5 minutes over WiFi or LoRaWAN with temperature, humidity, pressure, CO2, PM2.5, and more. Step-by-step guide covers hardware, firmware setup, configuration, management, and updates.
Read the DocsHome Assistant / Ecowitt
Already running Home Assistant or Ecowitt devices? Connect your existing environmental sensors to the WeSense network with our ingester plugin and contribute data from hardware you already own.
Read the DocsReference: Recommended Sensors · Hardware & Boards
Strengthen the Network
Sensors collect the data, but nodes are the infrastructure that stores, replicates, and serves it. Running a node is one of the most impactful ways to contribute.
Run a Regional Node
Replicate data for a single region or city — for example, Wellington or Auckland. Smallest scope, easiest to host on a Raspberry Pi or small VPS, and ideal for community groups focused on their own area.
Station GuideRun a Country Node
Replicate every reading from your country. The most common scope for serious operators — broad enough to be useful as a national mirror, modest enough to run on a single mid-tier server.
Station GuideRun a World Node
Store the entire network's data. The ultimate backup — a world node replicates every archive from every region, keeping the full dataset resilient and available.
Station GuideRun a Meshtastic Gateway
Bridge your local Meshtastic mesh to the internet. Environmental telemetry from nearby mesh nodes flows into WeSense automatically through your gateway.
Gateway GuideContribute Skills
Contribute Code
Are you a developer? We need expertise across the stack — firmware for new sensors, Python ingesters for new data sources, backend services, and frontend visualisations. The contributor guide maps every repo and the areas that most need help.
Contributor GuideContribute Data Science
Help us build the models that will achieve emergent accuracy, uncover hidden environmental trends, and turn raw data into profound insights.
Get InvolvedBuild Visualisations
All WeSense data is open and queryable. Build your own dashboards, analysis tools, or integrate WeSense data into existing platforms. We'll link to and promote third-party tools.
Data AccessThis project is in active development. Documentation, guides, and community channels are being set up — check back soon.